Is Obama the First Pro-Euthanasia President?

There’s been very little attention paid to an interview President Obama did with the New York Times the day of his major speech at Georgetown University on April 14. I was especially interested in the section of the interview dealing with health care, and to learn of the President’s perceptions of end-of-life issues. It’s not pretty. Read on.

For starters, President Obama opined:

I have always said, though, that we should not overstate the degree to which consumers rather than doctors are going to be driving treatment, because . . . when it comes to medical care; I know how to ask good questions of my doctor. But ultimately, he’s the guy with the medical degree. So, if he tells me, You know what, you’ve got such-and-such and you need to take such-and-such, I don’t go around arguing with him or go online to see if I can find a better opinion than his.

Well, yes and no.

But the President’s slant is immediately concerning, because there’s a fine line between medical expertise and Doctor Power. What if the doctor says, “Well, you’ve got two weeks to live, and your quality of life is very poor, and all the expensive care we can give you will not help a bit, but assisted suicide is legal, quick, and very inexpensive?’ Should I then accept this pronouncement because he’s “the guy with the medical degree?”

If you think I’m stretching things a bit, it’s because of what came next from the President:

And part of what I think government can do effectively is to be an honest broker in assessing and evaluating treatment options. And certainly that’s true when it comes to Medicare and Medicaid, where the taxpayers are footing the bill and we have an obligation to get those costs under control. And right now we’re footing the bill for a lot of things that don’t make people healthier.

Not too hard to see the spin here. Now we’ll get the government saying, “OK, seeing that we pay for your medical care, we’re going to decide what care you get and what care you can’t have.”

And, more darkly, the specter of futile care emerges, because what the President was saying was, “If we’re paying for stuff that doesn’t make you healthier, we need to reconsider whether we want to pay for this treatment.”

Note the phrase is “to make you healthier” - not to alleviate your symptoms, or provide you with comfort care because you’re never going to get healthier.

Simple: If treatment makes you healthy again, you get it. If it can’t, you can’t have it, because we need it for people who can get healthy again.

Pure, unadulterated futile care.

Here’s what will happen, trust me:

The government already knows that medical care in the last weeks of life is where most medical dollars get spent. Same goes for money spent on people with significant, although not necessarily terminal disabilities. Marry that to the President’s commitment to cut health care costs, a society that increasingly thinks helping people die is just dandy, and a medical profession that is increasingly utilitarian, and you have the perfect plan to make people with severe medical problems, including those with disabilities, into Useless Eaters.

It got worse.

The President:

So when . . . I talk about the importance of using comparative-effectiveness studies as a way of reining in costs [which] . . . is an attempt to say to patients, you know what, we’ve looked at some objective studies out here, people who know about this stuff, concluding that the blue pill, which costs half as much as the red pill, is just as effective, and you might want to go ahead and get the blue one. And if a provider is pushing the red one on you, then you should at least ask some important questions.

Ah, “comparative-effectiveness,” “objective studies.”

Science in the service of deciding who lives and who dies. Seems like we’ve heard this somewhere before.

Allow me to paraphrase my President:

Doctor to patient: “You know, what, we’ve looked at some objective studies out here, people who know about this stuff, concluding that there’s no point in treating you any further. We’ve concluded that the blue pill, which will keep you comfortable until you die, is very expensive. The red pill, that costs a tiny fraction of the blue pill, can end your suffering quietly, effectively, and with dignity.”

Don’t believe me? See what happened to Barbara Wagner in Oregon, where the state refused an expensive treatment to help her live our her days, but offered to pay the pennies it would cost for her to commit assisted suicide.

But the President went even further, using a personal example when asked about end of life care:

. . . my grandmother got very ill during the campaign, she got cancer; it was determined to be terminal. And about two or three weeks after her diagnosis she fell, broke her hip . . .So now she’s in the hospital, and the doctor says, Look, you’ve got about — maybe you have three months, maybe you have six months, maybe you have nine months to live. Because of the weakness of your heart, if you have an operation on your hip there are certain risks that — you know, your heart can’t take it. On the other hand, if you just sit there with your hip like this, you’re just going to waste away and your quality of life will be terrible. And she elected to get the hip replacement and was fine for about two weeks after the hip replacement, and then suddenly just — you know, things fell apart . . .

OK, a very difficult situation, with difficult, but very common health decisions that needed to be made. BUT, then the President went on, back to setting us up for official pro-death thinking:

Whether, sort of in the aggregate, society making those decisions to give my grandmother, or everybody else’s aging grandparents or parents, a hip replacement when they’re terminally ill is a sustainable model, is a very difficult question. If somebody told me that my grandmother couldn’t have a hip replacement and she had to lie there in misery in the waning days of her life — that would be pretty upsetting.

