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“Assisted Suicide Advocates Seek to Euthanize the Rule of Law”
Friday, October 16, 2009, 9:15 PM
Wesley J. Smith

I was asked to write a piece for an online magazine called The Church Report.  I decided to expand my criticism of the lawsuit in Connecticut to redefine the word “suicide” in the assisted suicide context to “aid in dying.” The suit wants a judge to rule that when the suicidal person is terminally ill and is assisted in self-killing by a lethal prescription from a physician, it is not assisted suicide, in short, a blatant attempt to legalize by lexicon that which could not be done by legislation.

I get into the history of “aid in dying” as an advocacy term coined to overcome poll results showing that people have a negative attitude toward suicide. From the column:

Never mind that it is accurate. The dictionary definition of “suicide” is “the act or an instance of taking one’s own life voluntarily and intentionally.” http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/suicide And forget for the moment that fear of stigma can save lives. C & C is blatantly promoting a postmodern word engineering scheme that would sacrifice accurate and precise legal lexicon on the altar of emotional personal narratives.

Lest you think such subterfuge cannot succeed, it already has.  Under Washington State’s newly legalize assisted suicide regime, participating doctors are legally required to lie on the death certificate by listing the cause of death as the underlying disease rather than the prescribed suicide drug overdose.

Redefining the term in order to legalize assisted suicide by judicial fiat would have consequences:

Consider the surrealistic possibilities: If the lawsuit succeeded and I gave a terminally ill friend in Connecticut an overdose with which to intentionally end his life, it would remain a crime. But if my friend consulted a doctor he doesn’t know who is affiliated with Compassion and Choices to obtain the overdose—as happens with most assisted suicides in Oregon— it would merely be legal “aid in dying”—this, even though the act, the motive, and the lethal consequence would be precisely the same in each instance.  That’s not only nuts, it is blatantly Orwellian.

But the issue is bigger than just assisted suicide:

It is also dangerous beyond the issue of assisted suicide. The United States, we are often told, is a nation of laws and not of men.  If we are to be governed by the rule of law, words have to matter and definitions must be capable of being relied upon. But if a commonly understood term can simply be tossed out in order to legalize what the people’s elected representatives made a crime, why couldn’t a judge similarly criminalize an otherwise legal act via the same sleight of hand machination?  Indeed, should judges decide they can unilaterally change the rules by simply redefining terms, what law could permanently be relied upon?

The case should be a slam-dunk, the lawsuit thrown forcefully out of court.  But the way things are in the courts today, you never know what will happen. In this sense, the assisted suicide lawsuit in Connecticut not only threatens to remove a vital legal protection from vulnerable patients, it is a lethal threat to the rule of law itself.

And frankly, I don’t think that assisted suicide advocates much care.


Interview With WJS: “The Human Exceptionalist”
Monday, October 12, 2009, 11:19 PM
Wesley J. Smith

Earlier this year, I did a podcast interview with Kevin Allen, who runs a very fine feature on Ancient Faith Radio called The Illumined Heart.  It mostly dealt with human exceptionalism, and it has now been abridged (with my permission) into a written Q and A in Salvo magazine.  From the interview:

KA: What is “human exceptionalism,” and how does it relate to bioethics?

WJS: It’s a term that I may have coined [Me: I think I then said, but have tried to popularize], and it refers to the sheer moral importance of believing in the unique value of human beings. We seem to be entering an era in which humanity is viewed as irrelevant by many very powerful political and cultural forces. Does human life have intrinsic moral value simply and merely because it is human life? Our answer to this question will tell us all we need to know about what sort of society we’ll be looking at in the next couple of years. If the answer is “yes,” then we can create a bioethics that stands for the sanctity and equality of all human life. If the answer is “no,” then we need to ask an additional question: What is the attribute that confers moral value?

KA: How are people answering this second question?

