The in-the-tank media is huffing and puffing, trying to make something important out of an entirely predictable recommendation by the Royal Society of Canada commission to legalize euthanasia. But commissions can be created to obtain a specific result, as this one was and did.
In fact, I told you this very thing would happen two years ago, to be precise, on October 28, 2009. Here’s the Secondhand Smoke post, “Stacking the Deck for Euthanasia in Canadian ‘End of Life’ Commission” in its entirety:”
“Expert commissions” to advise on contentious issues of public policy are usually political tools designed to come to a predetermined conclusion in order to pave the way for a desired policy changes. Remember that as we take a look at a new commission being appointed by the Royal Society of Canada to look into end of life issues. From the story:
Queen’s Philosophy professor Udo Schuklenk has been selected to head a prestigious new international panel on “End-of-Life Decision Making” in Canada. Appointed by the Royal Society of Canada, the expert panel will investigate key aspects of this critical issue – including voluntary euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide – and prepare a public report.
Stories such as this never seem to look deeper than the job titles of the panelists, as if they come to their work with no preexisting positions. So, I decide to check, starting with Udo Schuklenk. What a surprise: He’s a pro euthanasia philosopher. How do I know? He’s said so. For example, in an essay explaining why he is an atheist, he wrote:
No matter how unbearably patients suffer due to illness or injury toward the end of their lives, the world’s monotheistic religions stand as one in their rejection of many dying patients’ requests to end their lives in dignity. That we may well be of sound mind, and that there is no prospect of our condition improving, makes no difference to their stance. Our own considered judgment that life is not worth living any longer counts for nothing to organized monotheistic religions. According to them, we are not ethically entitled to ask for physician assisted suicide or voluntary euthanasia. This is surprising, given that at the end of our natural lives churches have promised us that we would be going to heaven – or hell, as the case might be. If at the end of a decently lived life we would go to heaven and enjoy eternal life, why are they fighting our earthly death so vigorously? None of this makes any sense at all if we take religious beliefs about our afterlife seriously. Once again substantial, avoidable human suffering is a direct consequence of religious interference with our end-of-life decision-making.
I don’t care about his religious views, but to chair a panel with such a clear view in favor of assisted suicide, indicates the direction in which the commission’s recommendations are expected (designed) to go.
But perhaps I am being too cynical. Let’s see who else is on the commission: Ah, Scot philosophy professor Sheila McClean who wrote The Case for Assisted Suicide, a book described as arguing fervently in favor of legalization. Hmm, I wonder how she will vote?
Another commissioner is a Dutch euthanasia researcher. Cute.
Then there’s Jocelyn Downie, author of Dying Justice, a book urging the decriminalization of both euthanasia and assisted suicide. The bias isn’t even subtle.
I spent some time researching the views of the two remaining members, but neither seemed to be particularly involved in the issue. So let’s count them, at least for now, as neutrals. No matter: Even assuming both are as adamantly opposed to assisted suicide as their co panelists appear to be for it, the deck is stacked, the fix is in, 4-2 for permitting assisted suicide in at least some cases.
The next step in this Kibuki Theater will be for the media to trip over themselves to report breathlessly that “the experts” have deeply pondered, and determined–after much hand wringing, there is always hand wringing–that assisted suicide should be allowed. It is all so scripted and predictable.
Gee, I was right. But then, on these matters, I usually am.
November 16th, 2011 | 12:35 pm
…and it’s more evidence that there is no slippery slope, but a well planned route being pursued.
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
November 16th, 2011 at 1:26 pm
Indeed.
November 16th, 2011 | 2:40 pm
Wesley,
as a Canadian and a Christian pastor I am paying attention to this issue as closely as I am able. I am very concerned for the future of human life in my country.
I have learned about the extent to which human life has become disposable mostly from your blog and the links you provide.
I don’t have the ability to follow this as closely as you do. I greatly value your summaries and reports on the developments on this front.
Your diligence is so appreciated. Please keep up your admirable work. God Bless you greatly!
November 16th, 2011 | 3:27 pm
Wesley Smith has been right about all of this from the beginning. The “slippery slope” was inevitable after the law opened the door to “passive euthanasia” and “assisted suicide” with the 1991 Patient Self Determination Act here in the United States and the Quinlan case.
Of course, those countries like Canada who have socialized medicine also have budget problems and want to ration their resources through the rationing of health care —especially to the old, the disabled, the senile, and the throwaways of society.
If physicians and hospitals are given the legal right to “choose” which patients to save and which patients to release to death and the patient, or the legal surrogate, can’t make the choice or mediate the choice, there is trouble ahead that we can’t imagine.
As we become more secular and as we deny that there are God-given rights and responsibilities that are inalienable — and the only rights that we really have are those that are determined by our secular governments, the slippery slope becomes public policy.
Too Bad! So Sad! I’ve got the “Euthanasia Blues.”
November 16th, 2011 | 4:15 pm
[...] Widgets « Previous |Home| Movement Begins to [...]
November 16th, 2011 | 8:13 pm
Slippery slope indeed
letter to the editor about Holland from the New England Journal of Medicine
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199705083361910
The investigators minimize the number of patients put to death who have not requested it by omitting from this category cases in which patients were given pain medication without discussion of the doctors’ explicit intention to use the medication to end their lives; these cases are instead treated as deaths secondary to pain medication. These deaths have increased by 40 percent — from 1350 deaths (1 percent of all deaths in the Netherlands) in 1990 to more than 1900 (1.4 percent) in 1995 — a comparison the investigators choose not to make. In over 80 percent of these cases, the patient made no explicit request for death. Since researchers around the world consider these cases to be nonvoluntary or involuntary euthanasia (if the patients were competent), they will view these data as reflecting a striking increase in the number of patients whose lives were terminated without their request and as a refutation of the investigators’ claim that there has been no increase and perhaps a slight decrease in the number of such patients.
Herbert Hendin, M.D.
American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, New York, NY 10005
November 17th, 2011 | 11:24 am
Congratulations to Herbert Hendrin, M.D. who understands, as a physician, that a society that embraces suicide and involuntary passive euthanasia of its citizens as “expedient” and fiscally intelligent is deeply immoral and ultimately doomed.
January 2nd, 2012 | 9:06 am
[...] is of course prudent to examine the agenda and backgrounds of those doing them. As Wesley Smith has pointed out, at least four of the six people have a clear and public pro-euthanasia stance (including the [...]
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact