No, what I suppose I mean is that the process isn’t like an experiment where you have a control; if the patient is euthanised, the question of whether they might have recovered is no longer answerable; a very small number of patients do end up recovering from conditions that are (technically wrongly, I suppose)diagnosed as utterly hopeless - like I said above, it’s probably something like a bell curve. Medical diagnosis is not a boolean operation.
I think it’s a fairly safe bet (because of course there’s no real way to test it - as I said, we’re talking about an experiment in which the control is destroyed) that, if involuntary euthanasia were put in place, there would be a small number of patients whose lives would be ended that could have recovered. Maybe that number is acceptably small, but I doubt it could ever be exactly zero.
If you were asking your question sincerely, I apologize. It read to me like you were mocking me for taking a very stupid position, which I quite obviously wasn’t taking.
The question was asked with a certain amount of tongue-in-cheek, but the inquiry behind it is genuine; if we euthanise a patient that would (or might) actually have recovered, despite the bleak prognosis, how will we know?
But we can see what precentage of children with the same condition recover if not euthanized. If that precentage is 0%, then I think thats a pretty compeling argument that the one we euthanized was not long for this world either.
I still think that their are cases where the patient is not just likely to die, but certain. Children born with vital bits missing and such. I’m not a doctor, so if this isn’t the case, someone can let me know.
Of course we won’t which would’ve made it a very stupid thing for me to be asking. Lemme try being less wordy:
Cite?
Daniel
PS I can’t resist wordiness. Specifically, and this is what I’ve been trying to ask since my first post, cite for a case in which a patient recovered from conditions that were diagnosed in such a way that they’d be included under this protocol?
They probably aren’t preparing to, but they’re opening the door for those who later would want to.
Before the Holocaust began, the German government rounded up 200,000 of those deemed ‘mentally unfit’ (suffering from retardation varying from mild to severe; or, possibly just anti-social) and executed them in mass stylings that would lay the foundations for the showers at the concentration camps.
These executions were done with full consent and approval of doctors. It was also done with the uninformed consent of the parents, many of whom were lied to and misinformed as to what they were actually condemning their children to.
This is not the same situation. But stating “Doctors will always know what’s best, will always fight to save a life, and will never have a hidden agenda for removing certain people from the gene pool” is proven to be untrue.
No, they may not intend to institute such a program, but you can get from point A to point B by taking a long series of tiny steps, each of which seems entirely reasonable. Human beings have a strong talent for deceiving themselves and justifying their crimes with noble sounding rhetoric, especially when large sums of money are involved.
What is the small, reasonable sounding step that goes from euthanizing people who are suffering and terminally ill with thier premission (or the premission of thier guardian if they are unable to communicate thier wishes) and a program for murdering people with handicaps against their will?
The Nazi’s may have couched their programs in the language of euthanasia, but I don’t think that means that euthanasia is prone to easily slipping into eugenics. It’s a big difference betweeen doctors wanting a eugenics program and covering it up with the language of euthanasia and doctors actually attempting to help thier patients.
Well, exactly how it happened in America and Germany in the 1900’s to 1930’s:
Step 1: Doctors are allowed to euthanize the terminally ill and suffering.
Step 2: Very small minority of doctors distort the facts and conditions of certain cases in order to euthanize people that they believe will be a ‘burden on society’ (say, Dutch doctors who euthanize gravely but not terminally ill children of immigrants.) In my opinion, this is bad enough. But you want it taken to the full level, so I’ll continue.
Step 3: Small minority of doctors get together and begin manipulating studies and data in order to bring out ‘new evidence’ that supports their pre-conceived notions. (To continue the entirely hypothetical Dutch example, that Turkish babies are less likely to recover from certain diseases.)
Step 4: Publication of ‘new evidence’ so manipulated is grabbed and publicized by politicians, leading authors, etc., for which said evidence supports their pre-conceived notions.
Step 5: Under popular and political pressure, guidelines are relaxes on certain procedures to allow more cases in.