See? Old, lying in misery in an expensive hospital bed, with a broken hip.

Pretty upsetting. Expensive, too.

What’s a grandson to do?

The President:

Well, I think that there is going to have to be a conversation that is guided by doctors, scientists, ethicists. And then there is going to have to be a very difficult democratic conversation that takes place. It is very difficult to imagine the country making those decisions just through the normal political channels. And that’s part of why you have to have some independent group that can give you guidance. It’s not determinative, but I think has to be able to give you some guidance. And that’s part of what I suspect you’ll see emerging out of the various health care conversations that are taking place on the Hill right now.

Just so you know: Pro-death is going to be more than law. Here's the plan:

Have “conversations” with the public under the guise of measured reasonable argument. Subtly (and not so subtly) use doctors, scientists and ethicists who are pro-death to lead the way. Shape public opinion to utilitarianism, futile care, people as pure economic entities, and then the resistance to assisted suicide, and, eventually, euthanasia, will crumble.

Is Obama our first pro-death President?

I see no evidence that he’s not.

Mostert Live on the Andy Caldwell Show Tuesday, 6.05 pm Eastern

I'll be back live on the Andy Caldwell Show at 6.05 pm eastern time today, Tuesday, May 5. We'll discuss ISDB's announcement last week that it had filed a friend of the court brief in Montana, appealing a Montana Judge's declaration from the bench that physician-assisted suicide was legal in Montana.

Please join the conversation!

ISDB Files Amicus Brief Opposing Legalized Physician-Assisted Suicide in Montana

The Institute for the Study of Disability and Bioethics yesterday joined with the Bioethics Defense Fund, and the Pro-Life Legal Defense Fund, in filing a friend of the court brief appealing the legalization of physician-assisted suicide in Montana.

Hard on the heels of last November’s ballot initiative legalizing assisted suicide in Washington State, a Montana trial court judge ruled that Montanans had both a right to die and a right to physician-assisted suicide. The judge made it clear that she understood that Montana had no safeguards in place for physician-assisted suicide, and no legal definitions of the crucial terms competent or terminally-ill, conditions legally specified in both Oregon and Washington. Further, the court indicated that the decision for physician-assisted suicide should be the sole responsibility of physicians, despite there being no legal guidelines specifying how doctors might establish whether a person requesting physician-assisted suicide was competent to do so or not.

Read the filed brief here.

ISDB & Disability Matters Co-sponsor Second International Symposium on Euthanasia & Assisted Suicide

The Institute for the Study of Disability & Bioethics, the home of this blog, is pleased to announce our co-sponsorship of the Second-International Symposium on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide on May 29^th and 30^th in Washington, DC. The Symposium will be held at the National Conference Center, near Dulles airport.

I will be a keynote speaker, along with Diane Coleman (Not Dead Yet), Dr. Peter Saunders (Care Not Killing, UK), Rita Marker (International Task Force on Euthanasia & Assisted Suicide), Wesley J. Smith (Discovery Institute), Alison Davis (No Less Human, UK), Alex Schadenberg (Euthanasia Prevention Coalition-International), and Margaret Dore, (Seattle elder law attorney).

As readers of this blog know, the gathering storm of legalized assisted suicide and euthanasia continue unabated.

Speaking at a conference in Canada this past weekend, it was clear that the general public have very little information about what’s happening right under their noses, in communities large and small.

A piece about my keynote in the Guelph Mercury laid out very accurately what I see to be our current challenges.

Details for the conference are here.

We’d love you to join us!

When Infants Die

Doc over at Mind, Soul, and Body has a thoughtful piece on some of the most difficult circumstances I can imagine – being faced with the prospect of a dying infant.

Dying infants break our hearts for all kinds of reasons, and parents and loved ones face a titanic struggle between what they face and what they believe.

You see, we carry around in our very beings a plethora of expectations around life, especially around the lives of a newborn:

Nobody should die young.

Parents shouldn’t have to bury their children.

We don’t care if it’s a boy or girl; we just want our child to be healthy.

But that is not what we find in the pediatric ICU. We find very, very sick babies. We find absolutely no prospect of recovery.

There will be no happy photos of first days at kindergarten, school, or college. There will be no endless, badly filmed video that will be played over and over again across the years, with chuckles all the while.

No first love, no getting married in clothes that years later will look so terribly dated.

All gone.

But not yet gone. Before us, a frail form clinging to what could have been.

Doc explains just how disabled and medically vulnerable these children are. His descriptions don’t make for easy reading, but they’re accurate.

