Try looking at the book as something other than an instruction manual. Your greatest criticism should not be that the authors focused too much on your shared desire to eliminate those you consider undesirable, and not enough on the undesirable characteristics that cause you to view your fellow human beings as vegetables that should be eradicated. It should bother you to know that your own views are identical to theirs. Did it ever occur to you that maybe the Holocaust wasn’t such a good thing?
“undesirable characteristics that cause you to view your fellow human beings as vegetables that should be eradicated.”
I didn’t create the term vegetable. And I didn’t call for the eradication of anyone. Eradication is defined as to remove or destroy utterly; extirpate. I am not saying anything like that. I said it is the responsibility of the parents to decide on the possibility of not causing the child more pain than it already has, whether physical or mental.
In De Anima, Aristotle used the word vegetative (or, rather, the ancient Greek equivalent) to denote lesser forms of life. Plants, he wrote, have a “vegetative” soul, capable only of growth and reproduction, whereas humans have a “rational” soul that allows for thought. If the child, due to severe brain damage has not capacity to thought, rational or otherwise, how can he lead anything close to a normal life? And when will this status become a frustration for caregiver or patient?
We don’t know enough about the current status of the patient. But the parents do. If they choose the USA treatment and it fails, then the termination status currently in effect becomes a real issue that they will have to decide how to handle. Right now they are grasping at straws. Hope for the best for them, but I don’t know enough to know how well it will turn out. I fear bad.
rwood