What’s Wrong with the World

If there is one bright spot in all of this, it is that in my limited teaching of medical ethics, most students find this type of thing appalling. I can only hope that the number remains small.

Are these undergraduates or graduate students, RC?

What really bothers me is that this debate is almost one-sided and taking place in a moral vacuum. The mass media has such a large mouthpiece that it will almost drown out the voice of the reasoning few. Really, without a sense of sin any action seems possible. The wages of sin is death and that can begin in this life. The drive to death is nothing more than in playing itself out to it's logical conclusion in the life of these "enlightened" inividuals. A few posts ago we talked about what is true tragedy. This is an example.

The Chicken

By the way, why no commentary about the riots in London? These situations are connected in a way - remove moral training from kids and rioting ensues.

The Chicken

Certainly, a moral vacuum can and probably will return us to a war of all against all, Chicken.

There has been no post yet about the riots in England because I'm tired, the fact that Britain, which has given us so much over the centuries, is dying and burning is appalling and depressing, and I'm not sure what I have to say to add to the commentary on other sites. Plus I don't feel like dealing with commentators on the subject. What other contributors here are thinking on the subject, I don't know and haven't asked. I'd rather this thread weren't on that subject.

One aside and an observation from the peanut gallery:
- A bit of irony(?) in that Ms. Bogle's article appeared in the AOL Healthy Living section.
- Bogle romanticizes nature and accepts its brutality as long as it occurs within its natural ecosystem thereby contributing to the continuation of the ecosystem. We live in an increasingly secular world where many deny a Creator and naturalism holds sway. It is only a hop, skip, & jump until human life as no longer viewed by society as having an inherent worth beyond our contributions to society and/or the ecosystem. Will we become a line item with debits & credits subject to some bureaucratic formula of future net worth? (I wonder if someone has already written a short story about such a place.)

In line with your comment, Larry M., I noticed that every time Bogle introduces one of the people in the nursing home, she does so in terms of the person's previous activities which _she_ considers to have been worthwhile. It's eerie. These previous activities are supposed to make the person's present life seem worthless by comparison. For example, she tells us that her father was an "agent of change" in his earlier life. She introduces one woman by saying that before her children were born she worked in a bank! (Apparently having raised the children isn't her most important accomplishment in Bogle's book; working in a bank before they were born is.) Another woman used to work in, IIRC, food services. It's chilling. Bogle looks at each of these people as previously useful, but now useless, cogs in the system. Her whole manner of talking about them makes that clear, even when she's supposedly complimenting their past achievements.

My apologies, Lydia. I did not mean to suggest that this thread get thread-jacked onto the riots. I was just making a general connection regarding the milieu of Bogle's remarks. Certainly, she would have been driven from town for printing this fifty years ago.

The Chicken

Ostracism is definitely under-utilized, probably (unfortunately) for legal reasons. "Your name is what again? April Bogle? Oh, I read your article recently about Alzheimer's and the rainforest. You know, actually, I'm afraid I won't be able to give your car a tune-up, Ms. Bogle."

I sometimes hear folks advocate assisted suicide. I never see them teach by example. Apparently, when it comes to death and assistance, it's better to give than to receive.

I feel like talking about hateful ideas and language, let alone the ost-racism word, only confirms those control freaks in their delusions. In any case, I always try to be clear that I won't be holding any coats while these monsters go kill somebody.

Herewith, some predictions. First prediction: Within a decade, in America, we will see elderly people being directly and actively euthanized without repercussions. I predict that this will be done to mentally incompetent people who (for whatever this is worth) could not have consented at the time of their deaths.

I think we got ourselves into this situation because we embraced a perverted form of Christian morality. It's been said here that liberalism is a Christian heresy, and cases like this prove the point. Liberals and many Christians have argued that human dignity and other factors demand that "we as a society" take care of every person who suffers, without regard for how they got there lest we be mean and judgmental. Where the liberals exercise no discernment, we can chalk that up to them aping morality and philosophy badly. For Christians, it is inexcusable to think that society owes a dying drug addict the same level of assistance as a normal elderly person suffering from dementia.

How and why we arrive at our infirmities and bad situations are fundamental to what level of moral claim we can make on our fellow man for assistance. The single mother who had 3 kids by 3 fathers, none of whom she even tried to marry, is fundamentally different from a mother of 3 whose husband left her or died. Yet we give them both the same claim before the law, and the worthier one of the two is less assisted and lumped in with those who are simply unapologetic burdens on society.

If we would stop pretending that all indigents are created equal, let alone even have a moral claim to public assistance of any kind, we could get to the task of actually helping those who truly can't help themselves. It would be cheaper to cast into the streets the drug addicts, alcoholics, unwed mothers, pathologically criminal, gluttons and others who have willfully destroyed themselves while putting up every advanced Alzheimer's or dementia patient in a 5 star hotel for the rest of their life than our current system.