Step 6: Further pressure and lamentation about ‘burdens on society’ leads to ‘preventative’ measures- forced sterilization of those likely to give birth to such children. Continued loosening of guidelines about what counts as ‘terminal’. More government oversight at the exclusion of parental rights as this is seen as a matter of ‘society’.
Step 7: Pressure climaxes into undesirables, seen as without any hope of future progress and a complete burden upon society, being rounded up and never heard from again.
First, I stand corrected on the thing about how the article was worded. I missed a comma in one of the sentences I quoted and thus took it to mean something different. :smack:
mks57’s post said in a few words the basic point I am trying to make. It would just be too easy to start stretching the “rules” of euthanasia to start including others.
There has got to be a better way to deal with the pain aspect than just euthanasia. The way I see it, whatever works. Heroin? Fine. I’m not up on what the strongest painkiller in the world is. If the strongest isn’t good enough, let’s find something stronger. Companies develop new drugs all the time; this would be a pretty good reason to create a new medication.
If we can’t save them, we should keep them comfortable until they die. We cannot do euthanasia in this situation without opening the floodgates for disaster, and I don’t think human lives are worth the cost of figuring out how euthanasia can be done “perfectly,” even if there is a perfect way.
What counts as “recovery”? My first college Biology professor had a son born with Spina Bifida who was given a prognosis of 3-6 months when he was born IIRC. He lived until he was in his early 20’s and died unexpectedly of something I can’t recall at the moment while living in Hawaii and making a good life for himself. This seems to be the most directly applicable here as Spina Bifida was one of the diagnoses mentioned by the Dr’s in the cite. I can’t judge the “extreme” qualifier versus my Prof’s son, of course.
Other “recoveries”? My father-in-law beat two cancers and was told he had 3-6 months to live more than fifteen years before he died(of a third cancer). An old man nicknamed “Rocky” ran a police/army surplus store down the road from my mom’s place. A number of years ago he was hit by a car and thrown over fifty feet. His back was broken and doctors told him that if he lived, 3-6 months, he would be confined to a bed for the rest of his life. These days he runs his shop from his wheelchair. One day I was talking to him about the accident and he stood up out of his wheelchair and did a little shuffle dance and then sat back down. He told me he does that once a day just to spite the Dr’s who told him he’d never get out of bed again. Ornery old cuss, but a hell of a fighter.
If the doctor wants badly enough to eliminate these babies from the gene pool, he or she could already do it, probably very easily. I don’t think this law is really giving a doctor any new powers, for those who might wish to abuse them.
I’m not trying to be an ornery cuss myself, but ideally we’d have a case whose medical facts were open to our perusal. This is a third-hand account of an event, which lacks the kind of detail necessary for us to evaluate whether it’d be covered by the protocol in question.
If there have been patients whose spina bifida would qualify as “extreme” under the protocol in question, who might have been euthanized at birth had the protocol in question been in effect, and who recovered to live satisfying lives, I’ll be extremely skeevy of this protocol.
But I’m not willing to condemn it based on the slippery slope fallacy, or on Godwinizations, or on unsupported appeals to emotion. I want to see some facts with which to condemn it.
There are any number of well-known conditions where anyone who claims that the child will survive are pretty darn deluded, including conditions where pretty much the only parts of the brain that exist are the parts that feel pain. And yet, plenty of people insist that we must maintain, if not prolong this pointless suffering, if only to please some sense of symbolic slippery slope. This is what I’m refferring to. I suspect you knew that too, which is pretty low of you if so.
The Groningen Protocol isn’t the same thing as the infants that were euthanized after being born with terminal conditions. The “up to age 12” refers to children who develop terminal or vegitative conditions that aren’t mature enough to give things like prior consent to determine their wishes in such cases. Two different issues, though connected by the lack of informed consent.
I agree that there are clearly cases where there is seriously and worrying room for abuse: for instance when there IS some serious dispute over viability and pain management. But it’s simply dishonest to pretend that the debate over whether euthanisia is ever justified doesn’t ALSO include many of the real world cases that you refer to as “fictional” and “idealized:” especially given that you butted in on just such a discussion without acknowleding it (and indeed, trying to muddle the issue)
In the interests of having defined terms (which makes debate easier), how should we define “satisfying”? Is there an objective qualification we can use?
