[ Note: Several weeks ago, it became widely known that the Dutch were expanding their "euthanasia" program to formalize the previously informal murder of "inconvenient" children and other human beings at the hands of doctors. This further step down into the pit troubled me greatly along with millions of others. I spent a lot of time researching the question of how a society, inch by inch, arrives at such a degraded state in the name of sweet reason. I'd intended to write something about this, but then I found (Via As the Top of the World Turns) The Children Whom Reason Scorns written by 'Dr. Bob' at The Doctor Is In. This says all I would have hoped to say and more -- far better than I ever could.
With the author's permission I am republishing it in full on American Digest. I urge you to not only spend the time reading and thinking about this essay, but to pass it on to all those you think might also be interested. As well, I also urge you to discover The Doctor Is In for yourself.]
In the years following the Great War, a sense of doom and panic settled over Germany. Long concerned about a declining birth rate, the country faced the loss of 2 million of its fine young men in the war, the crushing burden of an economy devastated by war and the Great Depression, further compounded by the economic body blow of reparations and the loss of the German colonies imposed by the Treaty of Versailles. Many worried that the Nordic race itself was threatened with extinction.
The burgeoning new sciences of psychology, genetics, and medicine provided a glimmer of hope in this darkness. An intense fascination developed with strengthening and improving the nation through Volksgesundheit - public health. Many physicians and scientists promoted "racial hygiene" - better known today as eugenics. The Germans were hardly alone in this interest - 26 states in the U.S. had forced sterilization laws for criminals and the mentally ill during this period; Ohio debated legalized euthanasia in the 20's; and even Oliver Wendall Holmes, in Buck v. Bell, famously upheld forced sterilization with the quote: "Three generations of imbeciles are enough!" But Germany's dire circumstances and its robust scientific and university resources proved a most fertile ground for this philosophy.
These novel ideas percolated rapidly through the social and educational systems steeped in Hegelian deterministic philosophy and social Darwinism. Long lines formed to view exhibits on heredity and genetics, and scientific research, conferences, and publication on topics of race and eugenics were legion. The emphasis was often on the great burden which the chronically ill and mentally and physically deformed placed on a
struggling society striving to achieve its historical destiny. In a high school biology textbook - pictured above - a muscular German youth bears two such societal misfits on a barbell, with the exhortation, "You Are Sharing the Load! - a hereditarily-ill person costs 50,000 Reichsmarks by the time they reach 60." Math textbooks tested students on how many new housing units could be built with the money saved by elimination of long-term care needs. Parents often chose euthanasia for their disabled offspring, rather than face the societal scorn and ostracization of raising a mentally or physically impaired child. This widespread public endorsement and pseudo-scientific support for eugenics set the stage for its wholesale adoption - with horrific consequences - when the Nazi party took power.
The Nazis co-opted medicine fully in their pursuit of racial hygiene, even coercing physicians in occupied countries to provide health and racial information on their patients to occupation authorities, and to participate in forced euthanasia. In a remarkably heroic professional stance, the physicians of the Netherlands steadfastly refused to provide this information, forfeiting their medical licenses as a result, and no small number of physicians were deported to concentration camps for their principled stand. As a testimony to their courage and integrity, not a single episode of involuntary euthanasia was performed by Dutch physicians during the Nazi occupation.
Would that it were still so.
The Netherlands is today the only country in the world in which euthanasia and assisted suicide are legally performed, having fully legalized the practice three years ago after several decades of widespread illegal - but universally unpunished - practice. The Dutch have come into the public consciousness periodically over the past 15 years, initially with the consideration of assisted suicide laws in Oregon, Washington, Michigan and elsewhere in the early 90's, and again with their formal legalization of physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia in 2001. Once again they are on the ethical radar, with the disclosure last week of the Groningen Protocol for involuntary euthanasia of infants and children.
The Groningen Protocol is not a government regulation or legislation, but rather a set of hospital guidelines for involuntary euthanasia of children up to age 12:
The Groningen Protocol, as the hospital's guidelines have come to be known, would create a legal framework for permitting doctors to actively end the life of newborns deemed to be in similar pain from incurable disease or extreme deformities.
The guideline says euthanasia is acceptable when the child's medical team and independent doctors agree the pain cannot be eased and there is no prospect for improvement, and when parents think it's best.
Examples include extremely premature births, where children suffer brain damage from bleeding and convulsions; and diseases where a child could only survive on life support for the rest of its life, such as severe cases of spina bifida and epidermosis bullosa, a rare blistering illness.
The hospital revealed last month it carried out four such mercy killings in 2003, and reported all cases to government prosecutors. There have been no legal proceedings against the hospital or the doctors.
There is a duality in Baathists. You can find a Baathist who is a killer, but at home he's completely normal. It's like they split their day into two twelve-hour blocks. When people say about someone I know to be a Baathist criminal, 'No, he's a good neighbor!', I believe him.
I have chills from reading this! This post is one of the finest I have read on the topic. I agree that it's the "frog in the boiling water" syndrome. It's a sad phenomenon.