WJS: Well, Princeton professor Peter Singer, who is the world’s foremost proponent of infanticide, insists that what actually matters is having sufficient cognitive capacity or being self-aware over time—that sort of thing. Thus, fetuses and embryos are not people, nor are newborn infants. People such as Terri Schiavo, who have lost these capacities, are also deemed nonpersons. You can now find advocacy in the literature of bioethics to either remove the right to life from so-called nonpersons or use them as natural resources—for organ harvesting or in experimentation. Once you accept the premise that being human is not what gives you value, then you’ve thrown universal human rights out the window. If you do not accept the concept of human exceptionalism—the innate value of human life—then you are letting those in power decide who has value. Might is making right.

Read this blog and my other writings: Is any of that deniable?  The quality of life ethic is distorting medicine throughout the West. Biological colonialism has the rich preying on the poor for their organs in the destitute world, while scientists and bioethicists are seriously considering eventually engaging in fetal farming.  But with few exceptions, no one is connecting the dots on these matters. That is why I spend so much effort here.

I was speaking to what I knew to be a Christian audience, many, if not most, of whom would agree with me. And so I said:

These are very dark days that we are entering, which means that people must not only stand up for what is right in the public square, but when things become legal, they must continue to do what is right, regardless of its legality.

That’s where the rubber meets the road, isn’t it?  What do you do when cloned embryonic stem cell research might relieve, say, your MS, but you believe that cloning is immoral and destroying embryonic life for instrumental purposes is immoral?  If you are like my friend Mark Pickup, you say no.  But many would say yes.  And none of us know into which category we really fall until the time of testing.


Summarizing the Stock/Smith Debate
Wednesday, October 7, 2009, 1:35 PM
Wesley J. Smith

A few weeks ago, as I have mentioned previously, I debated bioethicist and scientist Gregor Stock about designer babies.  An audience member has written a summary of that clash that pretty accurately summarizes our respective positions.  From the article in the CBC Newsletter by Evan Rosa (I am a special consultant for the CBC):

t was a lively debate, on a tough, complex issue. Here I can only offer a brief (and hopefully fair) representation of both views, and then I’ll offer some of my own thoughts.

Stock’s Position

Stock, a biophysicist, claims that science is ever-revealing the very substance of humanity (e.g., mapping the human genome). He applauds human rational-technical control of the world, and infers that, as a part of the world, we humans will (and should) turn to ourselves, to recreate humanity, just as we do our environment. We’re human, we’re technological; it’s what we do, it’s our destiny.1 Through a course of scientific trial and error, we eventually arrive at good ends. This being the case, he welcomes such fashioning and designing of progeny, as a natural step in our evolutionary history. We already “sculpt our minds and bodies using exercise, drugs, and surgery, [and] tomorrow we will also use the tools that biotechnology provides.2 As a leader in his field, he encounters many well-meaning and responsible parents, and he resoundingly insists, “why not?”

Smith’s Position

Smith finds the notion of genetic engineering of progeny wrong and ridiculously flawed, and offers several lines of argument to support his position: research and procedures will be extremely expensive; it’s full of hubris (pride) and hedonism (self-seeking pleasure, on the parts of parents); it reinterprets procreation as a form of solipsism (everything exists for me); the practice is literally eugenic in denying equality to all, placing higher value on the “fit”; it fails to take into account the freedom, individuality and personal rights of the designed child; and it’s a utopian ideal, which, as history shows, is ultimately oppressive.

That’s a good overview. I would add that I told the audience they were not going to watch a “debate,” per se. Debaters need a common frame of reference so they can argue about which view is best to achieve the mutually desired goal.  Stock and I do not share views–at least on this issue. So, I asserted that we were really going to be espousing divergent world views.  Each has detriments and benefits, but both can’t be pursued simultaneously.  That means that at some point–like most of the issues discussed here at SHS–society will have to choose which path it will want to take.


