Posted on 11/22/2003 11:44:49 AM PST by sweetliberty
People already have the right to refuse unwanted treatment, and suicide is not illegal. What we oppose is a public policy that singles out individuals for legalized killing based on their health status. This violates the Americans With Disabilities Act, and denies us equal protection of the laws.
Disability opposition to this ultimate form of discrimination has been ignored by most media and courts, but countless people with disabilities have already died before their time. Not Dead Yet: The Resistance, a disability rights organization, Forest Park, Illinois, October 28, 2003
In 1920, a prominent German lawyer, Karl Binding, and a distinguished German forensic psychiatrist, Alfred Hoche, wrote a brief but deadly book, The Permission To Destroy Life Unworthy of Life. In his new book, The Coming of the Third Reich (Penguin), Richard Evans notes that Binding and Hoche emphasized that "the incurably ill and the mentally retarded were costing millions of marks and taking up thousands of much-needed hospital beds. So doctors should be allowed to put them to death."
Then came Adolf Hitler, who thought this was a splendid, indeed capital, idea. The October 1, 2003, New York Daily News ran this Associated Press report from Berlin:
"A new study reveals Nazi Germany killed at least 200,000 people because of their disabilitiespeople deemed physically inferior, said a report compiled by Germany's Federal Archive. Researchers found evidence that doctors and hospital staff used gas, drugs and starvation to kill disabled men, women and children at medical facilities in Germany, Austria, Poland and the Czech Republic. . . .
"The Nazis launched the drive to root out what they called 'worthless lives' [and 'useless eaters'] in the summer of 1939, pre-dating their full-scale organization of the Holocaust, in which they killed 6 million Jews." (Emphasis added).
The more than 200,000 "worthless lives" terminated by the Nazis before the Holocaust included few Jews. Most of those killed were other Germans considered unfit to be included in "the master race."
Among the defendants at the Nuremberg trials of Nazi leaders and their primary accomplices in the mass murder were German doctors who had gone along with the official policy of euthanasia. An American doctor, Leo Alexander, who spoke German, had interviewed the German physician-defendants before the trials, and then served as an expert on the American staff at Nuremberg.
In an article in the July 14, 1949, New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Alexander warned that the Nazis' crimes against humanity had "started from small beginnings . . . merely a subtle shift in emphasis in the basic attitude of the physicians. It started with the acceptance, basic in the euthanasia movement, that there is such a thing as life not worthy to be lived." That shift in emphasis among physicians, said Dr. Alexander, could happen here, in America.
Actually, the devaluing of apparent "imperfect life" had begun years before, in the United States. Various academics, in and out of the medical profession, had successfully advocated and instituted a eugenics movementthe perfecting of future generations of Americans by deciding who, depending on their hereditary genes, would be allowed to have children. The unfit would no longer be permitted to reproduce.
These American eugenicists provided German proponents of a "master race" with inspiration. As Robert Jay Lifton wrote in his invaluable book The Nazi Doctors (Basic Books), "A rising interest in eugenics [in America had] led, by 1920, to the enactment of laws in twenty-five states providing for compulsory sterilization of the criminally insane and other people considered genetically inferior." (Emphasis added).
Paying attention in Germany, Heinrich Himmler, one of Hitler's executioners, said the Nazis were "like the plant-breeding specialist who, when he wants to breed a pure new strain . . . goes over the field to cull the unwanted plants." Under the Nazis, there were eugenics courts to decide who could have children. In the United States Supreme Court (Buck v. Bell, 1927), Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, ruling that 18-year-old Carrie Buck should be involuntarily sterilized, famously wrote:
"If instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing of their kind. . . . Three generations of imbeciles are enough." Only Justice Pierce Butler dissented.
In this country, the eugenics movement lost its cachet for a time because the Nazis had gone from sterilization of the disabled to herding the religiously, racially, and politically unfit into gas chambers.
But there has been an American revival of eugenics in certain elite circles. A few years ago, an archconservative who had talked with some of the present-day, would-be purifiers of the American stock told me they were delighted at the deaths from AIDS of homosexuals.
But to protect the disabled from "mercy" killings, as well as eugenicists, another movement was forming here. Not long before he died, Dr. Alexander read an article in the April 12, 1984, New England Journal of Medicine by 10 physicianspart 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."
Next week: The growing conviction among American doctors, bioethicists, and hospital ethics committees that it is "futile" to try to treat certain patients, and therefore, medical professionals should have the power to decideeven against the wishes of the familywhen to allow these valueless lives to end.
If the courts finally permit the husband of brain-damaged Terri Schiavo to continue to press for her death by starvationby again removing her feeding tubemore of the barriers to killing may come down in other states. So this isn't only about Terri Schiavo. It could be about you
You could be right, but I took it more as a sideways slam at conservatives. Comparing the contracting of a disease that is largely preventable and often a result of one's excesses (AIDS) with the Terri Schiavo situation is a bit of a stretch IMHO. After typing the preceding sentence, though, I do see your point.
Then came Adolf Hitler, who thought this was a splendid, indeed capital, idea.
Scary thing is, I've seen FReepers reiterate those exact same arguments as to why Terri should be terminated. "It's costing taxpayers too much money." "Who might be able to use that hospital bed she's taking up right now?" Brrrrr! I've got shivers.