Dare I say, it would also be more just. Let private charity deal with the self-destructive according to their individual case and leave it to society to consider a safety net only for those who simply cannot, due to forces beyond their reasonable control, care for themselves.

I don't know, Timon. Yeah, I doubt you could actually get away with not repairing April Bogle's car because of her disgusting article.

But I think it doesn't hurt for people to get the sense that their ideas are distasteful and not acceptable in polite company. Peter Singer should never receive speaking invitations, for example. I'm not recommending anything like prosecutions. I'm recommending looking at people like they just crawled out from under a rock. I'm recommending removing the air of academic detachment from discussion of topics like murdering old people because they are a "burden."

Just one way in which I try to do this: While occasionally it is necessary because of its (unfortunate) use in the legal-medical literature to use the phrase "persistent vegetative state," I always put it in quotation marks and, even more important, I never allow people on my threads to use the noun form, "vegetable," for a human being. Never. I picked that up from Wesley J. Smith. It's utterly degrading, and I treat it as being completely unacceptable, like people treat the "n" word.

Also, if I run into Christian philosophy students (which unfortunately does happen) advocating consequentialism and defending the idea that it could be right to kill, say, an infant in order to save the whole world or something like that, I bring them up kind of sharply. Just because they picked up consequentialism of some sort somewhere along the line, just because deontologism is evidently "out" in ethics circles, just because Singer & Co. are treated as serious philosophers, doesn't mean we should just coolly contemplate bumping off children as if, being philosophers, we're not supposed to be shocked or disgusted at anything.

So I don't mind using a phrase like "hateful speech" or bringing up ostracism. I think we need to get back to the idea that some things are just unacceptable and that we should be acting horrified at them. Heaven knows, the left has plenty of its own things of this kind. People with common sense always used to have theirs. Let's get back to that common sense set.

Mike T., I certainly agree that our having taught people in general in certain broad categories to treat health care as free is part of what has led to the economic mess of our health care system. Over-demand is a huge economic problem, and every liberal approach is only to increase over-demand, which leads to further breakdown.

People have different prescriptions for fixing this over-demand problem. I myself would start with simple means-testing for Social Security and Medicare.

I doubt the wisdom of your own approach for many reasons, one of which is simply that the people who would be thrown out onto the streets for having "brought on their own problems" would be, say, fat people. As we see moral judgement for having "brought on one's own problems" brought back into our system, it falls pretty much foursquare on the obese and not at all on those who have committed more clear-cut sins. That's just the way our present lords and masters think about moral judgement. Even suggesting to the promiscuous that they are harming themselves and burdening society by their "lifestyle" is considered a shocking intervention into personal life, but trying to outlaw Happy Meals is a righteous cause.

I'm also not sure that I agree with the general rightness of throwing everybody out onto the street that has committed real sins to get where they are. In any event, I think we'd have a healthier system altogether if the care of the indigent (innocent and previously guilty alike) were the province of private charity. I'm just not sure how to get from here to there.

All that being said, however, it seems to me important to keep this in mind: It *should not matter* how burdened our health care system is or how stupid the set-up. We don't bump people off. There should just be a line in the sand there. The only reason that people move from, "Oh, look at all the resources so-and-so with dementia is consuming by being alive," to "Let's kill him" is because we have totally lost our moral compass. It's not like resource use and economic stress, nor even the economic unwisdom of liberal approaches, are any excuse for articles like Bogle's and Brooks's.

I'm also not sure that I agree with the general rightness of throwing everybody out onto the street that has committed real sins to get where they are. In any event, I think we'd have a healthier system altogether if the care of the indigent (innocent and previously guilty alike) were the province of private charity. I'm just not sure how to get from here to there.

I was referring specifically to government programs in that part of my comment. The government should not be in the business of providing "charity" to people whose need for it is specifically caused by immoral behavior. That isn't to say that such people may not merit charity individually or that private organizations shouldn't provide it. It's just this simple: the government should not be bailing people out from the consequences of their sin.

The only reason that people move from, "Oh, look at all the resources so-and-so with dementia is consuming by being alive," to "Let's kill him" is because we have totally lost our moral compass. It's not like resource use and economic stress, nor even the economic unwisdom of liberal approaches, are any excuse for articles like Bogle's and Brooks's.

I disagree that that is the only reason. In fact, resource consumption are a great "reason" for such articles. They would argue that it's not just needless suffering, but wasteful, to give "a whole nursing home room for years" to someone who could be easily euthanized out of "mercy," thus freeing maybe $1M-$2M over the remainder of their lifetime. They begin thinking like that because they don't question the basic premise of the welfare state.