Step 2 is basically Dr’s illegally killing people. This could happen with or without a euthanasia law. Step 3 wouldn’t get past the peer review process, and involves Drs telling their patients they’re terminal when they’re not.
Really all your steps 1-5 involve evil doctors who lie so they can kill the people they want to kill. But we trust our lives to doctors all the time, if they wanted to start killing people, they could do it with or without a euthanasia law.
Your step 6 is more or less my point. It’s a huge leap from killing people with their premission because they’re terminally ill (or evil doctors lie and say they’re terminally ill) and killing/sterilizing people becuase they’re a burden on society. Given that the dutch, especially, are great belivers in devoting more resources to their poor/disabled/etc. then most societies, I don’t see this happening.
mtgman, those cases are allegorical, we don’t know if the doctors thought there wouldn’t be any chance of recovery, to the point they’d be willing to risk a persons life on that judgement, or if they just said there was very little chance of recovery. We’ve all heard cases of miraculous, against the odds, recoveries. What I want to know is if their are classes of illness for which we can say there really is no chance of even an “against the odds” recovery.
No it wouldn’t.
Abbie, your solution seems to be “lets just invent something so there pain goes away”. I’m sure there is no shortage of $$ and effort going into pain management, and if something becomes available the doctors with great relief will proscribe it to their suffering patients. Until then though, a future hypothetical medication doesn’t really help with a present problem.
The argument about babies only being born with the part of the brain that feels pain has me curious. Wouldn’t death be almost immediate in that case?
I ask because years ago a friend gave birth to a baby who only had a a small part of his brain (maybe the stem? I don’t remember, I was really little when this happened). He was alive when born but died a couple of minutes later.
Good question. I don’t have a perfect definition, but here’s a starting point for discussion.
A satisfying life for a human must involve, at some point, consciousness. (I don’t know how consciousness is determined on a medical level; if a person’s eyes don’t dilate in response to light, I believe that’s a good indicator that the person is not conscious, for example). A human who spends her entire life in a coma does not have a satisfying life.
A satisfying human life must also involve AT LEAST one of the following:
-A significant period of time that is not consumed by severe pain; OR
-A sense of identity.
An infant who is conscious, but who lives for seven days in agonizing pain before dying, has not lived a satisfying life. If that infant manages to survive to the age of five, or whatever age children start to form a sense of identity, then I’d say the child has a chance of living a satisfying life. If the infant is able to spend even one of those days without experiencing severe pain, the infant may live a satisfying life.
“Satisfying” may not be the best word, but I can’t think of a better one; many alternatives (meaningful, worthwhile, productive, etc.) have hideous connotations. I want to set the bar extremely low for what constitutes a satisfying life.
That’s the rub isn’t it? Call out to Qadgop, DoctorJ, DSeid or any of our resident SDMB medical types. See how often they think one of these definite “really is no chance of even an ‘against the odds’ recovery” prognosises are given. I’m betting dollars to doughnuts that they’ll say they’re rarer than hen’s teeth because the reality is that there are virtually no cases like that.
I don’t really have a problem with voluntary, informed, euthanasia a la terminal cancer patients. I still feel a bit queasy about it because anyone in so much pain 24/7 that they want to die seems a good candidate for being incapable of making a rational decision. Still, I would leave it up to them. Making the choice for others is another matter entirely.
With all due respect, I think the burden of proof should fall the other direction. The norm is to do everything possible to cure and rehabilitate those afflicted with these conditions. The Hippocratic oath starts out “Do no harm” after all. Taking a positive action which will terminate a patient’s life may be the lesser of two evils, but the burden of proof that it is the lesser is on the person advocating the action. The burden of proof should be on the policymakers to ensure their policy will not rob someone of a chance to live a satisfying life. They may have done this to the satisfaction of the decisionmakers involved, after all the policy has indeed been enacted(although I am extremely upset that they were operating under it before it had been signed off on, that seems a grave breech of ethical behavior). Odds are these discussions have already happened and data presented in those review sessions. Even if it passed the bar there I would still expect it to have an extremely high level of oversight.