November 30, 2004

  • ETHICS & HUMANITY


     


     


    The Life and Times of Europe: Barbarians at the Gate and Babies in the Gutter…Still


    Netherlands hospital policy to euthanize imperfect babies


     


     



     


    Today it was not a very great shock to learn of the Dutch hospital which announced it has begun to follow a policy of terminating the lives of newborn babies deemed too sick to live 


    (also read similar unrelated story).


     


    As many might know, there are several countries in Europe which already practice some form of euthanasia on the elderly, the sick and infirm. Some blame this on the cold cost-cutting bureaucratic machine of socialized medicine, others believe both the lack of solemn respect for intrinsic human worth and a government healthcare machine sans conscience are symptoms of a bigger problem. Yet others say there is simply nothing wrong here at all. They argue, we are simply offering a way out for those too weak or sick to make the choice themselves. I suppose we should concede in the end that it is a good thing since no one has ever recovered from being “too sick to live” and become anything of consequence throughout the history of mankind. In fact, saving lives of little apparent social value is often far too much trouble and hardly worth the investment, so the thinking goes.


     


    This could arguably be the most traumatic fruit of a Europe once lightly salted with Judeo-Christian-influence, now fully unseasoned by anything but the rancid putrification of the human spirit at the hands of relativism. Though this scene is not altogether unheard of on the Continent throughout all of its history, those truly devout of the transcendent moral Ideal certainly made some headway against such barbarism. Nevertheless barbarism in the world and in Europe in particular has been to one degree or another the rule of social constructs rather than the exception. And this, not because most people aren’t basically kind, docile creatures, rather it occurs when there is no moral basis under which their leaders and other sociopaths in society can justifiably be kept in check.


     


    Hitler’s Germany was a prime example of this. In an embittered secularized country where the final decree of society rules as conscience, that “conscience” decided it was no longer acceptable to be a Jew, to hide a Jew, to oppose policies or devoutly practice one’s faith. The social “conscience” had chosen Hitler as chancellor based on its arbitrary sense of right and wrong- a sense which history has proven to be nothing short of fluid, to say the least! The German plunge into darkness was further exacerbated by a large revival of pagan rituals, customs and thought.


     


    If you will go with me for a moment however, I’d like to take you to a time before this where the value of animal-rule was the world’s only belief system. In such a time, nobody could justifiably oppose a Hitler, a Stalin or a Mau because there was no law higher than any of them. A time where the weak, slow and difficult to understand were thoughtlessly retired from their existence by the knife, the rock or poison. Where persona non grata applied to everyone who was not strong and with sword. In such a time babies were routinely sacrificed to idols, along with the aged and others, cast from great heights, having their throats slit, tossed alive into bogs or burned alive. This is the heritage of pagan barbarity at its finest, where men decide all of the rules to their own advantage. In such a place, if a wife displeased her husband he may just divorce her – or he may prefer instead to kill her in any way that pleased him. If he possessed sufficient power, he was free to rape, steal from and abuse anyone of any age or sex. These are the traditions of most of our forefathers. So it is not surprising they continue unimpeded in many sectors by a better way even until today. The pagan tradition is certainly far older than any law of reason. In Europe, pockets of civility have existed only fleetingly over the millennia, often superficially. The Continent often ranged from wild bestial rampages, to quieter, government-sponsored ones, depending on whether the king was the one deposing or being deposed.    


     


    In a world of pagan influence where no justification for human rights transcended the reach of arbitrary men, people easily lost protection and those seen as a possible burden were without a thought eliminated or “sacrificed”. The agreed-upon sensibility was simple: it would be instead unkind to society, yea even the individual in question to permit his or her continuance among us. This ideal was held by small tribes and great empires alike until the first major assault on its core philosophy long before modern Europe. This happening in a remote, modest place called Mt. Sinai, where a code of conduct greater than our corrupt, self-interested and self-devised ones (obviously, since all of us fail in some way to keep every part of it) was passed to a stuttering and quirksome leader – Moses, as if to punctuate the frailty of man and the faux authority which his laws alone, even if principally correct bring.


     


    On that day it truly became a world of two paradigms, one pressing against the other, the adherents of one greatly outnumbering the other. Yet the latter has survived the ages against raids, scourges, pogroms, persecutions, inquisitions and famines determined to be a conscience of compassion, unalienable divinely-appointed rights and hope for those who joined that new paradigm.


