What’s Wrong with the World

what all old children of old parents know: This is not just wrongheaded but steals the life from everyone involved

I watched my mother become exhausted and I feared for her health during the time my father's health declined to his death. Yet never once did she or I think for one moment that her life was being "stolen" or that Daddy's life was worthless because he was physically helpless and often confused. Not once. Because this is what normal people with normal minds and hearts do -- they honor and sacrifice for and uphold the dignity of the ones they love. I couldn't even read this whole article; it enraged me to an unhealthy level at the point when he wrote something suggesting that it was too bad he still saw her as his mother, that he still remembered her when she was healthy, and so he couldn't quite bring himself to do away with her on his own.

Christ have mercy.

And thanks be to God for the caring, sacrificing caregivers my father and in-laws had, giving us examples of what it means to love.

Wind (abortion), meet whirlwind (euthanasia).

If my etymology is correct, "euthanasia" comes from the greek "euthos" (good) + "thanatos" (death). Which makes me wonder, why do we call any death good? Is not death an evil, an enemy which Christ is removing? This might be another case where the lovers of death has won the battle of words.

Jvangeld, there has traditionally been a Christian use of the phrase "a good death." I suppose to refer to a death in a state of grace.

Nor is there anything wrong with, in some generic sense, thinking that "one could wish" not to go through long-term debility prior to death.

The obvious problem with euthanasia is taking that generic wish and deciding in godlike fashion to "make it happen" by killing people.

And, predictably, the Trojan horse Derbyshire adds another log to the funeral pyre of our once decent civilization.

http://takimag.com/article/going_out_with_a_bang_instead_of_a_whimper_john_derbyshire#axzz1vpHbRT1N

Derbyshire has always been a nihilist, particularly on these issues. When Terri Schiavo was being dehydrated to death, he was a major cheerleader for her killers.

I notice this pattern, which Derbyshire represents: Someone tells us what he "won't" endure (in Derbyshire's case, being incontinent) and then gives us a sentimentalized picture of his own stoical end: Going up to a mountain, beautiful scenery, enjoying a last cigar, and then quietly (as it were) shooting oneself to death. Tableau. How swift, how merciful, how dignified, how self-chosen.

Of course, Wolff wants to put a pillow over his mother's face. He wants to kill her, not just himself. This is not to say that suicide is right. By no means. But, y'know, blowing off someone else's head (or blowing out someone else's heart, as Derbyshire plans) is a leetle bit more shocking to most people than striding up the mountain, enjoying the cigar, and then killing oneself.

It is the stoic-kills-himself-with-dignity scenarios a la Derb that have softened us up for the put-a-pillow-over-Mom's-face scenario a la Wolff.

Modern health care is not your father's health care any more than modern banking is your father's banking. The world has changed radically and the folks in charge in nearly every enterprise now are managers more than experts. Odds makers, really, and bean counters and team players. This is what Wolff and his family got caught up in and he realized it too late.

Technology creates ethical problems which have never been seen before in human history. This is especially true of bio- and medical technology. It often forces decisions upon the loving and living that previously nature made without them. Wolff was swept up into that macabre world and, despairing an end to it, wants to create his own end. Understandable.

I do not think that Wolff is as much an advocate of euthanasia as he is a protester against the bizarre. He doesn't know how to deal with it. His best idea is a pillow to the face, which ironically makes him more like those managers he protests than the human beings he seems to know he and his mother are.

Modern health care is not your father's health care any more than modern banking is your father's banking. The world has changed radically and the folks in charge in nearly every enterprise now are managers more than experts. Odds makers, really, and bean counters and team players. This is what Wolff and his family got caught up in and he realized it too late.

Technology creates ethical problems which have never been seen before in human history. This is especially true of bio- and medical technology. It often forces decisions upon the loving and living that previously nature made without them.

I blame social security and its like in the nanny-state. Think about it: in 1935, virtually all old people who could not care for themselves lived with family members who cared for them. Along comes the good SSA, and old people have independent incomes. Which means 2 things: daughter Mary and son John can tell Mom & Dad, "you have money, you can take care of yourselves." Never mind the fact that in the last 3 or 4 years of life, having money doesn't solve the not knowing what to do with the money, much less solve the fact that the old folks don't remember to turn off the stove.