Killing for Organs
Monday, October 5, 2009, 5:55 PM
Wesley J. Smith

I have a piece up on CNS News.Com on the renewed drive to dismantle the dead donor rule that requires vital organ donors to be dead before procurement. From my column:

Oh-oh: Here they come. For years, organ transplant ethicists and some in the bioethics community have agitated to increase the supply of donated organs. There is nothing wrong with that in the abstract, of course. Increasing the supply would alleviate much human suffering and is devoutly to be wished. But therein lurks a great danger. Increasing supply is a worthy goal only so long as the organs are obtained ethically. But there is a growing chorus among the medical and bioethical intelligentsia to obtain more organs by harvesting living patients. Yes, some of our most influential voices now seek a license to kill for organs.They don’t put it that bluntly, of course. Rather—reflecting the spirit of our times—advocates argue that our definition of death should be changed to allow a great pretense that living patients are actually dead, thus permitting organ procurement.

I get into the Nature editorial, discussed here last week.  Not mentioned, because I wasn’t aware of it when this was written–darn!–is a similar call in the Journal of Medical Ethics.) I then pivot, and connect the call to harvest living human beings at the one end of life, with the current harvesting of embryos and proposed harvesting of fetuses:

We are not—yet—at the point that society will permit open harvesting and experimentation on cognitively devastated people, but that doesn’t mean we won’t get there. The slippery slope undermining human exceptionalism—the intrinsic value of human life simply and merely because it is human—is already slip-sliding away. Popular majorities support using nascent human life as corn crops in embryonic stem cell research, if the embryos were “leftovers” and going to be thrown out anyway.

But scientists have already moved beyond that early limitation. Many are now actively researching human cloning toward the end of manufacturing embryos for use and destruction in research.  And it won’t stop there if current trends continue. We already see early advocacy for “fetal farming,” that is, gestating fetuses for use in organ transplantation and medical experimentation.

New Jersey has already legalized cloned fetal farming, as a matter of fact. Here’s the conclusion:

It would be a terrible mistake to say, “It can’t happen here.” For as the late theologian Fr. Richard John Neuhaus once wrote, “Thousands of medical ethicists and bioethicists, as they are called, professionally guide the unthinkable on its passage through the debatable on its way to becoming the justifiable, until it is finally established as the unexceptionable.”

That process is steaming full speed ahead in the related fields of organ transplantation and biotechnology. The only way to stop this dehumanizing agenda is to take notice and push back before it is too late. Some things should ever and always be unthinkable.

I think they still are, but people have to know what is being advocated to ensure that certain lines are never crossed.


Abandoning the Vulnerable in the UK to Assisted Suicide Abuse
Saturday, October 3, 2009, 11:35 AM
Wesley J. Smith

As promised, I have written more extensively about the head prosecutor in the UK decriminalizing inter-familial assisted suicide. From my piece in the current Weekly Standard:

On July 4, 1995, Myrna Lebov, age 52, committed suicide in her Manhattan apartment. The case generated national headlines when her husband, George Delury, announced that he had assisted Lebov’s suicide at her request because she was suffering the debilitations of progressive multiple sclerosis.

Delury became an instant celebrity. He was acclaimed as a dedicated husband willing to risk jail to help his beloved wife achieve her desired end. The assisted-suicide movement set up a defense fund and renewed calls for legalization. Delury made numerous television appearances and was invited to speak to a convention of the American Psychiatric Association. He signed a deal for a book, later published under the title But What If She Wants to Die?

Why bring this up now?

Had Delury acted in England or Wales today–rather than in New York in 1995–he almost surely would not have been prosecuted. Even though assisted suicide remains a crime in the U.K., newly published British guidelines have effectively decriminalized some categories of assisted suicide by instructing local prosecutors when bringing charges in such deaths is to be deemed “not in the public interest.”