Thus it really becomes sacrificing the weak to save the rest and hopefully the system too. In reality, what we need is to sacrifice the majority of the welfare state's clients to save the minority.

I disagree that that is the only reason. In fact, resource consumption are a great "reason" for such articles. They would argue that it's not just needless suffering, but wasteful, to give "a whole nursing home room for years" to someone who could be easily euthanized out of "mercy," thus freeing maybe $1M-$2M over the remainder of their lifetime. They begin thinking like that because they don't question the basic premise of the welfare state.

But obviously none of that makes any sense unless one accepts consequentialism, unless one accepts the rightness of killing innocents to "save the rest." In other words, even considering that line of argument to be a line of argument shows that we have lost our moral compass. We no longer believe that killing an elderly dementia patient is one of those things that must not be done, period. If we did, we wouldn't even start that discussion of how much we could save by doing so. It would be like, I dunno (what do these "ethicists" still have in their minds as absolute prohibitions?), "Could we save the Medicare system by grabbing a random female off the street and raping her?"

April Bogle looks at her father, sees her future, and is afraid as she is still working things out. Better to have thought her options out in private rather than this silly article but the rest of us should realize that a silly article, not a likely policy, is all we have here.

We tried private charity when our demographics skewed far younger and the odds were that something other than dementia would claim one and still private charity couldn't cut it. We now have to deal with the Baby Boom bulge and the impoverishment of the cohort behind them. Good luck with depending on the kindness of strangers.

(The four kinds of vultures reference brought a smile. I've long admired the Tibetan and Zoroastrian approach to the matter and I've opted for jhator in my final directives; the local turkey vultures use the thermals off the ridge out back so they are frequently overhead).

"The single mother who had 3 kids by 3 fathers, none of whom she even tried to marry, is fundamentally different from a mother of 3 whose husband left her or died."

But the kids are the same and deliberately creating an underclass isn't wise.

We no longer believe that killing an elderly dementia patient is one of those things that must not be done, period. If we did, we wouldn't even start that discussion of how much we could save by doing so.

Where we once understood "they that won't work shall not eat," many now believe it is a crime against "human dignity" to let a man starve to death if he refuses to work or die outside a hospital if his drug addiction finally catches up to him and he can't pay his way. The recurring theme in how we handle indigents is to turn a blind eye toward evil. Why then is it so surprising that many turn a blind eye toward cost-cutting measures to maintain that system?

But the kids are the same and deliberately creating an underclass isn't wise.

You can handle the kids' needs through specific programs. SCHIP to guarantee a minimum level of health care is one thing. Cutting mommy a check to use at her discretion is another. One of the many reasons I oppose child support (both in most divorces and in all out of wedlock cases) is that there is no ability to prove the child is actually benefiting from it (and often, it's not being spent on them).

SCHIP is great but mom needs prenatal care and the kids need to eat and wear clothes and have a place to sleep.

but mom needs prenatal care

That has no bearing on the issue of forking over cash (which the welfare state cannot track).

the kids need to eat and wear clothes and have a place to sleep.

There are plenty of ways to accomplish those things without giving over cash.

When the government just cuts a check, it loses the ability to oversee the use of those funds. That means the public loses the ability to gauge whether the program is actually serving the common good (children getting the bare necessities) or not (mom buying herself steak, a day at the beauty salon and a big TV).

Y'know, Mike T., I just can't agree with you. I'm usually all in favor of making distinctions, but I just don't see that somehow being willing to let a drug addict die on the street makes us more likely not to bump off a dementia patient. I'm definitely opposed to programs that "enable" (to use a jargon term) the drug addict's on-going addiction. But if it isn't immoral enabling for a private charity to give him a decent place to die, it isn't immoral enabling for a public charity to do so. My objections to public charities appear to be some the same and some different from yours. But in general, I don't think that we would improve our moral attitude (or be more moral people) if we tossed AIDS patients out onto the street to die. Giving money to be used to further an addiction = bad. There we are at one. Beyond that, I don't think we are.

And before someone can turn a blind eye to killing the elderly, someone else has to believe that it's right to kill the elderly, to teach that, and, finally, to do it. And those people are allegedly respectable citizens. I vote we remove their respectable citizen status.

Ah, Al's back, to tell us all is well. Actually, whatever may have jump-started her thoughts on the subject, Bogle _does_ make policy recommendations. Brooks certainly views himself as a policy wonk of some sort, and he's definitely trying to get fear of Alzheimer's patients in the aggregate to have an impact on public policy. The Hemlock Society is in the business of making policy recommendations.