Next social revolution: John & Mary, instead of having 5 kids, in part to take care of them in their old age, only have 2 kids. They forget that the old SS system was built on 5 workers to 1 beneficiary, in a pay-as-you-go system. With fewer children born to each couple, it eventually becomes a 4 to 1 ratio, then moving down toward 3.5 to 1. At the same time, people stopped dying at age 72 to 74, after some 7 to 9 years on SS, now living 15 to 20 years on SS. The net makes it more like 3 to 1 workers to retirees, and still moving downwards.

This is not a revolution in technology, it is a revolution in social dynamics: old people cannot expect to be cared for by their family, they can only be expected to be cared for by strangers. Since caring for a strange old person is unpleasant, you charge serious money for it, unlike taking care of your own parents. You manufacture a Medicare system to theoretically do medical care, but this isn't really medical care, it's living care, which lasts years and is unrewarding to those whose mental focus has been that "rewarding work" means work outside the home. The only families who can possibly pay for Mom & Dad's living care out of regular income do so with a 2-earner pair working, and few children to put through school.

Alphonsus, I agree that technology does in fact make new problems. But the biggest component of the problems in elder care stem from the social revolution. My parents lived with me and my wife and my kids for the last 9 and 14 years of their lives, underwent their last illnesses with us, and died at home in bed cared for by their children (and grandchildren). Yes, it was challenging at times, and yet it was a chore and unpleasant at times. But that was irrelevant. You don't count the difficulties of caring for parents and put them in some kind of a balance to decide whether to bear them.

Not reading comments, just sharing:
A woman who was nearly a grandmother to me got cancer. It was nasty.
Her son came and took her "home."
A month later, she was dead.

When he came to scatter her ashes with my parents, per her binding will, he basically admitted to murdering her because it was so unpleasant to care for her.

After insisting that she be hauled away from her home of the last several decades, from people who actually cared for her, so he could "take care" of her....

There are a lot of people who talk about preventing pain in the old, and mean their own.

There are a lot of people who talk about preventing pain in the old, and mean their own.

This is precisely it, Foxfier. Well-put.

Sorry about the odd block quote; apparently I didn't select the first part of it. Must learn to proofread on the screen better. [Fixed: TM]

I do not think that Wolff is as much an advocate of euthanasia as he is a protester against the bizarre.

No, Alphonsus, this is simply not true. The entire article is framed by euthanasia, and it ends with an explicit plan for suicide. Someone who thinks like Wolff sees no distinction here. Let me point something out: There are plenty of people who end up with dementia, incontinent, or some combination of major debilitating symptoms without major medical interventions such as heart surgery. It can happen just from growing old. Wolff is absolutely clear that such people's lives are "worth ending." One presumes he would give a hat-tip somewhere along the line to their having consented ahead of time to being killed, though he doesn't bother to get into that. But to him, the entire drive is to kill in order to avoid that "indignity." He is utterly clear. Moreover, the continual references to cost make it clear that he wants this to be _widely_ applied as a "solution."

I have to say this: I am noticing more and more these days, in a variety of otherwise unrelated political and moral areas, a strange drive on the part of pundits and commentators to pretend that people aren't doing what they obviously are doing or aren't saying what they just said in so many words. Perhaps the fact that this is coming up in more than one area is just a coincidence, but it's very strange. How many times does Wolff have to say that he wants to kill his mother and that people in her situation should be killed and that he hopes to be killed under such circumstances? He says it over and over again.

I am noticing more and more these days, in a variety of otherwise unrelated political and moral areas, a strange drive on the part of pundits and commentators to pretend that people aren't doing what they obviously are doing or aren't saying what they just said in so many words.

Lydia, I see this in my students all the time. It goes either direction, depending on the topic and maybe the genre or style or clarity of the writing, I'm not sure (I'll have to pay more attention; it would be interesting to see if there is a pattern).

A) They soften the explicit message into something more comfortable to them or more conformable to their own beliefs, often, I think, because they wish/hope that someone surely couldn't believe or say that awful thing that they would never say.

B) They knee-jerk react to something they disagree with by an instant, wholesale condemnation of everything said, without noting reasons or mitigating factors or caveats, etc. provided by the writer.

Probably (B) occurs more often when the subject contains an assertion that challenges something precious to them ("How DARE she say that cell phone use is a violation of public space; I have the RIGHT to use my cell phone any time and any place and any way I please!"); perhaps (A) occurs more often when they are reading literature and have developed sympathy for a character who makes a morally wrong choice (such as the girl in "Hills like White Elephants" choosing to have an abortion). At least those are the two examples that sprang immediately to mind when I read your comment.