     


    It has been a continuous and difficult battle to say the least. Sadly, even some who have claimed throughout the ages to follow a Mosaic conscience have instead been borne out to be liars by their pagan fruits of corruption, cruelty and so forth. Yet they have not invalidated the Ideal, rather proven both its need and its worth to mankind, despite one of the biggest coupes in history in which those very pagan acts known throughout history were ascribed to those professing not to be pagan though not holding to their profession in any way by their actions, as we saw with the Crusades.


     


    And so we begin the modern era, but the tenants are still there for men to see and follow: justice, kindness, compassion, life and liberty. These, the very reasons pilgrims fled to the New World not so long ago, the reason for the popular resistance against the Nazis and the Soviets, against evil men like Romania’s Nicolae Ceausescu and the leaders in Beijing. Such tenants, unprecedented prior to their arrival also brought to mankind a passion for building and staffing hospitals, schools for pupils of both sexes, women’s and racial suffrage, a loathing of any bondage or slavery for any and even kindness to animals and the proper caretaking of nature (A righteous man has regard for the life of his animal, but even the compassion of the wicked is cruel - Proverbs 12:10). Though corrupt men may not fully keep them, these ideals live outside the mortal realm of influence. They are transcendently correct and right and available to all who will have them. And it is a foolish man who thinks himself stronger or greater than these, though in the end he will learn in a most difficult way of their wisdom.


     


    The question is whether in the strong winds of justice we will bend like the grass or be broken like a tree. In the Netherlands today sick newborns are being put down like the mules of yore with broken legs. But even mules today are afforded veterinary care to mend their broken bones. And children or any other weak or infirm person, like all men are far greater than the sum of their fleshy parts. It is from such among the weak, infirm and abused, abandoned and neglected we have seen the likes of these, some of our greatest leaders, artisans, philosophers and scientists:


     


    Albert Einstein


    Abraham Lincoln


    Teddy Roosevelt


    Stephen Hawking


    Isaac Newton


    Leonardo Da Vinci


    Dr Temple Grandin


    Henry Ford


    Thomas Alva Edison


    Alexander Graham Bell


    Julius Caesar


    Winston Churchill


    Peter the Great


    Franklin D. Roosevelt


    Harriett Tubman (leading 19th Century American Abolitionist)


    George Washington


    H.G. Wells


    Charles Dickens


    Isaac Asimov


    Hans Christian Andersen


    General George Patton


    Ludwig von Beethoven


    Glenn Gould


    Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky


    Itzhak Perlman


    Helen Keller


    Lord Byron


    Woodrow Wilson


     


     


    In American Pop Culture:


     


    Richard Burton


    Tom Cruise


    Lou Ferrigno


    Danny Glover


    Bob Hope


    Robin Williams


    Walt Disney


    Marilyn Monroe


    Paul Newman


    Christopher Reeve


    Sylvester Stallone


    Elizabeth Taylor


    Bruce Willis


    Stevie Wonder


    Kenny G


    Meatloaf


    Alice Cooper


    Elton John


    Elvis Presley


    Michael Bolton


    Cher


    Carly Simon


    Ray Charles


    B.B. King


     


    Perhaps such a list as this might help those in the Netherlands who are unable to appreciate transcendent morality think better about the merits and wisdom of a value system which places at the top innocent human life as the greatest and unalterable right, at least from the perspective of their own long-term interests. As they say, what one does to his neighbor, he does to himself.


     


     


    A man wrote a song about 20 years ago that I think shares poetically but still very succinctly the short-sighted dilemma of pagan moral relativism. In the song “Baby Doe,” Steve Taylor tells the story of a couple who gives birth to a disabled child in a time when the final arbiter of right and wrong is the currently perceived pressures of a fallible society:


     


     


    Baby Doe

    Unfolding today
    a miracle play
    this Indiana morn
    the father–he sighs
    she opens her eyes
    their baby boy is born

    “We don’t understand
    he’s not like we planned”
    the doctor shakes his head
    “abnormal” they cry
    and so they decide
    this child is better dead

    I bear the blame
    believers are few
    and what am I to do?
    I share the shame
    the cradle’s below
    and where is Baby Doe?

