Devaluing lives (like Terri Schiavo's)

The Washington Times ^ | May 2, 2005 | Nat Hentoff

[hinckley buzzard]

I'm not sure of the amount of government expenditures law abiding disabled are entitled to in an effort to emulate ordinariness...

It's a lot, what with Medicare, Medicaid, SSD, grants for workplace accommodation. I am aware of a person with MS who is wheelchair bound but works full time at an office job. She recently had her home adapted with government dollars to add a full bath in a lower storey and a stairway chair elevator to get up and down. About 50,000 for the work.

Incidentally, rights to full medical care for imprisoned felons are mandated by numerous US court decisions, so you don't even have to be "law-abiding" to get the gov to help you.

[BykrBayb]

"This person suffering from hereditary
defects costs the people 60,000
Reichmarks during his lifetime. People,
that is your money. Read 'New People'."

[hinckley buzzard]

Yeah. I know. But don't get me wrong, I'm on the side of the sanctity of life, not its cost effectiveness!

[knightshadow]

The old Nazi photo-ad and caption you present are true. William L. Shirer, long before he wrote "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich," was a news correspondent in Nazi Germany (1934-1940). He heard murmered rumors of so-called "mercy killings" circulating quietly among Germans. Operatives he knew had no trouble quickly getting to the bottom of the rumors. The Nazi government had, not too secretly as it turned out, begun a deliberate effort to eliminate "undesirables," those being the severely handicapped, the mentally ill (especially children), those with birth defects, and such. Their rationale was based on two premises: first, eliminating the cost necessary to maintain these "useless" lives; and, second their eugenics philosophy, from which stemmed the idea that keeping these "sub-human" people from procreating by eliminating them from the gene pool, would make Germans hereditarily healthier. Shirer documents the entire situation in several pages of his original book "Berlin Diary," still available, I think. The grisly facts have to be read to be fully fathomed. Anyone who thinks Terri's case, and today's increasing "death" attitude toward the old, the disabled, the terminally ill, et. al., don't constitute the proverbial "slippery slope," have no understanding whatever of history.

- knightshadow.

[hinckley buzzard]

As bad as it seems, the idea of inherent worth is only good until the bills come due.

In a multi-trillion dollar economy, the "bill" for reverencing of human life is trivial. The "bill" for abandoning that philosophy is one we can't afford.

[hinckley buzzard]

I read "Berlin Diary" back in high school, when dinosaurs walked the earth. Fascinating. If you want a full history of the Nazi eugenic/medicalization of killing, try Robert Lifton's authoritative "The Nazi Doctors."

[TheSarce]

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