Posted on 01/31/2012 2:00:42 PM PST by ProgressingAmerica
A few days ago, an article titled "Is it morally wrong to take a life? Not really, say bioethicists" appeared in a journal for bio ethics. More than anything, note the context. This is being discussed by those who are "the experts" of ethics, by researchers from Duke University and the National Institute of Health. So we're supposed to take this seriously, that this is an enlightened and reasoned discourse on the matter. All of that gets shattered if you look at the verbage they use at the bottom:
This radical conclusion may shock some readers, but the authors are not murderers. They want to bring greater precision to what we mean by killing. Rendering someone totally and permanently incapacitated is just as bad as taking a life, or so they contend. Killing totally disabled patients does them no harm."Then killing her cannot disrespect her autonomy, because she has no autonomy left. It also cannot be unfair to kill her if it does her no harm."Nor, they say, is life "sacred". The only relevant difference between life and death is the existence of abilities – and a brain-damaged person no longer has these."[I]f killing were wrong just because it is causing death or the loss of life, then the same principle would apply with the same strength to pulling weeds out of a garden. If it is not immoral to weed a garden, then life as such cannot really be sacred, and killing as such cannot be morally wrong."
So they know full well their proposal is radical, yet they've proposed it anyways. I can't get past the words they're using, they have made a 'good' attempt to soften the ground. Where have I heard such vile nastyness before? Oh yeah! Margaret Sanger. In her 1922 book "The Pivot of Civilization", Sanger incredibly wrote the following:(Page 265)
At the present time, civilized nations are penalizing talent and genius, the bearers of the torch of civilization, to coddle and perpetuate the choking human undergrowth, which, as all authorities tell us, is escaping control and threatens to overrun the whole garden of humanity.
Margaret Sanger also justified her radicalism by cloaking it in science. In 1925, "Birth Control: Facts and Responsibilities" was published. Now, being as this is still under copyright, I can't do anything with it. But Margaret Sanger did, repeatedly, imply or outright say and write things in reference to "human weeds".(as you can see)
This is always how it begins. Go after the "lowest hanging fruit" as they see it. The feebleminded, the neuronic, the idiots and imbeciles, the illiterate, the undesirables, the defectives. Those are all terms that were used by early eugenicists and progressives to denote their superiority above others. As we have seen from history, doctors should not have the power to make these decisions. Even when individuals make this sort of choice is bad enough, as noted by The Blaze, this: is the result of the devaluation of human life. But this kind of thing is nothing new. Let's get back to Margaret Sanger. In 1932, she penned an article titled "MY WAY TO PEACE" (From the Sanger public documents archive)
have Congress set up a special department for the study of population problems, and appoint a Parliament of Population Directors representing the various branches of science.
How nice. A politburo which will decide if you are worthy of life or not. And aptly named! The Parliament of Population.
(f) the whole dysgenic population would have its choice of segregation or sterilization.(g) there would be farm lands and homesteads where these segregated persons would be taught to work under competent instructors for the period of their entire lives.
Yes, you read that right. This is where it always ends up. And note, as I go through all of this, how every bit of this relates back to what those bioethicists wrote just a week ago. They did everything but use the word 'feebleminded'. What Sanger wrote here sounds very similar to this:
"I think it would be a good thing to make everybody come before a properly appointed board, just as they might come before the income tax commissioners, and say every 5 years or every 7 years, just put them there, and say, sir or madam, now will you be kind enough to justify your existence? If you're not producing as much you consume, or perhaps a little more, then, clearly, we cannot use the big organization of our society, for the purpose of keeping you alive, because your life does not benefit us and it can't be of any use to yourself
Would you say Shaw's proposal sounds like a proposal for a Parliament of Population? I think it does. Now, you don't have to go digging very far before you start to learn that Sanger was well acquainted with Fabian Socialism, having relationships with both Havelock Ellis(who was a contributor The Birth Control Review) and H G Wells. All one big happy circle.
Know history, and you know the future. While I don't expect that modern bio ethicists will go around talking about the feebleminded any time soon, I cannot say it won't happen. They're already going around talking about "human weeds". They have already placed themselves on this path. So what's next?
Progressives have the ethics of Babylon.
Thanks for posting.
Progressive’s ethics would appear to be copied from 1938 Nazi policy.Sounds a lot like the “useless eaters” program.
There is only one way to stop them. Only one way.
Even the meanest form of worm will try to avoid being killed.
You can negate your right to continue breathing by initiating force, fraud, or theft against another person... But that is a different argument...