Some might say that is what should have happened in the Delury case. But in that matter, truth seeped through the cracks of the compassion disinformation campaign. Perhaps because he was planning to write a book about his wife’s death, Delury had kept a diary.  Rather than revealing a depth of  love and selflessness, it instead showed vividly that Delury put Lebov out of his misery:

The diary showed that Lebov did not have an unwavering and long-stated desire to die, as Delury had claimed. Rather, as often happens with people struggling with debilitating illnesses, her mood waxed and waned. One day she would be suicidal–but the next day she was engaged in life. Delury, moreover, encouraged his wife to kill herself, or as he put it, “to decide to quit.” He researched her antidepressant medication to see if it could kill her, and when she took less than the prescribed amount, which in itself could cause depression, he stashed the surplus until he had enough for a poisonous brew.

That wasn’t all. When Delury’s book came out–after double jeopardy attached, he admitted smothering her with a plastic bag.

Now, consider the Delury/Lebov case in light of the UK decriminalization:

Thanks to the assisted suicide guidelines, potential Myrna -Lebovs in Britain are now at the mercy of future George Delurys. And those Delurys know full well that, so long as they don’t keep inculpating diaries, they will have little trouble convincing prosecutors that their motive was compassion, a claim readily believed in a society so fearful and disdainful of disability. Such are the consequences of the state prosecutor’s decision that protecting the dying and infirm from assisted suicide is no longer in the public interest.

Finally, add in a UK coroner’s inquest in the Kerrie Woolterton case concluding that doctors were right to stand by and let her die from swallowing anti freeze because she wrote a note refusing treatment, and you have a perfect storm of abandonment.

Culture of death, Wesley?  What culture of death?


Obamacare: My Take on You Tube
Tuesday, September 22, 2009, 12:45 AM
Wesley J. Smith

On September 9, I was asked to appear on a web-cast for the Family Research Council about Obamacare. (I would also appear at a NOW web-cast, if asked.) It was a pretty good interview, if I don’t say so myself, with interlocutor Tony Perkins.  Here it is for your approval or brickbats.


“Health Care Reform and Human Exceptionalism”
Monday, September 7, 2009, 11:59 PM
Wesley J. Smith

He talks!–and talks, and talks: I was interviewed for the Derek Gilbert podcast recently about Obamacare, health care rationing, the danger of bioethics to the vulnerable, animal rights, and human exceptionalism.  If anyone is interested, just hit this link.  Merci.


“Blue Dog” Congressman Baron Hill (D-IN) Avoids Wesley J. Smith-Inspired Question at Electronic Town Hall
Friday, September 4, 2009, 3:53 PM
Wesley J. Smith

Well, this is both flattering and telling. A questioner at an online town hall brought up a point I have made about Obamacare to Indiana “Blue Dog” Congressman Baron Hill. From the transcript:

Q: Congressman Hill, do you agree with Wesley J. Smith, author of “Culture of Death: The Assault on Medical Ethics in America”? In the book he reminds us that the devil’s in the implementation and not just the bill. He states that the legislation itself is only part of the problem with Obamacare. If the bill were to pass hundreds of bureaucrats will have years to govern the details of the law. This is where the real assault on American freedoms can be achieved as many regulatory actions are brought about after legislation and under the radar. For example, any end-of-life counseling provision should be specified in the bill to be purely voluntary and that counseling should be required by law to be neutral as to outcome. Otherwise, even if the legislation does not push in a certain direction, refusing treatment for example, the regulations could.

Rick Berry, Madison

A: Because of the complexity of our nation’s health care system, I believe the implementation of any reform legislation should be drawn out over several years. That will allow us to see what works, what doesn’t, what needs to be addressed immediately and how best to fix problems that arise. In terms of ambiguity on the end-of-life counseling or advanced directives provision, I can assure you that the language is perfectly clear on that issue – the option to receive such counseling or professional services is indeed an option (completely voluntary) and simply makes it a covered service should Medicare beneficiaries seek such services. This is a deeply personal issue and should remain one.

Notice how Hill avoids the issue of the tens of thousands of pages of regulations that would be promulgated outside of the public eye to carry out the purposes of the legislation.  (Legislation today are mere skeletons. The flesh and blood is crafted by bureaucrats in the administrative departments.)  Also, section 1233 of HB 3200, the end of life counseling provision, does need to be  made explicitly voluntary on the face of the legislation for both provider and patient, and further, be required to be non-directed toward a particular choice.  Yet, as we have discussed here at SHS, rather than make these changes that would prevent bureaucrats from inserting bad things into regulations, the House committee passed the bill to the floor without change–as the Senate looks prepared to drop the provision altogether.

