The slippery slope of euthanasia is slipping as projected in England, Europe’s hotspot for bioethical immorality. Len Doyal, professor of medical ethics at Queen Mary University of London, argues that physicians should be able to actively euthanize severely impaired patients whose lives they deem no longer worth living, without their consent. He recognizes that this is already going on in the form of dehydration (as in the Terri Schiavo case), but argues that this can cause a “slow and distressing death.” To alleviate this distress Doyal proposes that the British government legalize the active euthanizing of these patients so that they die immediately.

 

This is important for several reasons. First, it is the doctors—not the patient or family—who decide whether the patient’s care should be ended and their life terminated. Secondly, this is no mere passive euthanasia where medical care is simply removed and the person dies from their disease. This is the active killing of human beings. And for the record we are not talking about brain dead humans being kept alive only artificially by machines; we are talking about severely damaged humans (suffering from severe cognitive dysfunction) being intentionally killed because their lives are deemed invaluable by the medical community. Thirdly, I find it interesting that during the Terri Schiavo fiasco doctors were arguing that people like Terri would not feel the pain of dehydration, and yet Doyal admits that such a death can be slow and distressing. Which is it?

 

HT: Wesley J. Smith