Not necessarily false- but misleading conflation and spurious correlation. Of requests for euthanasia about 81% are granted, of the ones not granted, 13% of those people die before they can be euthanized. There in lies the problem no? This logic doesn’t take in to account how many of those deaths would have occurred immediately or shortly following euthanasia had the patients not been euthanized. Of about 19% of those who apply and don’t get euthanized- THIRTEEN percent die BEFORE they are euthanized. It wouldn't be fair to extrapolate those numbers and say that 90% or so of those euthanized would have died almost immediately regardless of course- so we have to compare the number of deaths a year from euthanasia granted illness before the law to the numbers reported after and compare the increased number of euthanasia deaths to the decrease in deaths from conditions that qualify for euthanasia under the law.
Of course that is still overly simplistic and we’d have to apply additional data. It would also be useful to provide data on how many people have recorded in reliable testimony (as reliable as self reported data can be..) that the specific reasoning to their request was based on costs relating to treatment. That however opens up the intangible of “quality of life-“ in other words- chronic pain and/or reduced function etc. and restrictions to their ability to live due to the illness and treatment. It would at the very least also be prudent to provide data on the incomes and demographics who are most likely to seek euthanasia to see if there appears to be a correlation to socioeconomic status or other factors.
Euthanasia is certainly a complex subject. Our present view is largely that a human being of healthy mind would not choose to die and a human being who isn’t of healthy mind cannot make such decisions. Certainly we know that of the many people who suffer depression or suicidal thoughts, the majority who don’t kill themselves tend to be glad they didn’t over time and with getting well. So what then when a person is not clinically depressed or otherwise substantially impaired? Or- what if when their mental or physical state is such that they are essentially never going to not be impaired? That their new “baseline” of who they are as a person is that mental state? Allow me to give you a scenario:
If a person were “mentally and physically healthy” and signed a care directive stating they wished to be kept alive via life support were they to become unable to live without it or make decisions, and that person had a stroke or suffers brain damage that severely impaired their cognitive abilities and prevented them from life without machines, and after the damage they said they wished to sign a new directive to NOT be kept alive- would you think they should be held to the directive they signed in “sound mind and body” or that even though they were now cognitively impaired they should be able to over ride a decision their “better functioning” self had made? Ok. Let’s flip it. Let’s say that a person signed a document that they DIDNT want to be kept alive and had the same damage and would die in a short time without machines- but in their new cognitive state they began to beg to be kept alive and change the document- would you change it? If you would change it in one and not the other-
Why? Why is one request valid over the other when both contradict what they wished when sound of mind and body?
Ok. Let’s look at another angle. Jane has massive brain damage. She doesn’t remember much of her life, or perhaps she no longer acts and thinks like the Jane you knew. So- what made Jane Jane and not someone else? This person has her genes and looks like her and may have some of her memories or such- but she’s effectively a different person isn’t she? And if the person she was is never coming back- “Jane” is dead isn’t she? This is Jane 2 isn’t it? A person who thinks and/or acts differently than Jane 1. Janes body belongs to Jane 2 now. Jane 2 has to live the life ahead of her. So then- why should Jane 2 be blind by the wishes of the now home Jane 1? Perhaps another angle…
If we assign some weight to the fact Jane 1 was of sounder ability to make a judgment because of her pre impairment state- we also must look at the fact that Jane 1 had no knowledge of what it would be like to live in a state she had no frame of reference for. You can’t know what something is like if you have no way to relate- how does one relate to being brain damaged (save the political or pop culture burns here…) The more sighted/hearing often view decreases or non presence of those senses as a terrible curse- while many who live without those senses or diminished use are quite happy and in fact find the term and concept of a “cure” insulting. It is a fact that even where technology and procedures can grant or enhance those senses for those born without them, many who use those means return to their previous state because they don’t find them to enhance life or find they decrease their quality of life. Some people choose to not have sight or hearing even after having Them.
In fact- it’s fairly common among those with hearing aids who were born with “good hearing” and lost some as they aged, that those people will at times turn off or remove their devices, to enjoy the quiet or remove distractions or to gain relief from unpleasant noise or just to change their experience of a moment. So even among those born with “good hearing,” hearing can at times be seen as a burden less than a blessing.
So even things most people would think are “good” which others do not know of can be things that people don’t want to live with- so it would stand to reason that things that are seen as “bad” like losing your physical or mental faculties and such might be something people don’t want to live with no?