Whoa...I ain't namin' names, but that sounds like a spot-on description of some of the players in this case.
Cruel and having no compassion toward a fellow human being.
I should think Michael would be sweating bullets about now.
Doesn't it though?
Must've been all the prayers for my Pres lately that gave me the srength to venture into DU today, but I found this and thought you might find it appropriate..
Great Old Democrats...
GOD
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php? az=printer_friendly&forum=104&topic_id=757162&mesg_id=757395
They were trying to find catchy names to fight GOP....funny and very sad....
As a mere mortal woman I might condemn those men to a lifetime of 'night sweats' and 'hot flashes'....God has something even greater in store for them.
In Nazi Germany, German physicians planned and enacted the "Euthanasia" Program, the systematic killing of those they deemed "unworthy of life." The victims included the mentally retarded, the institutionalized mentally ill, and the physically impaired.
KARL BRANDT Personal physician to AdoIf Hitler; Gruppenfuehrer in the SS and Generalleutnant (Major General) in the Waffen SS; Reich Commissioner for Health and Sanitation (Reichskommissar fuer Sanitaets- und Gesundheitswesen); and member of the Reich Research Council (Reichsforschungsrat).
Count One: 5. The said common design, conspiracy, plans, and enterprises embraced the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity, as set forth in counts two and three of this indictment, in that the defendants unlawfully, willfully, and knowingly encouraged, aided, abetted, and participated in the subjection of thousands of persons, including civilians, and members of the armed forces of nations then at war with the German Reich, to murders, brutalities, cruelties, tortures, atrocities, and other inhuman acts.
Count Two: 9. Between September 1939 and April 1945 the defendants Karl Brandt, Blome, Brack, and Hoven unlawfully, willfully, and knowingly committed war crimes, as defined by Article II of Control Council Law No. 10, in that they were principals in, accessories to, ordered, abetted, took a consenting part in, and were connected with plans and enterprises involving the execution of the so-called "euthanasia" program of the German Reich in the course of which the defendants herein murdered hundreds of thousands of human beings, including nationals of German-occupied countries. This program involved the systematic and secret execution of the aged, insane, incurably ill, of deformed children, and other persons, by gas, lethal injections, and diverse other means in nursing homes, hospitals, and asylums. Such persons were regarded as "useless eaters" and a burden to the German war machine. The relatives of these victims were informed that they died from natural causes, such as heart failure. German doctors involved in the "euthanasia" program were also sent to Eastern occupied countries to assist in the mass extermination of Jews.
Count Three: 14. Between September 1939 and April 1945 the defendants Karl Brandt, Blome, Brack, and Hoven unlawfully, willfully, and knowingly committed crimes against humanity, as defined by Article II of Control Council Law No. 10, in that they were principals in, accessories to, ordered, abetted, took a consenting part in, and were connected with plans and enterprises involving the execution of the so called "euthanasia" program of the German Reich, in the course of which the defendants herein murdered hundreds of thousands of human beings, including German civilians, as well as civilians of other nations. The particulars concerning such murders are set forth in paragraph 9 of count two of this indictment and are incorporated herein by reference.
Count Four: 16. The defendants Karl Brandt, Genzken, Gebhardt, Rudolf Brandt, Mrugowsky, Poppendick, Sievers, Brack, Hoven, and Fischer are guilty of membership in an organization declared to be criminal by the International Military Tribunal in Case No. 1, in that each of the said defendants was a member of the SCHUTZSTAFFELN DER NATIONALSOZIALISTISCHEN DEUTSCHEN ARBEITERPARTEI (commonly known as the "SS")
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I hereby proclaim the Florida Second District Court of Appeals (most especially Chief Judge Chris W. Altenbernd, Judge Carolyn K. Fulmer, and Judge Thomas E. Stringer), Circuit Judge W. Douglas Baird, Circuit Judge George Greer, George Felos, Esq., and Michael Schiavo guilty of:
COUNT ONE: The said common design, conspiracy, plans, and enterprises embracing the commission of crimes against humanity, as set forth in count two of this indictment, in that the defendants unlawfully, willfully, and knowingly encouraged, aided, abetted, and participated in the future subjection of thousands of persons, to murders, brutalities, cruelties, tortures, atrocities, and other inhuman acts.
COUNT TWO: They are, and have been, willfully and knowingly, committed to crimes against humanity in that they are principals in, accessories to, ordered, abetted, took a consenting part in, and were and are connected with plans and enterprises involving the execution of a euthanasia program in the course of which the defendants herein will murder, or cause to be murdered, hundreds of thousands of human beings. This program will involve the systematic execution of the aged, incurably ill, the brain damaged, those labeled to be in a persistent vegetative state, and other persons who do not have advanced legal directives, by the withholding of nutrition and hydration, in nursing homes, hospitals, and asylums because such persons are regarded as "useless eaters" and a burden to society.
I'll take everybody I can get, but I'm concerned about my fellow Catholics because of the sorry leadership we have (particularly in Florida) and because of articles like this pro-killing garbage in the Catholic press. (The piece I referenced appeared in Commonweal, but we had one almost as bad in the Atlanta Catholic paper, which is supposedly ultra-conservative.)
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