He struggles, as do we all, with where to find the compromise between comfort care and the unrelenting reality that sooner, rather than later, every effort will fail.

But, in the end, it’s really not that complicated, because there are essentially two choices.

We can go the route of Peter Singer, who insists we should euthanize these infants, or, in Baroness Warnock’s harsh world, that they should be “put down.” Or we can take note of what happens routinely in the Netherlands, where dying babies are routinely euthanized because they have no hope of a “good quality of life.”

What hideously casual utilitarian decisions!

But, as Doc suggests, there is another, better choice: Supporting the family, gently explaining every option. Using every medical and palliative tool to provide comfort and ease pain. Being patient as families grieve.

All this, because we are dealing with a human life, an exceptional life, no matter how brief. 

A life worth just as much as anyone more perfect. 

Loving and gentle medical care so that whatever time is left can be spent making the memories, brief as they will be, to warm and console hearts after that Long Slow Goodbye. 

Dignitas’ Assisted Suicide for Healthy People

I’m often more than a little bemused when naiveté inevitably results in shock and disbelief.

Why? Because there are two groups of people who generate shock among those who listen to them:

First, there are those who deliberately seek to shock our sensibilities for the sheer delight of seeing the reaction produced. Like grown ups who tell potty jokes at polite dinner parties.

Second, a much more dangerous group: people who say things that are not necessarily meant to shock, but are simply said because they are true. These people mean what they say, and say what they mean.

And then act on what they have told us they would do.

Saying what they believe is not the biggest problem, though – it’s that people react by thinking they cannot possibly mean what they are saying, and so either ignore it, or are disproportionally incredulous.

Incredulous is exactly how the UK press have been acting over statements made by Dignitas founder Ludwig Minelli.

You do remember Dignitas, don’t you? In case you missed previous posts about this outfit, see here, here, here, here, and here.

I’m shocked that the UK press is shocked. Minelli is just saying what he believes, how he intends to proceed, and what his actions will mean.  Minelli wants to  stretch the envelope of whom he helps kill.

He's as serious as a heart attack (sorry, couldn’t resist).

Minelli’s comments are also a rare glimpse past the pro-death spin and propaganda of “dignity,” “autonomy,” and “compassion” into the horrific abyss of twisted pro-death values and deceit.

The Times of London fretted that Minelli ". . . now wants to kill people that are perfectly healthy." 

(Sidebar: That’s the ultimate goal of all this pro-death stuff – death on demand anywhere, any time, for anyone).

Let’s look at what Minnelli actually, and accurately, said:

Ludwig Minelli described suicide as a “marvellous opportunity” that should not be restricted to the terminally ill or people with severe disabilities.

Just to make sure you see the spin: Suicide is not nihilistic, selfish, and probably avoidable. It’s a wonderful act that people should embrace. Oh yes, and by the way, we don’t need to be selfish about it – why should only terminally ill people or those with severe disabilities have access to this “marvelous opportunity?”

See how magnanimous? Marvellous opportunities should be available to all, otherwise it’s discriminatory, don’t you know.

On we go:

Mr. Minelli said that anyone who has “mental capacity” should be allowed to have an assisted suicide, claiming that it would save money for the NHS.

Breathtaking. 

If you have “mental capacity,” suicide’s the thing for you. Note, the mental capacity term is not an accident: Even newborn infants have “mental capacity.” Ergo, assisted suicide for all!!!

If what Minelli means is that assisted suicide should be available for people in their right mind, that’s only a stepping stone to killing people who aren’t in their right mind (e.g., Alzheimer’s patients) when others decide that, were they in their right mind, they would want to commit suicide.

The last part is not a joke – it’s how they justify euthanizing people with impaired “mental capacity” in the Netherlands.

But here’s the coup de grace: Killing people saves the state (the British National Health Service) money.

There. 

No more pretence.

No more backtracking (as many pro-death people do) that saving money is never the intent, although sometimes an unintended consequence, of assisted suicide and euthanasia.

Does anyone really think that the bean counters in any health organization won’t see this as a very tempting idea? Can we say Useless Eaters, anyone?

But, now, finally, to the reason for the fuss (see, nobody these days is too upset about someone spinning assisted suicide & euthanasia as a “marvellous opportunity” or that killing people will save money – that’s old hat).

Everyone got their knickers in a tangle because Minelli was "revealing plans to help a healthy woman to die alongside her terminally ill husband."

Minelli explained:

“The husband is ill, his partner is not ill, but she told us here in my living room that, ‘If my husband goes, I would go at the same time with him’,” he said.