But it all just means whatever you want it to mean, anyway, doesn't it? It is rapidly becoming impossible to communicate. God help us, and please pray for us writing teachers!

Wolff is noticing the fact that medical technology has progressed to the point that it can keep us alive for an increasingly long time, but it can't enable us to live any sort of life in the process. A life of being completely senile and immobile is no life at all, and I don't think anyone really disagrees, but because of the euthanasia connection people get their hackles up whenever the topic is brought up.

Euthanasia is a cure worse than the disease, brought about by an inability to think outside the box of cradle-to-grave welfare provisions. A much better solution is to simply end medicare at some advanced age, like 80, and from that point you are on your own. If you want to break the bank for a few more months of incontinence, then go ahead, but if you can't or won't then you die naturally, like it ought to happen.

but because of the euthanasia connection people get their hackles up whenever the topic is brought up.

There you go again, to quote a famous man. No, this isn't just a matter of "bringing up the topic" of medical technology. Wolff _explicitly says_ his mother's life should be actively ended and _explicitly plans_ this for himself. This isn't a matter of people "getting their hackles up" because of some "connection" that sort of vaguely arises in our minds.

A much better solution is to simply end medicare at some advanced age, like 80, and from that point you are on your own. If you want to break the bank for a few more months of incontinence, then go ahead, but if you can't or won't then you die naturally, like it ought to happen.

Matt, this is not an intelligent comment. Sorry, but it's true. Let's please get concrete. Here's a woman, let's say. Yeah, she's incontinent. So are a lot of people. She can't care for herself. What does "dying naturally" mean? This person is _not_ on any machines. Let's even stipulate, just to keep your interest, that this person chews and swallows food. (I don't myself think that's overwhelmingly important, because food and water are never "extraordinary means," but this will keep it simple for you.) What costs money is having a place for her to stay and having _basic care_: Having her fed, having her diaper changed, having her turned to avoid bedsores. What "dying naturally" do you have in mind? Hmmm. I suppose you'll say I'm creating a straw man if I envisage saving the money on the apartment rent and throwing her out in the street. What else is costing the money? Oh, her basic care. So how do we stop "breaking the bank" and let her "die naturally"? Do we stop changing her diaper? Do we stop turning her in the bed? Do we stop bringing her food and water and leave her to die of thirst and hunger? (She can't get up and get it herself.) Do we just sort of leave her to die of sheer neglect? Maybe die of infections from bed sores in a stinking bed?

See, people who say facile stuff like you just said are not thinking. It is not some kind of Machines or Technology that are costing money for Wolff's mother and thousands like her. It is basic daily care. There is no way to have them "die naturally" except by just abandoning them to die of neglect.

Sorry to break it to you, but them's the facts. It's not high-tech stuff that's costing the money here. It's basic care on a daily basis for an enfeebled adult, over a long period of time.

1. No the connection is real, as I acknowledged. You've overreacted yet again.

2. I'm not sure you read the article. At one point Wolff recounts his regret of signing off on a major heart operation that his mother actually didn't want, and without which she would have died. This is what I mean by natural. Modern medicine can keep you alive, but Wolff's point is that his mother isn't living in any sense at all. Surely people should be allowed to not have operations, or is that neglect?

Yes, I read the article. Pretty much every word. Did you do as much for my main post? I said, "Nobody is saying that the family in this story was required to have heart surgery for the mother."

Moreover I have said now to Alphonsus and will say to you again:

There are plenty of people who end up with dementia, incontinent, or some combination of major debilitating symptoms without major medical interventions such as heart surgery. It can happen just from growing old. Wolff is absolutely clear that such people's lives are "worth ending."

It doesn't exactly matter how Wolff's mother ended up where she is. The fact is that the bank-breaking event at this point is not the surgery but is her _continuing to live_ and to need care. She could have ended up where she is by some other route. Plenty of people do.

Oh, and by the way: All this stuff about "isn't really living at all" is sheer rhetoric. We should put a moratorium on it. It's just a way of dehumanizing the patient and declaring him "life unworthy of life." We shouldn't say it about others. We shouldn't say it about ourselves. The woman is alive. Sorry Wolff doesn't like that. Deal with it. Don't make up creepy phrases like "isn't really living."

but Wolff's point is that his mother isn't living in any sense at all.

Define "living". See, the problem here is that we have some people who have decided that "living" means something other than what it used to mean, and then assume that everyone else has to go along with that new definition. That, my friend, is Orwellian Newspeak.

