This is the second outstanding comment on the Charlie Gard post, and it boldly ventures into the ethics jungle of euthanasia. The discussion must go there, for if society has limited resources, and we have more limited resources than Paul Krugman and Bernie Sanders admit, then when people use up their allotted portion, they either have to die or someone else has to pick up the bill. The recent surge in popularity for single-payer health care is due in part to the old saw about how soldiers think when going into battle. It’s everyone else who’s at risk, not you. Or as my dad liked to put it, “Gee, I’m going to miss those other guys!”
Increasingly, as I get older and think about how different my family’s life would be if both Mom and Dad hadn’t contrived to pop off quickly after relatively short illnesses and minimal hospitalization, I see the same consideration in planning for my loved ones. I don’t want to waste my son’s inheritance to pay for the last and worst years of my life; indeed, I think it would be unconscionable to do so. However, that needs to be my choice, not the Death Panel’s.
Here is Mrs Q’s Comment Of The Day on the post, “Observations On Britain’s Charlie Gard Ethics Fiasco”:
When medical care is socialized, nihilism & scientism combine to control those who can be useful to the state & those who need to be eliminated from it.
Dutch lawmakers are looking at a Completed Life Bill that would allow those 75+ in age to choose medical euthanasia. The lawmaker pushing the bill, Alexander Pechtold, said it would allow the Netherlands to…
“take the next step for our civilization.”
And what step is that exactly?
The Gard case highlights the dark workings of Marxism for what it is by defining life in terms of how much of a burden it supposedly is to others. That the “greater good” is better served when certain people s lives are considered “complete.”
Baby Gard, as Jack noted, cannot continue to be a financial burden in the context of socialized medicine because in such a paradigm, there are not enough resources to support all of those represented by it. Remember socialism ALWAYS promises more than it can ever deliver and always spends more than it has.
I love it when people tell me how great the health care in France is, while many there complain the immigrants are a drain on the system because they have not put their money into it for years. Or Canada, where our friends cannot afford private insurance and go without certain medications & treatments because they’re not covered by state. Or Europe, where rates of Downs Syndrome are jarringly low because doctors have advocated so severely for abortion of these unborn, that in some countries it has literally been years since such a child has been born.
It’s called eugenics and it will only get worse as we “evolve” to that *next step* Pechtold mentioned. How this stuff still isn’t seen as maniacal, genocidal, and homicidal is because of PR spin & appeals to “progress.”
The UK stopping these parents from being free to spend their money and attempt to treat their child epitomizes the state over-stepping its proper place in people’s personal lives.
The other day I said to my wife “it’s almost as if babies are being sacrificed to Moloch again.” She said “Again? Not sure it ever stopped.” In a way she might be right.
Ethics Alarms 
“The Gard case highlights the dark workings of Marxism”
Something prolific Liberal/Progressive/Socialist/Collectivist/Communist regimes have ALWAYS done without peer?
Population control.
Of course history shows that those regimes usually handle population control on the post-born-but-dont-like-totalitarianism side of the coin… massacring millions who don’t agree.
On the flip side, it’s not even the government massacring the unborn here… it’s a culture that endorses the individual choice to kill their children.
Sorry. I know abortion wasn’t what you were discussing.
“massacring millions who don’t agree.”
Sugarcoat it whydontcha…
“I know abortion wasn’t what you were discussing.”
No worries, and it should be part of that discussion.
The Nazis had a pretty micro-managed approach to abortion; prohibited for Teutons, everyone else, not so much.
Classist/Elitist/Racist Margaret “Human Weeds” Sanger’s dream of a “Race Of Thoroughbreds” wouldn’t have had the same cachet if its ‘selective breeding’ approach hadn’t been ‘selective’ enough.
An enlightening read on the evolution of that…um…discipline is Thomas C. Leonard’s “Illiberal Reformers: Race, Eugenics, and American Economics in the Progressive Era”
Sanger surprisingly believed life began at conception & wasn’t a fan of mass abortion. She was definitely a eugenicist but I think she would have viewed Planned Parenthood in a way differently than most of us think.
I’m no apologist for her but I have the habit of reading books by people I disagree with…including hers (Woman & The New Race) and find it interesting now what’s come from her legacy.
”Sanger surprisingly believed life began at conception”
Many of the pioneer Feminists (Anthony, Cady-Stanton, Blackwell, Norton, et al) felt the same way.
IMHO, Sanger’s history has been airbrushed down to the nub.