So, Mr. I'll-kill-you-for-any-reason-as-long-as-you-ask is going to do what any champion of a worthy cause would do: He’s going to challenge the Swiss law that bars assisted suicide for healthy people.

Now there’s a really brave, kind man.

Coming soon to a place near you.

Be afraid, be very afraid.

I Bowl Like a Retard

In last year’s presidential campaign, large chunks of the electorate and many disability advocacy groups were apoplectic that Sarah Palin made clear her advocacy for children with disabilities. She did so from a position of strength: She had a newborn with Down syndrome and a nephew with autism.

As I noted at the time, this was the first time any of the presidential candidates had specifically spotlighted advocacy for people with disabilities. Until Palin’s remarks, the national disability community had been seething over how they had been pointedly ignored.

After Palin’s remarks, they seethed all over again, just for different reasons.

Unfortunately, Palin’s use of the bully pulpit quickly got derailed from a laudable opportunity to advocate for people with disabilities to the gutter of partisan politics. Those politically opposed to Palin, including many disability organizations and researchers, pounced.

They were outraged that she had the temerity to mention disability. Essentially, their rather pitiful arguments were (a) how dare a Republican try to hi-jack disability issues, when the Democrats owned that territory (going back to the Kennedys’ advocacy for people with disabilities in the early 60s)? and (b) Palin was being politically opportunistic, the disability issue a convenient vote-grabbing prop.

There was no quarter given that Palin was genuinely prepared, if elected vice-president, to make this her vice presidential issue.

Perhaps the most vicious responses came from many in academia: the special education researchers and university faculty who, from their lofty perches, gleefully declared Palin’s remarks the confused babble of some Neanderthal hick with an IQ lower than the people she was advocating for.

It gave me a whole new perspective on my profession, who usually go to great lengths to remind us all how impartial they are, and how they know what’s best for people with disabilities.

A colleague at another university even took the time to pass on a hit-piece to a prestigious special education listserv I subscribe to. In that piece, the writer said that in Alaska, there were many others like Palin - “knuckle-dragging” epithet and all.

Fast-forward to last Thursday, and President Obama’s Jay Leno Show derision of people with disabilities, describing his poor bowling skills as something that would be seen at the Special Olympics.

Here’s what the President meant: “I bowl like a retard.”

Criticism of the President has been measured, at best. The listserv I’m on that so viciously went after Palin has been completely silent about President Obama's insult.

Not a word.

And certainly no words taking the President to task.

Here’s the sad truth: President Obama said what he thinks:

People with disabilities are less worthy than the rest of us. They can’t even bowl properly. Or run properly, or think properly, or see properly.

Go to the Special Olympics; see them unable to do things that others do well.

Have a good laugh.

Be thankful you’re not them.

Way to go, Mr. President.

Pain Management in the UK: Good for Sir Liam and a Propaganda Prediction

As I’ve repeatedly noted on this blog, the UK seems to be ground zero in the international push for legalizing assisted suicide.

The eagle-eyed pro-death crowd is expert in looking for spin and angles that will bolster their case, even from circumstances that would suggest the opposite.

For example, many Britons have gone to Dignitas in Switzerland over the past few years to legally commit assisted suicide. Rather than focus on the macabre Swiss and their dark practices (for a price, of course), the pro-death lobby turns the argument this way:

"Assisted suicide is dignified death. Those progressive Swiss understand this, as do the intelligent Dutch, and the ever-so urbane Belgians, so they have made assisted suicide legal. Assisted suicide in the UK is illegal. How unsophisticated we Brits seem to be!! We must work to change these Neanderthal notions in the UK!! Our poor fellow Brits have to die in a strange country, bereft of their familiar surroundings, family, and friends. They should be allowed to die with dignity at home, in the UK, surrounded by their loved ones, their friends, and Spot, their loyal dog, preferably on a sunny warm day with a nice breeze……"

Oh, sorry, I’m getting a little carried away with the propaganda…..

You get the picture.

A related issue surfaced in the UK’s Guardian last Saturday, when the issue of pain management at the end of life took center stage on the news that the UK’s chief medical officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, was about to release his annual state of the health system report blasting the lack of pain management experts and care.

A part of the story caught my eye, the issue of severe pain at the end of life:

Asked whether better pain relief could, as some anti-euthanasia supporters argue, reduce the demand for doctor-assisted suicide from people with terminal conditions, Donaldson said: "I think this concept of a good death is very bound up with the lack of pain and the sort of serene quality that people enter when they are free of pain, so I guess all of the feelings that surround that are bound up to a large extent with pain.

Good for you, mate.

You see, the pro-death crowd play on peoples’ fears – like the fear that in your last days nobody will be able to control your pain and you’ll go screaming in unspeakable agony into the world beyond. 