    A hearing is sought
    the lawyers are bought
    the court won’t let him eat
    the papers applaud
    when judges play God
    this child is getting weak

    They’re drawing a bead
    reciting their creed
    “Respect A Woman’s Choice”
    I’ve heard that before
    how can you ignore
    this baby has a voice

    I bear the blame…
    it’s over and done
    the presses have run
    some call the parents brave
    behind your disguise your rhetoric lies
    you watched a baby starve


     


     


     


     



     


    ____________________________________________________________


     


     


    ETHICS & HUMANITY


     


     


     

Comments (5)

  • The article itself tho was less inflammatory than the Drudge headline, & grapples with the morality of science. Do you keep someone alive just because you can? A baby that will never survive off life support?

    My 101 year old grandmother had pneumonia this year, & they gave her antibiotics. Why? Surely they’re aware that if a woman that old recovers from pneumonia, it’s going to be at a greatly reduced quality of life. She never had to suffer much by being incapacitated, but she is suffering now.

  • Okay Jeff, it’s a huge book. Are you ready :p

    The way I see the world, it’s one of a moral question that transcends individual cases. We all know and have known those who have grown old and weak and sick and eventually have died. We too will one day be numbered among them. The ageless question was and always will be, whose right is it to decide? And it has been historically answered by the two major differing schools of thought in naturally two very divergent ways. About this we should think carefully and while we are thinking about this we might also consider that not every generation and culture is as equally prudent with such absolute power as we may consider ourselves to be.

    The school of thought to which I subscribe is that if we allow people to be put down like barnyard animals, we will see a dreadful mindset wash over us all like a wave from a stormy sea that will not subside until it has been fully consummated. And it seems that there are many precedents throughout history to back this claim up from the times of the Egyptians to the Greeks and Romans to the Huns, to post revolution France, Bolshevik Russia and Nazi Germany and today in China, North Korea and certainly underway in Europe once more.

    What is a good reason to give someone who is old and feeble antibiotics? Because to withhold such and to allow them to succumb to infection is cruel. Even Hippocrates knew this even while living in a society which condoned the murder of children and estranged wives, slaves and so on. If you have ever had an infection (and we all have) we know it certainly is not a painless route to the next world. I know how miserable pneumonia is, such situations are common to all families, but if a patient has the possibility of recovering (no, at 101, your grandmother will probably never play ice hockey again) then the right thing to do is administer the medicine, soothe the pain and understand this too, is a part of life and if anything it is part of life so that we will slow down and begin thinking about the deep things we need to think about as we care for those who deserve our solemn honor. My grandmother died of Alzheimer’s a few years ago. Watching her slowly deteriorate was very painful for everyone in the family. But it’s about respecting human life and about being in awe of it, in fact. And conversely about respecting death and the meaning of what one’s legacy will bring. But we learned so much during the moment when she was diagnosed until that very last day there was a glimmer of recognition in her eye – and to the last moment there was a breath in her. We learned a great deal about her such as the things she would remember from earlier in her life or from childhood (since the disease robs its host of the most recent memories first), stories my grandfather or aunt or uncle or parent would remember or be reminded of by something she’d say or do. We learned how to care for someone with her condition, how to be patient and selfless (something made easier because to the end, even when she could no longer remember who we were, she continued to be patient and selfless with us, as she had always been before).

    The quality of life for her was certainly not diminished. It only evolved, as it does so long as we are alive. She still loved it. She still loved everybody around her, she still filled the room with her smile and positive outlook and challenged us to laugh and remember the value of other people. As her short term memory faded and we would come over to visit and help out, she would offer us something to drink about every five minutes or so. You always knew what she was thinking: it was always about us. She was just glad to be alive and be with the ones she loved.

    The problem with the idea of legalizing human euthanasia is that, as history has shown us and will show us again, we will find that in the end we as a society will be killing people with medicine just because we can.

    Truly, our society cannot survive such relativism in matters of life and death, and neither does it deserve to.

    It is important though that we first have a consistent definition of what life-support and euthanasia are.

    Typically life-support has been defined as artificial means of life-extension, such as respirators, dialysis and others along with emergency measures such as the use of defibrillators and other resuscitation techniques.

    Even today in some countries however, this definition of “artificial” life-support is being warmed up to say that children on dialysis and otherwise normal children in need of a respirator have a less-than perfect quality of life and therefore might be better off dead. The odd thing is they never ask the children. And in countries like China and certainly Saddam’s Iraq or the old Romania, children with diabetes, seeing or hearing problems, dyslexia, diminished motor skills or simply those orphaned have been as good as dead.

