|
In America, pushing the envelope used to mean advancing technology; pursuing new creative summits in literature, music and art; breaking down the separating walls between classes; becoming more outspoken when wrongs are apparent; setting trends and changing hearts and minds. In sum, positive and intuitive actions by courageous and creative minds held the power to alter our social landscape for the better.
All you need do is look back upon the civil rights activists this country proudly calls their own to understand how a willingness to test limits can be an exceedingly good and influential thing.
But, that was then.
These days, it appears that pushing the envelope means seeing just how flagrantly cruel and bastardly we can possibly be to one another. Testing the limits of ethical practice and common sense appears to be the new vogue and nowhere is that revolting arrogance more apparent than the bioethics community.
Knowing that their actions and positions oftentimes produce bad case law, shoddy legislation and inexplicable endorsement by the media at large, the bioethics community would like you to view deliberate acts of malevolence against ailing and vulnerable people as acceptable and legitimate public policy.
Their collective behavior does not push the envelope in such a way that it causes us to think. Rather, they would prefer you leave the thinking to them.
On April 30 and May 1, 2006, the University of Pennsylvania hosts a bioethics symposium titled "The Legacy of Terri Schiavo: Why is it so hard to die in America?" At $100 per head, interested parties can hear presentations and debates from a number of "celebrated" bioethicists about what we can cooperatively do to make the deaths of critically ill and profoundly disabled people a more easily realized goal.
The symposium's line-up of speakers and presenters include the self-made widower, Michael Schiavo; euthanasia proponent, Dr. Ronald Cranford (who calls himself Dr. Humane Death); Special Guardian Ad Litem for Theresa Marie Schiavo, Dr. Jay Wolfson; program director for the Hospice of the Florida Suncoast (where Schiavo was confined - without a terminal diagnosis - for over five years), Mary Labyak and Circuit Judge George W. Greer, the judge who ordered Terri Schiavo to be denied enteral nourishment and food and fluids of any sort.
The symposium's syllabus is so prejudiced towards ending life that it is practically a parody. Topics include Personal Experiences with Death and Dying, Who Should Decide: Surrogates / Families, Who Should Decide: Courts / Legislators and How Should American Society Cope with Death.
And, while you're taking in this morose presentation of death fetish, keep in mind that the obligatory continental breakfast will be served promptly at 8:00 am.
Not one topic or subject of debate is devoted to the issues of caring, patient wellness, pain management, patient privacy or promoting longevity - all things I used to believe the medical community supported.
Instead, this ethically-challenged peanut gallery of 'experts' is focusing their energies and words on an entirely different objective: clinical killing as ethical practice.
That people question their own attitudes about life and death is of no concern to me. We should all think and have opinions. What is, however, a chief trepidation of mine is that these people are shaping the legal and medical landscapes in such a way that abandonment and killing are more acceptable than advocating a patient's wellness and right to live.
Interestingly, the same familiar faces keep touting the social benefits of neglecting helpless people to death. This should read as an obvious indication that the objective of ensuring a right to die has long been abandoned in favor of creating a duty to die.
Caring for complicated medical issues, protecting the lives of people who have become incapable of doing for themselves and promoting longevity are all laughable concepts to the this ring of thugs. That they view you, your body and your life as liabilities and not things worth protecting makes this group of self-proclaimed bioethics experts public enemy number one.
"See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda," George W. Bush, May 24, 2005.
President Bush took some well-deserved heat in the media for that remark. It almost lends itself to the old adage that a lie, repeated enough times, starts sounding like the truth.
The bioethicists promoting care rationing and euthanasia are hoping against hope that the concept holds true.
Time and again, we're told that terminal dehydration is a pleasant process -- even though medical evidence rebuts this position head-on. Time and again, we're told that the right to die is about our own privacy -- even though most right to die cases have not been based on the patient's directive but on the wishes of his or her family. Time and again, we're told that causing death is a compassionate agenda -- even though the cost containment factor is stunningly illustrated in the rhetoric ceaselessly belched by pro-euthanasia movements.
But, if you say it enough times, someone might actually buy what you're selling.
To be fair, not all involved in bioethics are eager to promote the manifesto of care rationing and euthanasia. But their numbers are surely overshadowed by the people who are speaking up for their community and throwing every ounce of their being in supporting the agenda to kill unproductive members of our society based on arrogant quality of life judgments.
By and large, the talking heads representing the bioethics committee want very badly for you to forego the expensive process of living if an illness or injury should rob you of your ability to care for yourself. And they will drive that message home using any line of attack they can possibly grab hold to.
That makes these little events like the University of Pennsylvania Bioethics Symposium more than just pushing the envelope. It makes it an egregious and contemptible display of condescension, ethical conflict and an insult to every human being who believes that their life and body belongs to them and not to any loud-mouthed proponent of murder. 4-30-06
Pamela F. Hennessy is the Founder of the Partnership for Medical Ethics Reform (www.forethics.com) and volunteered as a representative of the Terri Schindler-Schiavo Foundation from 2002 to 2006.
© 2006 North
Country Gazette
|