They don’t want you to know that almost all pain, in almost every case, can be very, very effectively controlled. Medically, there is no reason for people to suffer excruciating pain at the end of their lives. It can be managed. Period.

That’s what the good doctor was saying.

But. BUT: That’s not the way the assisted suicide and euthanasia extremists will twist it.

Prediction:

The pro-assisted suicide and euthanasia bloodlust will not call for better education in pain management, or for reducing the ignorance that pain can’t be managed.

They’ll spin it by saying, Look, there is no need to suffer such terrible pain at the end of your life. Horrible pain is, well, very painful, and undignified! We can help!!! Wouldn’t you like to put your mind at rest, knowing that before your pain gets too bad, we have a solution that you control!! Don’t worry, you don’t have to use it, but won’t it be great to have that option if you ever need it? The health system doesn’t have the wherwithall to help you with your pain – we can!!!

And that’s the real agenda, folks.

Making you dead by first making you frightened.

The Final Exit Network Gets Busted Part 2: SPIN MODE!!

Last week’s arrest of four FEN members in a federal sting in Georgia has cranked up the pro-death extremists’ propaganda machine. They’re in full spin mode.

You know there’s something going on when Dr. Death Jack Kevorkian is bleating about FEN being a bunch of whackos whose methods he doesn’t agree with.

From the story:

A lawyer for retired pathologist Jack Kevorkian, who participated in dozens of assisted suicides, said his client does not condone the methods of a national assisted-suicide ring with Michigan ties at the center of a multistate investigation.

Rich. 

Don’t miss the spin: It’s only that he doesn’t condone THE METHOD. He’d much prefer, I think, that FEN use the methods he did, especially in his televised killing of Thomas Youk in 1998.

So, an ersatz distancing, if you will.

Then there’s the ubiquitous Derek Humphry.

He of the Hemlock Society (now spun as “Compassion & Choices”).

He of the book “Final Exit.” (Gee, you’d think the Finale Exit Network could have been a bit more creative here).

He of deserting his second wife when she turned out to have terminal cancer.

ANWAY, Humphry went into full spin mode:

“We shall keep going — we will fight this case,” said Derek Humphry . . .This [Georgia] is a test case. We didn’t look for this. They handed us a case. The public is enormously interested.”

Don’t miss the spin: There we were, going about our kind business, and we have been unfairly targeted. We shall fight! We will not be silenced! You mess with us, we’ll take our case to the masses!!!

Ho-hum.

Except that good citizens reading these quotes less than carefully are likely to mistake killers for caregivers

Which is exactly what they want.

The Final Exit Network Gets Busted Part I

Well, things have gotten hot for the Final Exit Network.

They should.

Should get much hotter, if you ask me.

The reports were thick and fast late last week that an undercover federal investigation in Georgia resulted in the arrest of four FEN members on charges of assisted suicide, which is illegal in the state.

It seems that the feds began putting together pieces of the death puzzle after FEN was exposed in Arizona last year for allegedly helping kill a 58 year-old woman, who had no terminal illness at all, but who apparently had psychological problems.

So much for the pro-assisted suicide argument that assisted suicide should only be available for people with terminal illnesses. . . 

Then last June, in Georgia, 58 year-old John Celmer checked out. Celmer’s wife became suspicious that he hadn’t died in his sleep, as it first appeared when he was found. Going through her husband’s things after his death, she came across evidence that Celmer had corresponded with FEN members. She also found receipts for the purchase of two tanks of helium.

FEN recommends victims inhale helium through a mask placed over their head. The helium replaces oxygen, thereby suffocating the victim. It’s also almost impossible to trace at autopsy. It’s a FEN standard operating  procedure, as is their removing of all evidence of the assisted suicide after the death. That’s why Celmer’s wife thought he died in his sleep.

As if that wasn’t enough to raise red flags, Celmer’s doctor, completely surprised at his patient's death, weighed in. From the Atlanta Journal Constitution:

According to an affidavit, Celmer’s physician, Dr. Brant Carlson, told investigators Celmer had head and neck surgeries that left him cancer-free but Celmer was “concerned about his public appearance” because the surgeries disfigured him. “John Celmer was making a remarkable recovery” from two surgeries, according to the affidavit.

Celmer also suffered from arthritis in his hip, according to the affidavit, and his pain “could have been greatly reduced if he had taken his pain medication properly and stopped drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes.”

So, I’m asking all you gung-ho assisted suicide extremists, for the rest of your lives, please don’t tell us that assisted suicide is only for people who are suffering excruciating pain and who have less than 6 months to live.