There’s an award with her name attached to it and its 2009 winner, Hillary Clinton, is “in awe.”
“and find it interesting now what’s come from her legacy.”
What do you believe her legacy is/should be, and does that differ from what it is/ought to be?
There’s an award with her name attached to it and its 2009 winner, Hillary Clinton, is “in awe.”
This guilt-by-association tactic works less well to those of us who are aware that MLK Jr. was also a proud recipient of the Margaret Sanger award.
“This guilt-by-association tactic works less well to those of us who are aware that MLK Jr. was also a proud recipient of the Margaret Sanger award.”
Do tell!
Same deal with proud, yet manifestly undeserving, Nobel PEACE Prize winners?
Huh? That comparison makes absolutely no sense, Paul.
”Huh? That comparison makes absolutely no sense”
Awards (the Sanger & the Nobel, here) are given out for different reasons.
Few would argue the positive historical significance of MLK, Jr. Hillarity (sic) Clinton? Don’t get me started.
The Nobel? For every Peres, Wiesel, or Mandela there’s an Arafat, Gore/IPCC, or Hope-n-Change. The former are eminently deserving, the latter are (IMHO) craven POSs that violate the very spirit the Nobel is supposed to signify.
C’mon, the self-anointed 4th Greatest President EVAH started 4 new wars, didn’t close Guantánamo, and had the gall to say “it turns out I’m pretty good at killing people” about his murderous Predator Drone program that violated the air space of over 20 sovereign countries.
Then there’s that small matter of killing many, Many, MANY innocent civilians. Does that sound worthy of Nobel Peace Prize recognition to you? It doesn’t to me.
Of course one ought not discount the AA/PC/First Black POTUS “extra credit where credit isn’t due” approach from which the Selection Committee must have positively swooned into knee-buckling secular rapture.
Stephen Colbert: “Really, what was that (Nobel Peace Prize) for?”
Obama: “To be honest, I still don’t know.”
He’s not alone!
Paul I have nothing but contempt for her legacy & think it ought to be exposed for what it is, which is total garbage. I only wished to add that many of her followers think she was super pro-abortion when she actually wasn’t. And many pro-choice fans of hers don’t believe life begins with conception, while she did.
Again, I’m no fan of hers even a little, just wanted to add some details many seem to miss about her. Seriously check out Woman & the New Race. Horrible indeed!
Mrs. Q;
I must confess, her ‘life begins at conception’ detail was one that had escaped me, thanks for that!
“Women & The New Race” is in the queue, just after Jonathan Allen & Amie Parnes’ “Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton’s Doomed Campaign”
It was recommended by someone firmly entrenched in the “not all” category of Lefty friends (he calls me a Righty) I intend when I say, in a somewhat less-than-flattering-manner: “Lefties, most, not all.”
I suspect my erstwhile pal Chris will be interested in neither, they cast Clinton & Sanger, two of his extra special HER0ES, in rather a poor light.
I’m glad you’re a reader too Paul! I’m reading The Smear by Sharyl Attkisson, which is about how media is controlled by smear artists.
Maybe we need to start a book club.
Great comment Mrs Q. Really appreciate you joining the discussion!
Thanks Tex!
“I don’t want to waste my son’s inheritance to pay for the last and worst years of my life; indeed, I think it would be unconscionable to do so.”
I’ve been in solid internal debate on this topic already.
I’m pretty much set that if it’s down to wasting significant value I can pass on to my children or to others or prolonging my life a measly year or two that I probably won’t be able to enjoy much anyway, I think my choice I’m pretty comfortable with pre-committing to is to pass on as much value as I can instead of clinging on to something that is rapidly fleeting.
I can only hope that I’ve poured enough into my children, my friends, and my community that the last couple years WON’T be spent in some sort of anguish over “gee I want to spend just a little more time with so-and-so because I frivolously wasted the full times we did have, so let me desperately and expensively try to make up for that lost time”
And my wife.
AND my WIFE!!!!!!
In the past 15 years, I have had to participate in Do Not Resuscitate discussions twice. In both cases, EEG’s (Electro Encephalogram’s) indicated a lack of brain activity, thus making the decisions relatively easy. It wasn’t a matter of quality of life, it was a matter of presence of life. Brain-dead is dead, to my way of thinking. Thus, both relatives passed from our hands to God’s, or, at least, to whatever comes next, if anything.
Great perspective Mrs Q., thanks for sharing it.