Used to be, long, long ago like maybe 1970, that "living" meant the body carrying out, part by part, the processes of metabolism: cells taking food and oxygen and giving off waste material, nerves firing, muscles contracting (like the heart), and *most especially* the soul still being the principle of unity, integrity, and organization of the body. It's even better when the nerves fire reliably and well, when the muscles contract the way you want them to when you choose - but that's more like "living well" than "living."

According to Newspeak, the old "living well" is sort of what they want the word "living" to mean now. That lends itself to a horrible logic: if someone isn't "living" then taking steps to get rid of them isn't an affront to life, now, is it? Of course, if you put it in terms of standard human language, it doesn't come out all that well: if someone isn't living well, then taking steps to get rid of them isn't an affront to life? It's too obvious that the notion is illogical, so we have to equivocate.

There you have it: morality by fiat definitions. Humpty Dumpty would be pleased. Naturally, that descends very quickly into morality by might makes right, because without anything other than fiat, the stronger shout their fiats a lot louder than the weak. The thing to ask Wolff is, what happens when someone comes along at tells him: your so-called life isn't what I mean by "living", and you are in my way, so I am taking you out. Goodbye.

It doesn't exactly matter how Wolff's mother ended up where she is.

It does when that is one of the points of writing the article in the first place. I quite agree that Wolff should have to live with the consequences of his choices, but that doesn't mean he isn't allowed to ruminate on those consequences. That is hardened reaction talking.

I side with Ross Douthat, in that the option of euthanasia would not allay his regrets, it would simply give him an escape from them. It would make serious surgeries more common, because one could then just hit undo if it didn't work out to their liking.

As for creepy phrases, sometimes there are instances where a person isn't living in any sense, and they are appearing more and more as medical technology progresses. If you can't think or move, then what kind of existence are you having? For myself, I couldn't stand being senile, but could probably handle the physical degeneration. The leftists, as is often the case, understand the problem and have no idea of the solution. Cutting back medicare is the only sensible beginning.

I am inspired now to go have a talk with my parents about what their threshold is. I know my mother doesn't want to be kept alive by machines, but after hearing of this article she might have some other addenda.

There is no equivocation taking place, Tony. In the materialistic sense, Wolff's mother is alive. No one disputes that. What she is not doing is living a normal human life. And that's a concept that goes further back than Orwell.

As for creepy phrases, sometimes there are instances where a person isn't living in any sense, and they are appearing more and more as medical technology progresses. If you can't think or move, then what kind of existence are you having?

For myself, I couldn't stand being senile, but could probably handle the physical degeneration.

Now, you keep saying that euthanasia isn't the answer. I don't know if this means that you actually think it's wrong or that you just aren't on board with it yet or what. Your rhetoric here is pretty strong. Let's ask this outright: Suppose that someone gets into one of these states that you consider not a life worth having, but gets there without any high-level technology having been applied. What then? You seem to think that "cutting medicare" and "dying naturally" are "solutions." But as I keep pointing out, sometimes people don't die. (Darn it!) They just need basic care and go on living. Maybe senile. Derb says he wouldn't agree to be incontinent. You think the only people who ever get incontinent in their old age are people who have had heart surgery or similarly invasive life-saving procedures? Obviously that's not the case. Derb knows it's not. That's why he's planning the suicide route.

So, since you consider the _life_ of the elderly in such a situation (e.g., senility) to be a "problem," what "solution" can there possibly be?

Matt, it's a comforting myth that people are starting to tell themselves that if we just go "natural" and eschew high-tech interventions people will have quiet, "dignified" deaths, not live "too long," not get senile, not cost a lot of money in old age.

That way most people can sound to themselves more humane than Wolff does. They can insist that they aren't fantasizing about actively killing anybody but are just imagining a world in which people eschew extraordinary measures. But it's not so simple.

What if you pass your "threshhold" of senility without anyone's having taken any extraordinary measures? Many do. What if your care is then costly, just because basically caring for senile people _is_ costly? What then?

Lydia, certainly Wolff is advocating for the availability of some form of legal euthanasia. My interpretation of his article is that, more than that advocacy, he is railing against the ways and means of modern health care which seem increasingly better able to defy death yet at the same time offer no cure. I did read the entire article and what I see is that he blames this form of [slow death] medicine for putting people in a condition where he thinks euthanasia is the correct way out. He is terribly morally wrong about euthanasia, but he does make some very good points about the problems modern medicine spins off.