Just go ahead and say what many of us already know: That what you really want is death on demand, anytime, anywhere for anyone – and for any reason.

Oh, and that you want it legalized, all for our good.

Death is good.

Legalized death is even better!!!!

Love and Respect x 2: The Propaganda that More Killing is Better

John West has been all over the media in the last week or so, peddling his book about how he helped his parents kill themselves. He’s trying mightily to convince us that he’s a good and loving son because he didn’t have enough backbone to refuse to be an accessory to willful death - twice.

Or, as he puts it, he helped them kick the bucket because, as he says, “I loved and respected my parents.”

Ergo, helping parents die is what good, loving children do. Especially if they respect their parents. Doing it again is love and respect x 2.

These, and other dangerous pro-death party lines were evident in West’s extensive on-line chat with the Washington Post.

Chilling. Not only in what West said, but in the perceptions of the chatters with whom he engaged. Let me just say that most people in the chat seemed dimly uninformed.

Here’s a chatter on the old stereotype that animals and humans are basically the same:

Anywhere, USA: My poor mother had to be off life support for 10 days before she passed, my dog had to endure a few moments before she was able to go to the big dog park in the sky. I believe I will go to my Vet if I get sick, my dog got better treatment and it was with dignity.

Baroness Warnock would be proud.

Others conjured up the usual (and almost entirely ignorant) nightmares of machines and pain.

And of course, West himself raised the pro-death favorite euphemism comparing people to plants:

My mother . . . had no interest in turning into a vegetable, and so she chose to end her life sooner rather than later.

And, just in case you don’t think the underlying motive in this unspeakable squalor isn’t about reducing people to a cold dollar amount, read this little interchange from the chat:

Springfield, Va.: Your point about medical science keeping us "dying longer" is interesting. . . . I have also heard many times if there was a meter running showing the cost incurred keeping someone alive who is going to die anyway, people would make the decision to suspend medical care much faster. Do you think this is true?

John West: I think it might be true. A "meter" is an objective way to show people the truth of what's going on.

But I digress.

John West can write all the books about killing he wants. Good luck to him as he smarmily enjoys his 15 minutes of fame.

But, let me raise two points:

First, I’d encourage the California Bar to tell us what needs to be done with a lawyer who openly admits to committing crimes.

Second, lawyer West’s feigned ignorance about the LAW in Oregon and Washington, and the death machine that is now most of Europe, is not ignorance at all – it’s holding forth in an authoritative way (he’s a lawyer and author, don’t you know? Must be right, right?) to mislead you.

Here are two examples of West’s outrageous and willful disinformation:

The John West Spin I: 

There's a LOT of legal oversight in Oregon and now Washington State, as in The Netherlands, Belgium, and Switzerland, where it's currently allowed.

Really? Then how come every year thousands of hospital patients in the Netherlands are euthanized without them ever having requested it, talked about it, or anything else?

The John West Spin II: 

The laws in Oregon (and now Washington State) require 2 physician (sic) to agree that you're facing death from a terminal illness within 6 months, and you're in extreme pain, and that you're mentally competent to make the decision to take life-ending drugs.

Yes, and …… ???? 

That’s only half the story.

Here’s the other half: Once the lethal drugs are prescribed, that’s the end of any oversight at all.

West implies that physicians are there at the end: making it all oh-so-proper and transparent, you see!

Uh-huh.

Nope, assisted suicides in Oregon and Washington can happen anywhere, anytime, away from everyone, assisted by somebody else – anyone else.

Even if that somebody else is after your stuff. Even if that somebody "helps" you take the fatal dose without your asking. Even if that somebody is really tired of taking care of you.

Get the picture?

Makes me wonder, although we’ll never know:

West admits that he was there when his parents died.

How can we know, seeing that there was no oversight, what the circumstances were with Loving John and his parents shuttered away behind closed doors?

Twice.

The Real Agenda: Propagandizing Death for All

Well, the Propaganda of the Deed around assisted suicide begins to rear its ugly head in the US.

The latest is a loving son who’s written a book about how he loved his parents to death. He’s doing the talk show circuit.

Help kill my parents. Write a book. Gush (in a solemn kind of way) about how my dead parents are in heaven saying “What a good boy you were, to kill us off.”

More of John West early next week.

First, a primer on what’s really going on here in the assisted suicide assault on our culture: The Propaganda of the Deed.

The Propaganda of the Deed, you’ll recall, is a radical activist tool used to persuade people to accept something that is currently completely unacceptable to the larger society.

