Utopian Madness

Verging On Insanity

The old saw about the genie being let out of the bottle has it that once out, the genie can't be returned; it remains wildly uncontrollable.  Once out, bad consequences follow.  

There is a strong body of evidence to demonstrate that "assisted suicide", when legalised, is just such a genie.  Now, of course, nations that make assisted suicide legal always comfort themselves with the platitude that their particular version will not be misused by the unscrupulous.  After all, the fomenters and the legislators mean well.  They are only thinking kindly of the person suffering as they die.  Their version of assisted suicide is a law of love, dripping with compassion and pity.

But these folk are wilfully naive.  They do not operate on the premise that "the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked", but rather its opposite: viz, "the heart is truthful above all things and comprehensively righteous."  Given the supposed universal righteousness of men, of course it's reasonable to expect everyone will use a law permitting assisted suicides for the sole and only purpose for which it was intended, which was to reduce the suffering of the dying.

But which premise about men is true?
 Stand up, please, the man who believes that the heart of every person is "truthful above all things and comprehensively righteous".  Such a man, were he to exist, must have wilfully blinded himself to the collective experience of the human race for millennia past.  Is it reasonable to allow such myopic ignorance to frame laws governing life and death?

We are aware that "slippery slope" arguments are, well, slippery.  The possibility of taking following logical or inferential steps does not mean the steps will actually be taken.  But when it comes to assisted suicide, there is a body of existential evidence which cannot be ignored.

In 1984, Holland legalized euthanasia.  Critics immediately objected that Dutch doctors, having been given the right to kill their elderly patients at their request, would almost at once find reasons to kill patients at their whim.  This is precisely what happened.  The Journal of Medical Ethics,  in reviewing Dutch hospital practices, reported that 3 percent of Dutch deaths for 1995 were assisted suicides, and that of these, fully one-fourth were involuntary.  The doctors simply knocked their patients off, no doubt assuring the family that Grootmoeder would have wanted it that way.

As a result, a great many elderly Dutch carry around sanctuary certificates indicating in no uncertain terms that they do not wish their doctors to assist them to die, emerging from their coma, when they are ill, just long enough to tell these murderous pests for heaven's sake to go away.  The authors of the study, Hen Jochensen and John Keown, reported with some understatement that "Dutch claims of effective regulation ring hollow."

Euthanasia, as Dr Peggy Norris observed with some asperity, "cannot be controlled."  [David Berlinski, The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions (New York: Basic Books, 2009), p.32.]

 Let's change up a bit.  Imagine a law (not yet being advocated) which permitted parents to kill a maimed or handicapped child on the grounds that the child could never enjoy quality of life, so better to end it now.  Such a law philosophically and rationally would fit right close and very neatly with any assisted suicide law.  If the latter, why not the former?

Advocates for such a law killing off handicapped children might point out that no parent would ever do such an extreme act unless they were entirely convinced that it was for the child's sake and the child's good.  They would never, ever act out of selfish, egocentric motives.  But who would find such an argument credible?

Once James Boswell asked Dr Johnson his opinion upon original sin.  Johnson responded:

With respect to original sin, the inquiry is not necessary, for whatever is the cause of human corruption, men are evidently and confessedly so corrupt, that all the laws of heaven and earth are insufficient to restrain them from crimes.  [Ibid., p. 33.]

The advocate for assisted suicide must retort, "it just ain't so".   At that point we have good ground to suspect the advocate is not just egregiously naive, but is verging on insanity.