See my comment to Matt, above. Again: I think it's mostly just a story people are telling themselves that we can avoid this situation where people need long-term care while helpless, senile, and/or incontinent by refusing major interventions. There are still going to be _plenty_ of such situations even if nobody over the age of 70 ever has heart surgery again. That's just the way it is. It's paying someone else to do the _care_ that is expensive. The heart surgery that Wolff's mother had is in many ways a red herring, and we need to be vigilant not to be distracted by it.

Alphonsus, as long as we are not talking about simple ordinary living care, and we ARE talking about extraordinary means of maintaining life, what the heck is wrong with old people making good choices not to have that care when they don't want their lives to be prolonged at the risk of X, Y, and Z (including spending silly amounts of money)? But if one old person makes a different choice than I would, does that mean that they are being irresponsible and wrong-headed? By no means.

When my mom got brain cancer, people proposed 2 lines of very aggressive treatment that would have been miserable ways of living for the duration, with some chance of only extending life 6 months to a year. She declined to bother with anything other than palliative care. Now, she got "lucky" because there was no ordinary dementia - though she was pretty loopy later when the tumor was knocking on the brain. My point is, if you are talking about extraordinary means of preserving life, people already have the choice not to employ such means.

Yes, technology makes for some hard decisions. Whether to provide BASIC CARE is not one of them.

Tony, I am just giving my interpretation of Wolff's article. I empathize with his plight, having been through similar situations with three family members. But I do not agree with his conclusions about euthanasia or if/when a life is no longer worth living. I think with the Magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church on these issues and that is my official position.

No one has mentioned this yet, though Lydia appears to be on to it. A step beyond the right-to-die is the duty-to-die. That, clearly, is where Wolff winds up if he keeps going.

Alphonsus, I don't quite know what you mean by an "interpretation" of Wolff's article. As you've acknowledged, he's pushing good and hard for euthanasia. Moreover, his whole shtick concerns people who are in fact in his mother's situation. There is no rationale for limiting his concern only to people who got into that situation by having some major healthcare intervention at an earlier point in the causal stream. He's upset that people *are in that situation*, especially for a period of years. It's the situation itself that he characterizes in various demeaning ways as a life not worth living and so forth. (As does Matt, above.) If you'll allow me to say so, trying to _shift_ the emphasis of Wolff's article to, "Hey, y'all, it might be good to refuse heart surgery and major stuff like that when you're old" is simply downplaying what is really going on.

I think it's darkening counsel for us to say or think that this is chiefly about the way that contemporary medical care extends life by extreme interventions and the like. I mean, I'm sorry, but that isn't what this is about. There were incontinent and senile people around before there was heart surgery. There were paralyzed elderly people around before there was high-tech. As far as we know, people have had debilitating strokes for as long as man has existed. Sure, there are probably _more_ such people now, for various reasons, and _one_ of these reasons might be because of high-tech interventions earlier (maybe a lot earlier) in people's lives.

Another reason (as Wolff himself seems to acknowledge) is because of living more healthily in very general terms, which I don't suppose we want to stop: "Hey, Pop, how about shortening your life span by smoking, drinking to excess, and working at dangerous, life-threatening work on a farm. That way maybe you'll die younger so I don't have to pay someone to change your diaper when you're 80."

Some of it is just because we have (hardly high-intervention) things like antibiotics: "Hey, Mom, you're, what, sixty now, and I hear you have a UTI. Y'know, Mom, you're generally in pretty good shape, have all your faculties and your dignity and so forth. If you just don't take antibiotics for that UTI, tell them not to treat you for it, maybe you'll die soon, fairly quickly, instead of living to be ninety and maybe getting senile. Something to think about, Mom."

The problem here is with going into paroxysms of angst about how too many people are not dying soon enough.

"I am noticing more and more these days, in a variety of otherwise unrelated political and moral areas, a strange drive on the part of pundits and commentators to pretend that people aren't doing what they obviously are doing or aren't saying what they just said in so many words."

The exact opposite tactic is also often used for the same purposes of evasion. The subject reacts with great indignation at the plain-spoken description of what they are proposing in order to make it seem absurd that they (or any reasonable person) would support this view (Are you saying that I am in favor of the murder of my own mother?!). It makes the questioner/accuser seem like the crazed zealot distorting the truth.