    The problem with putting down grandma is that we as human beings do not have that authority- and considering how much evil is in the world, I would say there is a great deal of wisdom in that.

    Another problem with how life-support has been defined, particularly by the “deathers” is with regard to the act of keeping someone alive by natural means: means without which you or I would also die, such as food, water and so on. One reason why the Terri Schiavo case is so impassioned is that if even if she were truly not conscious, death by starvation or dehydration are two of the most agonizing and lengthy “natural” death processes. They are by far two of the cruelest. During the starvation regime, the stomach and intestines eventually literally start to die inside while the person is still alive. As this process progresses, the pain is excruciating and really cannot be adequate anesthetized.

    But the proponents of human euthanasia also have another method which clearly is neither natural nor ethical (and which many of them oppose when used on convicted murderers): the administration of a death-causing agent into the blood stream. No longer a sin of omission by any means, this is itself an outright proactive act of murder.

    Why is it murder? Not because some guy decided thousands of years ago that ending the life of someone who is a human being and not guilty of any crime is murder, but because his Creator decided that.

    I think there comes a time when someone is very near death that there no longer exists any ethical obligation to attempt resuscitation, as this will only prolong the matter. But the line between attempting resuscitation in such a dire circumstance and choosing to let a wounded man die on the street who fell and hit his head on the curb, or choosing to starve to death a retarded newborn or administer poison to the no longer “productive” elderly members of our community poisons the spirit of society with a virus whose hunger will only grow.

    Until the human race becomes all seeing, all knowing and all powerful, we would be well to humbly realize that we cannot always know what is best for a person in a life or death matter and I think it is vital to remember that their Creator will take care of the matter when that time has come.

    When we begin to play God by taking a life, we fool ourselves into thinking we see more and know more and have more power than we were given. And the weaker among us, whether knowing it or not will also get the message.

  • One could just as easily argue that using superhuman scientific advances to prolong the life of the human body is itself playing God. Withholding antibiotics from a 101 year old woman isn’t ‘putting her down.’ Our queasiness about death shouldn’t make us skirt the morality of science.

  • No, witholding under certain cercumstances is a different proceedure than administering a deadly agent. But I did qualify that when I defined euthanasia and life-support.

    I don’t think it is a queasiness of any sort for me, though I can’t of course speak for everyone. In fact, I have seen enough of it to be rather used to it, I regret to say. It is a slow process however when it’s not assisted and that might well make some people a bit queasy if not feel outright powerless, uncomfortable and awkward. The process certainly doesn’t jibe with our microwave generation. It is a miserable time and feeling to be sure, which no one wishes to be prolonged.

    But with regard to playing God, I had hoped someone might make such an argument that saving a life is playing God and as such is the same as taking one. If that be the case, why do we call street thugs who commit murder “murderers” and not “heros”? Why not also call those who step before a moving bus to save the life of a child a criminal? If we are going to qualify these designations simply based on the extent to which we think a person is experiencing life as we are, aren’t we essentially laying the groundwork in which the person or group which holds the greatest amount of power gets to define what is quality life and what isn’t for everyone?

    I would argue that saving a life has no prohibition as far as God or truly most reasonable societies are concerned, whereas acting in a manner which causes the death of the innocent does. As I outlined above, there have long been standards by which we define life-support and emergency resucsitation and there is a difference as I mentioned between “attempting resuscitation in such a dire circumstance (as when they are on their death beds and the cord is breaking no matter what) – and choosing to let a wounded man die on the street who fell and hit his head on the curb, or choosing to starve to death a retarded newborn or administer poison to the no longer ‘productive’…”

    But it’s never easy. The Dutch doctors in question acted without notifying anyone or and by acting in that manner failed offer anyone (particularly family members) a chance to contest the doctors’ decision to act. This to me reveals the whole matter for what it is: a symptom of a greater crisis of identity in some pretty important parts of modern Western culture. Science is not to blame no more than a car is to blame for the actions of a drunk driver. Science has always been with us and its discoveries simply show us ways to expand on our wishes, be they good or not. How we use science happens nowhere near the lab.

  • Hey, I read your blog & I think you might want to hear my tunes. Turn up your stereo & check my website here! http://www.musicbycali.com.

    Thanks!

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