So then we reach the question if wether people have the right to die? We can’t say they don’t- we allow it, even encourage it or support it. Every soldier that goes to battle and every fire fighter or police officer that puts on their uniform is stepping into a very real and statistically tangible contract to die for the sake of others. For this we call them heroes. We allow people to do dangerous jobs like mining and open sea fishing etc. because we need or want what they produce and often for those people those jobs are the highest paying careers that are accessible to them.
So to die for another is heroic. To die in pursuit of profit may be called heroic and is something we allow and benefit from- so what about when a person wants to die for themselves? Is that selfish? Ok. What if they want to die because they don’t want to be a burden? Let’s ignore money. What about the fact that having a lived one in certain states if health is mentally and emotionally and physically taxing and
Can take time and money and cause pain and stress to their loved ones which may be ongoing? Certainly death causes grief, pain, stress- but everyone dies- especially the terminally ill. So as a person is dying over weeks or months or a short number of years and their family and friends are seeing them in pain and in and out if the hospital, scared each time that this is the last time and they are going to die, as they wipe their asses and do all manner of things that we tend to need to do for dying loved ones- the pain and stress are there. And then they die. And then that pain and stress are still there. So you can’t escape the pain and stress of death, but you can skip the pain and stress leading up to it perhaps? So is that selfish if they choose to die to spare the ones they love?
I’m not saying one way or the other- I am asking you to consider the though and why some of these are heroic or ok and others aren’t considered the same.
But in the end… when money or resources are on the line… we will kill them wont we? So that’s a touch hypocritical is it not? What is the difference between killing a person by turning on a machine and killing a person by turning off a machine? You know when you start euthanasia they will die and when we “pull the plug” we know they will die. We make a choice and an action knowing the result is a person will die. So what is the difference? Why allow one and not the other? Again- not stating, asking.
It does seem a bit odd though doesn’t it? The controversy and law aren’t nearly so concerned with “pulling the plug.” If your insurance is out and you have no money the hospital doesn’t have to keep your dear gran gran or your Comoros husband alive for the next 30+ years with their every effort. If we remove costs of care per patient though we still have a problem- there are only so many doctors and nurses and beds no?
So what happens when there is a child who needs those resources and they are tied up by an 87 year old with terminal brain cancer who is comatose? What are the chances that mid would have lived if they got the care and what are the chances the 87yo will? How many years is the kid likely to live? How many is the 87yo? What is the quality of life for the kid likely to be? What about the 87yo? If we look at this scenario- contrary to the idea that choosing to die would be selfish- it would appear to be selfish to choose to cling to life or to cling desperately to a loved one we can’t seem to let go but is all but foregone in their prognosis at the expense of another life.
Of course- the kid could die the next day and the 87yo could live a year, or the 87yo could wake up and make a miraculous bear full recovery.
And well- is a child’s life worth more than an old persons? We tend to often consider that the case- but is it really so? Is their potential worth more because they have a statistical likelihood of living longer? Because for whatever resources we spare on a child they have a longer time in which they might produce things and do work in society so the return for the investment is higher. And well- for all the romanticism around the value of children at the end of the day the logic is pretty cold and pragmatic if we stop and strip away why we tend to view children as more worthy- it boils down to them being mathematically likely to do more for us or for the world. The romanticism just obscures the ghoulish sterile utilitarianism of such decisions. It makes it easier to live with ourselves when we do what is practical.
It serves as a safety mechanism of sorts to cloak such cold pragmatism in sentimentality because if we only do the coldly pragmatic when we can justify it through sentiment, we help keep the door closed to all the other horrors that strict pragmatism would release on the world. It’s much harder to justify something like feeding the homeless to the starving or some such horrible things that might make some calculated sense but are repugnant and can’t be so easily masked. By getting a culture to accept a morality where the elderly and everyone else are supposed to smile and nod that children are inherently and magically precious- we create an easy way to avoid showing the math when we choose a child’s life over another life.
This same mask also becomes a dogma which we digest and it becomes truth. Getting people to die willingly can be difficult- but those raised in a society where the absolute moral law is the lives of children are most important of all lives are people who will willingly and often gladly sacrifice themselves for children. This works out well in a society where few if any single person is irreplaceable in the practical sense to the functioning of the world and various social and economic systems we have built. So society and its machines naturally tend to benefit more greatly on balance when a child is saved and an adult or elderflower adult is sacrificed. Temporary losses in skills or knowledge or innovation, production, etc. tend to be made up for and surplus over the life of a child, especially as that child becomes part of a generationally exponential population growth that feeds more workers and by sheer numbers increases the odds of the next “great” people for the next generations.