In any event, way to go Rick Berry of Madison, IN!


Obamacare: The Unfortunate Call to Emulate the Netherlands
Friday, August 21, 2009, 10:15 AM
Wesley J. Smith

The other day, President Obama referenced the Netherlands as a splendid example of how the “public option,” that is a government plan, worked well with a private system. To The Source contacted me and asked me to reflect on the president’s use of that particular example.

First, the president drastically understated the matter when he stated that the Dutch government was merely “involved” in the country’s health care system.  Yes, there is a dual government/private system, but the private sector is regulated to the point of being handcuffed.  From the piece:

Everyone must purchase insurance from heavy regulated private insurance companies that offer plans with benefits set by the government. While the plans compete with each other on price, each company’s plans must be sold at the same price to everyone regardless of their age and state of health. It is illegal to refuse to sell anyone insurance, to create deductibles, or to refuse to fund treatments that a doctor has determined to be medically necessary. Employers pay 50% of the premiums and citizens 45%, and the government subsidizes people who can’t afford premiums.  Long term care is paid by the government, as is chronic mental health treatment and end of life care, services that are financed through taxation. Insurance companies that have heavy payouts are compensated by the government and a competition regulator ensures that the companies don’t act against the consumer’s interests.

That’s a lot more than just being “involved.” In a country the size of the USA, instituting such a heavily regulated, universally mandated two-tiered system would, to say the least, be an administrative challenge.

But given widespread fears that Obamacare could lead to death panels and the more realistic worry that rationing boards that will cut care for grandma, using the mother of all death cultures as an example for us to emulate was really maladroit.  I go through the Dutch euthanasia horrors: expanding categories of the euthanized to and including the depressed;  non voluntary euthanasia, infanticide, etc. Does this mean we will “fall off Euthanasia Cliff” if we follow Obamacare?  Not necessarily, but the money issue could prove relevant given Oregon’s offering to pay for assisted suicide while denying chemotherapy to cancer patients on Medicaid.  Also, Derek Humphry calls the cost saving potential for widespread assisted suicide the “unspoken argument” for legalization.  I conclude:

Don’t get me wrong: There is no evidence that Obama plans for assisted suicide/euthanasia to become a means of easing our strained health care budget.  But his proposal would mark a major change in American law and morality. Thus, if Obamacare breaks down Hippocratic medical ethics—as I think it would—if its proposed centralized cost control board imposes health care rationing and a concomitant duty to die—which, given the views of his closest health care advisers, it very well might—and if assisted suicide/euthanasia ever becomes merely another medical treatment choice—it is now legal in three states—the Netherlands may turn out to be more of a model for American health care than even the president may now suppose.

Obamacare is one of the most serious domestic public policy debates of my lifetime. I think it would accelerate other unfortunate cultural shifts that we are experienced–resulting in a social disaster, particularly for the weak and vulnerable.


What It Means To Be Human Podcast to Return Soon
Friday, August 7, 2009, 2:27 PM
Wesley J. Smith

I have been repeatedly asked when my podcast for the Discovery Institute, What It Means To Be Human, will return. Soon, my pretties.  Very soon.

The problem had to do with the time pressure of other work and personal matters. Then, my laptop crashed and burned.  My new system has Vista and I had trouble getting the recording software to work.

But that is all past us now. I am in Seattle to give a speech about my pending book to a Discovery symposium. Whilst here, I took the opportunity to record about 8 new podcasts. I also took advantage of the DI’s splendid IT guys to fix my computer problem.

So, as soon as editing is done, we will soon be streaming weekly again.  I will let you know as they are released.  In the meantime, if you want to hear some old podcasts, tune in here.  Thanks.

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