The nazis got a lot of their tactics from American 1920s progressives.
Progressives/liberal ALWAYS reach the point eventually. They believe that THEIR idea of morality is so superior to everyone else that they can kill you.
I’d like on your list. Wow. Just wow.
Sounds like the plot in my favorite Twilight Zone episode “The Obsolete Man”.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0734667/
Chancellor: Since there are no more books, Mr. Wordsworth, there are no more libraries. And of course it follows that there is very little call for the services of a librarian. Case in point: A minister would tell us that his function is preaching the word of God. And if course it follows that since the State has proven that there is no God, that would make the function of a minister academic as well.
Romney Wordsworth: There IS a God!
Chancellor: [shocked silence] You are in error, Mr. Wordsworth; there is no God! The state has proven that there is no God!
Romney Wordsworth: You cannot erase God with an edict!
It’s always for the greater good............/s
Context matters to both the big government left and the individual freedom right. To us, it is not wrong to take the life of a criminal who poses an immediate threat to the life or safety of an innocent person. To them it is wrong to kill that criminal but it is not wrong to kill an innocent unborn child (including one accidentally born during abortion), and it is not wrong according to them to kill our elderly relatives once they can no longer do anything for us.
In other words, Hussein voters.
“The will of the individual is what should matter here. If my last wish was to be kept alive as long as possible, no matter how incapacitated, in the hopes that some day they may find a way to fix me? Then killing me is causing me harm. Absent no such wish to DNR (do not resuscitate) being expressed, the default should always be pro-life.”
Please address the financial/economic aspects of keeping you alive as long as possible, no matter how incapacitated, in the hopes that some day they may find a way to fix you.
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Another good history lesson from Progressing America. One that should be taught in high schools and colleges all over the country.
Not long before he died, Dr. Alexander read an article in the April 12, 1984, New England Journal of Medicine by 10 physicians—part of the growing "death with dignity" brigade. They were from such prestigious medical schools as Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and the University of Virginia. These distinguished healers wrote that when a patient was in a "persistent vegetative state," it was "morally justifiable" to "withhold antibiotics and artificial nutrition (feeding tubes) and hydration, as well as other forms of life-sustaining treatment, allowing the patient to die." They ignored the finding that not all persistent vegetative states are permanent.After reading the article, Dr. Alexander said to a friend: "It is much like Germany in the '20s and '30s. The barriers against killing are coming down."
Above quote from here
MEDICAL SCIENCE UNDER DICTATORSHIP by DR. LEO ALEXANDER Introduction by C. Eckstein
In July of 1949, The New England Journal of Medicine printed an article by Dr. Leo Alexander titled MEDICAL SCIENCE UNDER DICTATORSHIP. Dr. Alexander acted as consultant to the Secretary of war, and the Chief of Counsel for War Crimes held in Nuremberg Germany.
The paper is considered a classic, justifiably earning the highest respect through the decades since its publication. In it, Dr. Alexander explains what happens to medicine when it "becomes subordinated to the guiding philosophy of the dictatorship." That philosophy is Hegelian, or "rational utility" which Alexander said "replaced moral, ethical and religious values."
What motivated physicians to judge that there is "such a thing as life not worthy to be lived."
How did such attitudes entice the healer to become killer?
Alexander said the crimes "started from small beginnings. The beginnings at first were merely a subtle shift in emphasis in the basic attitude of the physicians. It started with the acceptance of the attitude, basic in the euthanasia movement, that there is such a thing as life not worthy to be lived."
The physicians were not repulsed by this new attitude, nor did they survey the oiled slope. The theory was about to be put into practice. But first they had to take care of a few minor details, as for instance, the Hippocratic Oath. They would have to reject the ethics outlined in the over 2,000 year old vow.
They rejected the "non-rehabilitable sick", the "socially unwanted", the "unproductive" the unlovely and unlovable. Seduced by so-called "Hegelian rational", physicians veered unblushingly from noble physician to ignoble technicians. Dr. Alexander introduced a new term for destroyers of life, calling the science of killing, "ktenology".
In "The Example of Successful Resistance by the Physicians of the Netherlands." It was in this particular segment that Dr. Alexander applauded the small country for having such a large and brave heart. It was the Dutch physicians who risked their lives by standing firm against a dictatorship that threatened to change the practice of medicine forever. Considering the present situation in Holland, one might find the information contained, unbelievable.
Above continues here.
Go to the link if you want to read the full paper. You might want to begin with the final section. I did. It's titled "The Situation in the United States"
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