So even we we do not realize it we are cold and calculating. It tends to be baked into traditions and how things work. Remember- societies through history have literally ritually sacrificed people- young, old, in their prime etc etc. and usually these sacrifices were rooted in some pragmatism such as power structures, social control or population control and then cloaked in stories of spirits and nobility. It has been common in history that to be a sacrifice was made a social honor, the intended sacrifice and it their kin etc. would often be granted special social status, over generations the idea that being a sacrifice was morally upright and commendable would be built up, or there would be benefits of wealth or power attached along with possible penalties for those who resisted the status quo on the matter.
Our system of “pulling the plug” is not so different. It generally is a pragmatic matter having to do with resources- on a macro level not tying up medical resources that society could possibly otherwise use, and on a micro level where a family beats costs, the resources of the family. At some point if you charge to keep a person with little or no hope of meaningful recovery or even short to medium term survival alive, all but a few pocket cases and the wealthiest of people would eventually decide the cost wasn’t justified.
If we remove medical care costs to the family they might decide to keep a person on support they wouldn’t have kept on if they had to pay. Why not right? But isn’t that the sort of wastefulness that has contributed or caused climate crisis and environmental devastation and the much of the inequity in our world? When something seems to be available “infinitely” we generally take even when we don’t need or we wouldn’t if it were more limited. This goes back to
the early questions on even without personal cost that there are social costs such as the potential for others in need to be denied care because the resources needed to provide that care are tied up on someone who may not recover and will almost certainly not live long. In a world where every day hundreds of thousands of millions die while begging or wishing or fighting to live but the simple resources to keep them alive weren’t available to them- can there be a justification for using those resources to keep someone alive who isn’t fighting, who beyond not fighting has made it plain and clear that they do not wish to live? Interesting thought.
So yes- it is a very complex topic with all manner of moral quandaries that ultimately tends to shine the light back onto ourselves and, if we are being honest, most often is treated less fairly and is more approached as an extension of our own fears and insecurities and issues than with open and earnest examination because such examination tends to lead us to unpleasant truths about ourselves and society.
But as far as this meme goes- the information and even the basic composition to back what it implies and states aren’t provided. As said in the open- there is truth here but it is provided in a misleading way along with conclusions that aren’t supported by facts.
Ok. Let’s look at another angle. Jane has massive brain damage. She doesn’t remember much of her life, or perhaps she no longer acts and thinks like the Jane you knew. So- what made Jane Jane and not someone else? This person has her genes and looks like her and may have some of her memories or such- but she’s effectively a different person isn’t she? And if the person she was is never coming back- “Jane” is dead isn’t she? This is Jane 2 isn’t it? A person who thinks and/or acts differently than Jane 1. Janes body belongs to Jane 2 now. Jane 2 has to live the life ahead of her. So then- why should Jane 2 be blind by the wishes of the now home Jane 1? Perhaps another angle…
So even things most people would think are “good” which others do not know of can be things that people don’t want to live with- so it would stand to reason that things that are seen as “bad” like losing your physical or mental faculties and such might be something people don’t want to live with no?
So to die for another is heroic. To die in pursuit of profit may be called heroic and is something we allow and benefit from- so what about when a person wants to die for themselves? Is that selfish? Ok. What if they want to die because they don’t want to be a burden? Let’s ignore money. What about the fact that having a lived one in certain states if health is mentally and emotionally and physically taxing and
I’m not saying one way or the other- I am asking you to consider the though and why some of these are heroic or ok and others aren’t considered the same.
It does seem a bit odd though doesn’t it? The controversy and law aren’t nearly so concerned with “pulling the plug.” If your insurance is out and you have no money the hospital doesn’t have to keep your dear gran gran or your Comoros husband alive for the next 30+ years with their every effort. If we remove costs of care per patient though we still have a problem- there are only so many doctors and nurses and beds no?
Of course- the kid could die the next day and the 87yo could live a year, or the 87yo could wake up and make a miraculous bear full recovery.
If we remove medical care costs to the family they might decide to keep a person on support they wouldn’t have kept on if they had to pay. Why not right? But isn’t that the sort of wastefulness that has contributed or caused climate crisis and environmental devastation and the much of the inequity in our world? When something seems to be available “infinitely” we generally take even when we don’t need or we wouldn’t if it were more limited. This goes back to
But as far as this meme goes- the information and even the basic composition to back what it implies and states aren’t provided. As said in the open- there is truth here but it is provided in a misleading way along with conclusions that aren’t supported by facts.