Especially if you’re old and suffer from dementia:
Elderly people suffering from dementia should consider ending their lives because they are a burden on the NHS and their families, according to the influential medical ethics expert Baroness Warnock.
The veteran Government adviser said pensioners in mental decline are “wasting people’s lives” because of the care they require and should be allowed to opt for euthanasia even if they are not in pain.
She insisted there was “nothing wrong” with people being helped to die for the sake of their loved ones or society.
The 84-year-old added that she hoped people will soon be “licensed to put others down” if they are unable to look after themselves.
That’s supposed to be ‘ethical’? Yikes. I’d hate to see what she considers morally abhorrent.
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Rebecca adds: Those who don’t know history may not be condemned to repeat it, but they do seem to be condemned to remain too stupid to know whom they’re imitating. As to people being a burden on the NHS (which is more properly understood to be a burden on the British people) – how long until someone tallies the cost of a second trimester abortion against the cost of a lifetime of care for someone with Down’s Syndrome, and declares it a moral imperative to abort babies diagnosed with it?
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The following quotes in the article are just as revealing:
“I’m absolutely, fully in agreement with the argument that if pain is insufferable, then someone should be given help to die, but I feel there’s a wider argument that if somebody absolutely, desperately wants to die because they’re a burden to their family, or the state, then I think they too should be allowed to die.
“Actually I’ve just written an article called ‘A Duty to Die?’ for a Norwegian periodical. I wrote it really suggesting that there’s nothing wrong with feeling you ought to do so for the sake of others as well as yourself.”
This is exactly the kind of ‘next step’ that opponents of physician assisted suicide have pointed to all along. If the right to assisted suicide is grounded in some vague and open-ended principle of self-determination, then why should only the terminally ill be granted that right? Whereas earlier advocates of voluntary euthanasia limited the scope of their argument to cases of terminal illness, today’s proponents would have the same legal access extended to anyone who regards his or her medical circumstances as burdensome.
I would like to see Baroness Warnock’s specific criteria for determining who should and should not have the right to assisted suicide. The argument is probably grounded in little more than one’s own perception of one’s social value. That is to ignore, of course, the distinction between one’s *sense* of dignity and one’s actual dignity (something we all possess). But perhaps the Baroness thinks the latter just reduces to the former – in which case none of us have dignity unless we feel that we do.
This woman is 84 years old herself, I would say….you first!
We’re seeing this same reasoning used constantly by the state here in the UK now: the NHS is expensive, and you have a social duty to reduce that cost. It was used constantly during the introduction of the smoking bans (never mind that smokers are net contributors to the NHS because of the tax on cigarettes — mere facts clearly needn’t have too great an effect on this argument). We’re seeing more and more attempts by the state to legislate our food — in Scotland, local authorities have started assessing the menus of pubs for salt content when deciding whether to grant them licenses to serve alcohol. State employees are now going to be sent out into the streets to approach people they think look overweight, measure their waists, and tell them to go to Weight Watchers. People are regularly denied life-saving drugs because they’re too expensive for the nation, and the GMC have advised their members not to even tell patients that a drug exists if the NHS can’t afford it, effectively denying them the right to pay for it privately if they wish.
And now this. You’re too expensive, so do the decent thing.
The increasing pervasiveness of this attitude is, I think, the single best argument against the NHS. Bevin must be spinning in his grave.