Posted by: DeoDuce at December 12, 2004 1:58 PMVery informative post; very informative blog
Posted by: Chase at December 12, 2004 3:38 PMFirst, do no harm.
Anyntime the state takes life and death into its hands it's a very grave proposition.
How can we morally justify the euthanasia of even dying infants. To do so argues that the quality or value of the infant's life is somehow superceded by his suffering.
Those are things that are simply unknowable.
Posted by: Old Dad at December 12, 2004 4:38 PMI am a personal opponent of euthanasia, in whatever form. But I do think that equating the Groningen Protocol to the Nazi eugenics euthanasia programme is not entirely fair.
From Dutch blog sered.blogspot.com
"The main similarity is, that someone else decides wether a persons’ life is worth living any longer, and should be terminated.
The main difference however is that in Groningen, the decision is based on an assesment of the individuals’ life expectancy and if the individual should suffer any longer. In some twisted way, it can be percieved to be in the suffering individuals' best interests to die, especially if death is unavoidable within days or hours.
The Nazis on the other hand had no consideration for the individual, at all. They focused on society and a pure race; the individual was secondary to that. This is most definitely not the case in Groningen."
I can see why this argument may not hold water for everyone, but it's certainly a difference. The Nazis killed perfectly healthy children because they had Down's syndrome, and this is really not what Groningen proposes!
But I am afraid that we may end up there, some day - and that's why I'm still an opponent of the Groningen protocol. It's not the same as the Nazi eugenics program, but it may be the first step towards it.
Posted by: G.J. Wolfswinkel at December 13, 2004 6:10 AMG.J.
I think you missed the good Doctor's point. He clearly stated that the Groningen protocols are not the equivalent of the Nazi evil. What he is providing is a caution that the ultimate Nazi evil started as something much more benign. The good Doctor also made the point that the Dutch situation is different than pre-war Germany. However, we cannot know where this breaching of the moral gates can/will lead. And that it will surely lead somewhere not good is the concern.
Hi Phil,
In that, we do agree: the Groningen protocol is a step near the edge of the abyss. It also scares the hell out of me. This society where I live in, what will it do to me when I grow old? What will it do to me if I slip into a coma, for some reason? The idea that it is no longer you who is in control of your ultimate destiny really is frightening.
I will read the doctors' post again, I may have missed something indeed. But all over the internet, there are these comparisons between nazis and the Groningen doctors, in which these doctors are depicted as killers equal to Mengele himself, and this is just not true. This post triggered a defensive reaction in me which may have been a response to those other posts, more than it was to this specific one. I'm sorry if I overreacted.
One other point. I'm asking myself, why am I being defensive? Well.. I'm soaked in this Dutch society, and despite my christian beliefs and convictions, I find it increasingly hard to stand up to things like this. After all, it's all so.. reasonable.
Why let a dying baby suffer a day longer? What good does it do? Isn't it more mercyful to let the kid slowly drift away on a cloud of morphine, instead of letting it live in agony for another day or week?
And yet while I'm typing it, I can't really believe I'm really saying it. I believe that all matters of life and death are, and should be, in Gods hand.
In the Lord of the Rings book The Return of the King, after the final great battles, the Fellowship travels back to Isengard to duke it out with the wicked sourcerer Saruman. Gandalf offers him a way out of the inevitable end, but Saruman rejects it. As Saruman speaks to the Fellowship, the sound of his voice is so convincing, so intense, so reaonable, so moving, that even battle hardened members of the fellowship are on the verge of accepting everything he says. And when Gandalf interrupts him, his voice sounds crass, shrill, unatracttive in comparison, and instinctively his words are rejected - even though he speaks the truth.
But finally the spell is broken and Sarumans voice looses it's power.
I'm sort of waiting for that moment, I guess.
Posted by: G.J. Wolfswinkel at December 13, 2004 3:45 PMIn the "early" cases of euthaniasia it *is* reasonable. It could even be argued that in some extreme cases it's morally required or at least encouraged - much as we would make the argument when it is time to put down an animal in suffering.
Reason can tell us where to start, as in these cases. The problem is that it can't tell us where to stop. The problem is not Groningen, but what Groningen will inevitably lead to, in one way or another. But wait!, we exclaim, this time it will be different, this time we are surely wise, and good, and just enough to be able to make moral decisions in a reasonable way. This time our brakes will be strong enough to hold us on the slope, and we won't slide into the pit. This time.
Reason, and the mind, are wonderful tools, but I believe they are intended to be but servants to the spirit. When they become masters they are like machines without a governor, and will eventually spin themselves to destruction.
Posted by: DSmith at December 14, 2004 4:41 AMWow! What a powerful essay. Right on target, too. Life -- all life -- is a gift from God and has its own intrinsic worth. The deliberate taking of a life, however well-intentioned, is the ultimate act of hubris.
Posted by: Philomathean at December 14, 2004 8:47 AMDSmith, that's it - exactly! Tnx!
Posted by: G.J. Wolfswinkel at December 14, 2004 2:02 PM
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