I recall Barry Obama doing just such a thing when asked about his voting against the Illinois verion of Born Alive Infant Protection Act. I paraphrase but it was something like: "You are suggesting that I support infanticide! What am I, a monster?" I am almost positive that he used the term monster--but I can't find the exact quote now. The average viewer thinks, 'of course no would-be president would support infanticide.' But, of course, he did and he does.

Lydia, what I mean by interpreting his article is illustrated by the subtitle:

The era of medical miracles has created a new phase of aging, as far from living as it is from dying. A son’s plea to let his mother go.

While I do see what you are saying about his call for legally available euthanasia for the aged in inexorable decline as being one of his main points, that does not seem to me to be the entire content of the seven-page article. There are several layers in there, ranging from national health statistics to his very personal experiences, along with multiple issues in play at once. And not the least of those is his very transparent bewilderment, powerlessness, and frustration with death on death's (or God's) terms within the context of modern health care. He is teaching us how people of apparent good will (I think we have to grant him that) can and do come to his conclusions. That is worth thinking about if one wishes to carry the day against the evil of euthanasia.

My dad is the perfect example of the situation you are describing, Lydia. He lived until two years ago, to age 91, and the last couple-three years were very difficult -- he had increasing memory loss (but thankfully always recognized my mom), and severe arthritis alongside multiple "mini-strokes" caused his physical health to decline fairly rapidly until he was bed-ridden. Before that final point, he would often fall. My mom is only two years younger than he, and weighs maybe a hundred in full winter clothing and soaking wet -- there was no way she could continue to care for him after he began to fall. Never at any time during those years did he have any "extraordinary care"; the only treatments he received were antibiotics for pneumonia -- which was probably the immediate cause of his death in the end anyway. They made a decision at some point in the first part of his last year that he wouldn't go to a hospital for treatments of any kind, but in the end it didn't matter; there were no treatments to go to the hospital for.

And here we have to look at some of the cultural changes from the past, too. I live halfway across the country from them -- not by choice but because we have to live where we can support our family. I couldn't just quit my job (sole support of my family) and go take care of Daddy for two years. My brother lives nearby but couldn't afford to quit his job either, and Daddy had to have 24-hour care. With Mother not physically able to cope for any length of time, and knowing that if he fell *on* her, he would very likely cripple or kill her, and no paid in-home care available, what were we to do?

He was in assisted living for a time and then a rest home; in both places he received excellent care and Mother was able to be with him many hours each day. It wasn't ideal, but again, what were we to do? There were no "tubes" or any other extraordinary treatments keeping him alive; we were all willing for the Lord to take him when the time was right; and the cost was huge -- financially and, for my mother in particular, emotionally and physically. But what were we to do?

Perhaps he should have let himself die horribly of cancer fifteen years earlier, but even then, he only had one surgery, no chemo or radiation, and it never recurred. And he was otherwise in great health at that time, so why should he have been thinking, if I don't treat this cancer I won't die in a rest home? In fact, that surgery is the only extraordinary medical care he ever received in his entire 91 years.

There is only one answer to "what were we to do" if you believe that his last years were not worth living, and that was to have outright murdered him. And who in the world are we to make such a choice, even for ourselves? No doubt, twenty years earlier, he would have said "I don't want to live that way," and even when he first began to lose his abilities he commented in that vein now and then -- but those years were such a blessing for us all, and he knew, despite how he sometimes felt, that the Lord was the one to decide. Yes, they were hard years, and my financial inheritance (which I never cared about anyway!) is greatly reduced because of them, but my spiritual inheritance -- watching his patience and sweetness, watching my mother love him, seeing their influence on other patients and the staff -- is so much richer. I have those memories, those examples, because they chose life and chose to submit that life to God and His timing.

It is beyond self-absorbed to say we should not have had to suffer because of his suffering, but that is what it amounts to when we refuse to care for our sick and elderly. And we have no idea what is happening in their souls during that time; I believe that Daddy found a complete peace in the Lord during those years that had eluded him to some degree when he was able to be busy and "productive," and the manifestations of that peace blessed me in a way nothing else ever has.

The Lord have mercy on us all.

Thanks very much, Beth, that is a very useful illustration.

What I think a lot of people who get caught up in rhetoric like Wolff's don't realize is how "easy" it is to live to be quite elderly nowadays. That is to say, it doesn't always take anything major and invasive. It's not somehow the "fault" of some sort of monstrous medical system that people are living "so long."