And England has recently implemented an explicit policy of not prosecuting people who kill their disabled relatives and say (with what the prosecutor considers sufficient plausibility) that they did it at the relative's behest. This has been carried out already in the case of one man who gassed and suffocated his wife to death. How recently the request for death had to have been made, and whether the patient had to have been mentally competent at the time, we haven't found out yet. This policy (and it is a real policy) of non-prosecution is relatively new, so in the end I guess we'll find out whether a case like Bruce Brodigan's would be prosecuted in England. Considering the fact that the investigations appear to be rather cursory and that the killer relative's word appears to be taken unquestioningly, we can probably draw a few conclusions. And, yes, these things do start elsewhere and then get "borrowed" by America as a copycat. I have an American blog colleague right here who, I'm sorry to say, endorses England's "see no evil" non-prosecution policy.

All is not well, Al. I stand by my predictions.

I have hope that you're a poor prophet, Lydia, but not much.

Oh, I just made the mistake of reading Bogle's article. Talk about a person doesn't understand either love or what it means to be human.

You know, this nihilistic philosophy of death and dying gets spread everywhere because the media have no consistent concept of morality, anymore, and will let anyone speak for the sake of "open dialogue". That used to be okay because such words would be denounced in ringing voices from the pulpit, Sunday after Sunday, until the sound of thunder of the righteous blew away the smokescreen of openness surround in the mawing chasm of self.

There are too many mice in pulpits, these days, who squeak out a polite, "Excuse me, sir," instead of acting like men and putting the fear of God where it should be.

We need another St. Vincent Ferrer. The Four Last Things should be mandatory meditations for anyone dealing with life issues.

Bogle wrote:

But if we can prolong life beyond its natural time line...

The thing is, most Alzheimer's patients are living a natural life span, not an unnatural one, as Bogle would have us believe. It just happens to be longer these days because we aren't as stupid about things like sanitation, etc., which robbed us of years in the past. Indeed, life was too short in by-gone days.

She is no fan of Scripture, which prepared us for this day:

[Sirach 3]

Children, listen to me, your father; act accordingly, that you may be safe. For the Lord sets a father in honor over his children and confirms a mother’s authority over her sons.

Those who honor their father atone for sins;
they store up riches who respect their mother.
Those who honor their father will have joy in their own children,
and when they pray they are heard.

Those who respect their father will live a long life;
those who obey the Lord honor their mother.
Those who fear the Lord honor their father,
and serve their parents as masters.

In word and deed honor your father,
that all blessings may come to you.
A father’s blessing gives a person firm roots,
but a mother’s curse uproots the growing plant.

Do not glory in your father’s disgrace,
for that is no glory to you!
A father’s glory is glory also for oneself;
they multiply sin who demean their mother.

My son, be steadfast in honoring your father;
do not grieve him as long as he lives.
Even if his mind fails, be considerate of him;
do not revile him because you are in your prime.

Kindness to a father will not be forgotten;
it will serve as a sin offering—it will take lasting root.
In time of trouble it will be recalled to your advantage,
like warmth upon frost it will melt away your sins.

Those who neglect their father are like blasphemers;
those who provoke their mother are accursed by their Creator.

Bogle is not honoring her father, even though she might think she is, because as Sirach points out:

Those who respect their father will live a long life;
those who obey the Lord honor their mother.
Those who fear the Lord honor their father,
and serve their parents as masters.

She does not serve her parents as a proper master, who considers the fear of the Lord. No, she fears nothing but death, a smelly death, at that. She sees life as nothing but a series of, "I wants," and when he father can no longer want, she subtly argues that God has demotes him to the rank of less-than-human. Here's the thing: we can kill the less-than-human. Every zombie movie in existence says so.

Oh, but if her father were really the man spoken of in the Commandment to honor, then that man would continue until God has spoken THE END.

I'll give Bogle this: when she can create life, by herself, unassisted, by a mere fiat, then I will grant her the right to end life, by herself. Until she has acquired that power, she cannot end life by herself, only her selfishness.

The Chicken

P. S., in a wonderful movie rarely seen anymore, Colossus: the Forbin Project, Dr. Forbin, the creator of the supercomputer, Colossus, who takes over the world remarks:

Dr. Forbin: I think your mother was right. I think Frankenstein ought to be required-reading for all scientists.

We need a new Bizzaro Frankenstein for this new age: wherein Dr. Frankenstein seeks to kill the too-long-lived man-become-monster Alzheimer sufferer. Electricity can be used to inanimate matter as well as to animate it, you see. In the modern age, Shelly's work would be the same, only with the negative and positive wires reversed. Frankenstein was a tale where we came to pity the monster, but watch out, in the modern Frankenstein, we are the monster.

Should be...

That used to be okay because such words would be denounced in ringing voices from the pulpit, Sunday after Sunday, until the sound of thunder of the righteous blew away the smokescreen of openness surrounding and covering the mawing chasm of self.

Proofread before posting or you, too will suffer the mocking sounds of the Muses...

The Chicken