Here’s how it works:

1. Believe zealously in something that most other people (and the law) think is unacceptable.
   
2. Adopt in-your-face, shocking, and nasty tactics to confront people with the unacceptable idea, belief, or action.
   
3. Command the language of the ensuing debate to define the unacceptable or illegal issue in soft, positive terms.
   
4. Work hard at making the radical issue seem perfectly reasonable, and those who oppose it as completely unreasonable and intolerant.
   
5. Continually attack your opponents by whatever means necessary to keep them permanently on the defensive so that the debate is always to your advantage.
   
6. Make your opponents out to be oppressors, villains, and hysterically insane.
   
7. Introduce even more extreme issues, thereby making your original outlandish idea seem more reasonable.
   

The end result is that as the debate rages, people get familiar and more comfortable with the unacceptable issue. Many become confused about whether the issue is really unacceptable or illegal. At the very least, many think the unacceptable or illegal issue should at least be "discussed." Many join the activist side.

While the radical activists might not immediately win, the Propaganda of the Deed shifts the center of public perception, inevitably, in their favor.

Thas is what the televising of Craig Ewert’s death at Dignitas was all about.

That is what Jack Kevorkian’s CBS-televised murder of Thomas Youk was all about.

That’s what calling for assisted suicide for children in Scotland is all about.

Make the unthinkable thinkable.

Make the thinkable possible.

Make bad good, and good bad.

Make what's illegal legal.

Make killing a beautiful gift.

Make death more attractive than life.

We had better get our act together, before they kill us all.

The Swiss Way Part III: Follow the Cash

Well, I hadn’t planned a Part III about the Swiss death machine Dignitas, but as I suspected, we’re starting to see a trickle of information about the rotten underbelly of the business of killing in the heart of civilized Europe.

It’s the money, stupid……..

On Sunday, London’s Daily Mail reported that nurse Soraya Wernli, who was all for helping people kill themselves, went to work for Dignitas several years ago.

Dignitas bigwig Ludwig Minelli put Nurse Wernli quickly to work sorting out the contents of black plastic bin liners that were cluttering a stairwell.

What she found changed what she thought of Dignitas, it’s claims to dignified dying, and put pay to the whole notion of patients and their loved ones being treated with respect:

Minelli said I should empty the sacks onto a long table - they were huge - and sort through everything. I opened one up and was horrified by what was inside. Mobile phones, handbags, ladies' tights, shoes, spectacles, money, purses, wallets, jewels.

I realised these were possessions which had been left behind by the dead. They had never been returned to family members. Minelli made his patients sign forms saying the possessions were now the property of Dignitas and then sold everything on to pawn and second-hand shops.

I felt disgusted. You see these old photos of people in Nazi death camps sorting through the possessions of those who had been gassed. Well, right then and there, that is how I felt.

Wernli soon realized that Dignitas was, first and foremost, about cold, hard, cash. It was, she said, a 'production line of death concerned only with profits.'

She recalls clashing with Minelli about his deadly production-line. One case that especially irked her was the death of 74-year old Brit Reginald Crew:

Mr. Crew arrived in the morning and was dead just hours later,' she says. 'This was another of my many clashes with Minelli. I argued that it wasn't right that people land at the airport, are ferried to his office, have their requisite half-an-hour with a doctor, get the barbiturates they need and are then sent off to die.

This is the biggest step anyone will ever take. They should at least be allowed to stay overnight, to think about what they are doing. But Minelli would have none of it. He once said to me that if he had his way, he would have vending machines where people could buy barbiturates to end their lives as easily as if they were buying a soft drink or a bar of chocolate. I support assisted suicide - but not the way he went about it.

All well and good, Nurse Wernli, but your assumption is [misguided] compassion.

Minelli’s is money. A simple cash flow issue.

More people dead, more money made.

A win-win:

People want to die.

Minelli charges to help kill them.

They die.

He goes to the bank.

What’s not to like?

The Swiss Way Part II: The Entrepreneurs of Death Making

Dignitas, the Swiss assisted suicide killing machine responsible for hundreds of deaths, is being investigated for profiteering from killing.

Nah. Couldn’t possibly be, right?

After all, this is all about helping people “die with dignity” isn’t it?

I didn't know "dignity" was this expensive.

Seems to me there's nothing too dignified about making money killing. But then again, there are many stories that how they help people die isn’t that dignified either.

Anyway, the Telegraph has reported that until now, Dignitas’ fiscal transparency has been MIA.

We’re obviousy not going to get answers from the families of people who died under Dignitas macabre watch.

There are clues, however. In Part I last week, I commented that the Daily Mail reported that Maxine Coombes scrimped and saved $15,000 to complete the dastardly deed.

Now, I don’t have the details, but 15K is an awful amount of money to hop from the UK to Switzerland, especially if you have a one-way air ticket.