People who talk like Wolff or who are in any way sympathetic to his rhetoric might be surprised to be a fly on the wall when I talk to my doctor or to my husband. I'm pretty anti-chemo and don't know what I would do if I had cancer and were advised to take chemo. I refuse to get hyper about my cholesterol level. I think healthy people have way too many medical tests these days. I try to avoid the notion that a healthy person has to go to the doctor every year just for a physical. And so on and so forth. It would be _great_ if I could drop dead suddenly of a near-instantaneous heart attack some day in the midst of otherwise hearty and healthy old age. I'm quite willing to regard such a purely natural death, for a Christian, as a merciful home-going.

I'm by no means some kind of "vitalist."

But when article after article tells us that we have a problem because there are too many people around living to be really old and needing care, then we do indeed have a problem. But the problem is that people can write such articles, not that there are too many old people. That's just entirely the wrong way to approach it.

And that's the thing, Alphonsus: I refuse even to approach it that way. I won't "try to see the perspective of" someone who starts out by telling us that we have a problem because there are too many really old people around who need care and then tries to assign blame for this "problem"--be it to modern aggressive healthcare or anything else. That's entirely the wrong way to approach it. On an _individual basis_ people may decide to reject aggressive care. And if they do, that _may_ mean that they die relatively more quickly than if they had accepted such care at some point in their lives. But it also may not mean that. And suggesting that people refuse treatment should not be something we bring up by saying, "Well, let's acknowledge that Wolff has identified a problem and that we need to help find a solution." Because the "problem" Wolff has identified is just longevity itself, the lives of the elderly themselves. And you aren't going to get anywhere good if you start by treating that as a problem in search of a solution. And rejecting aggressive treatment won't "help" all that much anyway, at which point people are still going to be looking for a "solution" to the alleged problem: The existence of old people.

Let me also point out that the very subtitle you cite contains the _highly_ objectionable phrase "a new phase of aging, as far from living as it is from dying." Nope. That, like the rhetoric used by Matt in this very thread, is just wrong, wrong, wrong. It simply is no approach to the proposal of euthanasia whatsoever to start by acknowledging that people who say such things have a point or have pinpointed a problem or anything of the kind. They don't have a point. They haven't pinpointed a problem. And we aren't going to help stop the euthanasia train (or trainwreck) by "dialoguing" with them on the basis of such characterizations. Alive is alive.

Oh, Lydia, I think I will rest my thoughts on this subject now and share with you something from St. Alphonsus de Ligouri's treatise, Uniformity with God's Will. I am not trying to make any point with it at all, just thinking you might like it.

"...the person who has little desire for Heaven shows he has little love for God. The true lover desires to be with his beloved. We cannot see God while we remain here on earth; hence the Saints have yearned for death so that they might go and behold their beloved Lord, face to face. 'Oh, that I might die and behold Thy beautiful face!' sighed St. Augustine. And St. Paul: 'Having a desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ.' 'When shall I come and appear before the face of God?' exclaimed the Psalmist.

"A hunter one day heard the voice of a man singing most sweetly in the forest. Following the sound, he came upon a leper horribly disfigured by the ravages of his disease. Addressing him he said: 'How can you sing when you are so terribly afflicted and your death is so near at hand?' And the leper: 'Friend, my poor body is a crumbling wall and it is the only thing that separates me from my God. When it falls I shall go forth to God. Time for me is indeed fast running out, so every day I show my happiness by lifting my voice in song.' "

Yep. I do like it. Like I said. I'm no vitalist. I could share quotation after quotation of the same kind with you and mean every one in a heartfelt fashion. The Apostle Paul as well, "For me to live is Christ, to die is gain." Indeed, after "having a desire to depart and be with Christ" he adds "which is far better." As the song says, "This world is not my home, I'm just a-passin' through." The Author of the Epistle to the Hebrews: "They confessed that they were strangers and sojourners...wherefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he hath prepared for them a city."

The truth is, I regard all of that as having pretty much nothing to do with Wolff's article. I know that that may surprise you, but I believe it to be true.

Or perhaps I should correct: What all of that has to do with Wolff's article is that one who has a Christian worldview, as manifested in such quotations about our wonderful home in heaven and our hope of eternal life, will have nothing in common with his article.

"Derbyshire has always been a nihilist, particularly on these issues. ..."

Yep; and that he was *somewhat* right in his "The Talk (Non-Blank Version)" cannot mitigate the fact.