Another clue: The Telegraph reported that one woman paid about $88,000 “10 times its usual fee.”

So we can surmise that the “usual fee” is about $8,800.

For what? The lethal drugs cost pennies. The venues, apparently, aren’t exactly five-star (backseats of cars, dingy, graffiti-covered apartments). I’ll bet the shifty characters carrying out the deed aren’t been paid as highly trained medical or scientific professionals either.

From the Telegraph:

Juerg Vollenweider, state prosecutor in Zurich, said: "We still don't even know what Dignitas does with the 10,000 Francs it is paid (£6,000) or what it is for. If we are kept from taking a look into their accounting, we could see that as selfish motives."

 "But if Dignitas can also be shown to have selfish motives, it could be in a lot of trouble," a legal source said.

According to the Swiss newspaper Blick, the head of Dignitas, Ludwig Minelli, has so far failed to hand over the books, claiming he needs to transfer them from old computer software.

And, by golly, they certainly seem like they’re cutting as many corners as they can.

Read on:

Swiss officials have also investigated allegations that the remains of dead patients were being dumped in lakes after being cremated. Two Dignitas workers were allegedly caught trying to pour the ashes of 20 bodies into Lake Zurich, but a former employee claimed at least 200 people's mortal remains had ended up in the same body of water.

Making money from killing people?

Not exactly new. Fill in the blank.

As I mentioned last week, don’t let’s hope that this will bring about the closing of Dignitas.

Instead, we’ll have calls for “regulation” “accountability,” and transparency.”

That is, calls to ensure death-making is more efficient.

What we won’t have (or at least not very strongly) are calls for ending this madness.

Too much to hope for, I fear.

The Swiss Way Part I: The Dingy Business of Killing People

I’ve detailed in past posts how people, especially from European countries where assisted suicide is illegal, have been flocking to Switzerland to kill themselves. The Swiss killing machine, Dignitas, is the only pro-death Swiss organization that kills foreign visitors.

They want as many people dead as possible, you see. It’s where Dan James and Craig Ewert went to their deaths.

Just for the record, this macabre tourism happens enough that it even has a name – “euthotourism.” 

Sidebar: A sharp entrepreneur is proposing a travel/death package for Kenyans to Switzerland, all inclusive!!

Nice.

However, “dignity” is not exactly what people have been finding among the Alps and the cuckoo clocks.

Read on.

A little over a year ago, Maxine Coombes decided the extent of her motor neuron disease meant it was time to die. She scrimped and saved the $15,000 for her final trip and travelled to Dignitas accompanied by her sister and her son, Paul Clifford.

Returning to the UK after Coombes’ death, Clifford didn’t see what happened next as dignified at all.

London’s Daily Mail reported what Clifford found. He

said the family had had a “terrible” experience and likened the flat where his mother died to a “backstreet abortion place” with graffiti-covered walls.

To add to his shock, when [Paul’s mother] raised concerns that her son might struggle to cope with her death, a member of staff said he, too, could die at a “cut price” rate.

“When we arrived at the place it was a block of flats, with a buzzer marked Dignitas but there was no answer. We were standing there for about three-quarters of an hour until a man arrived wearing a leather jacket with a sports bag over his shoulder, a dirty blue Tshirt, jeans with the knees cut out and smoking a roll-up [joint]. There was paint and graffiti on the walls outside, and the same on the door to the apartment. Inside there was a coffee table, four chairs around it, a bench, and a little washbasin.

After Coombes died, Paul described his interaction with the Dignitas representatives:

“He wanted us to go out of the room while he checked she was dead. We had to sit on a flight of stairs which stank of urine. We went back in but two police officers, the state prosecutor and two staff and a medical examiner arrived. We were asked loads of questions, with my mum still slumped there . . . in her wheelchair. We were there for at least two and a half hours.

During the questioning, Mr Clifford said, [a Dignitas assistant] rolled a cigarette while a female member of staff with a red “punkrock” hairstyle took her dog out for a walk.

After the police were “satisfied” with their answers, the pair had to leave again. When they were let back in to spend a few minutes with his mother’s corpse, they found her on a bench “going blue”, covered in a “dirty blanket like half a curtain”, with “her clothes chucked on the floor”.

The banal casualness of death.

Dirty, stinky, routine.

Unremarkable. Cold.

Just like brushing your teeth: A necessary waste of time.

Here’s the kicker: This nightmare will hardly engender much shock or outrage, I’m afraid.

Why? Because the spin and pressure will be to pass laws to make places where people kill themselves nice and comfy, clean, and warm.

Decency and love have disappeared.

Barbarity is cool.