Posted on 09/05/2014 6:28:49 AM PDT by wagglebee
It wasn’t “the Nazis” that caused the mass euthanasia deaths of disabled infants and adults. It was the eugenics ideology of the era that denied human exceptionalism.
We are heading in the same direction–although certainly not mass murder of the kind that happened in Germany circa 1939-1945.
But we too have accepted the idea that there is such a thing as an unlivable life. Indeed, in the Netherlands, babies born with serious or terminal disabilities are killed in their cribs by doctors.
In Belgium and the Netherlands, people with serious mental illnesses are euthanized–to widespread applause.
All of this reminds me of the words of Nuremberg Medical Investigator Leo Alexander, published in 1949 in the New England Journal of Medicine:
Whatever proportions these crimes finally assumed, it became evident to all who investigated them that they had started from small beginnings. The beginnings at first were merely a subtle shift in emphasis in the basic attitude of the physicians. It started with the acceptance of the attitude, basic in the euthanasia movement, that there is such a thing as life not worthy to be lived.
This attitude in its early stages concerned itself merely with the severely and chronically sick. Gradually the sphere of those to be included in this category was enlarged to encompass the socially unproductive, the ideologically unwanted, the racially unwanted and finally all non-Germans. But it is important to realize that the infinitely small wedged-in lever from which this entire trend of mind received its impetus was the attitude toward the nonrehabilitable sick…
The killing center is the reductio ad absurdum of all health planning based only on rational principles and economy and not on humane compassion and divine law. To be sure, American physicians are still far from the point of thinking of killing centers, but they have arrived at a danger point in thinking, at which likelihood of full rehabilitation is considered a factor that should determine the amount of time, effort and cost to be devoted to a particular type of patient on the part of the social body upon which this decision rests.
At this point Americans should remember that the enormity of a euthanasia movement is present in their own midst.
Do you want to know what keeps me up at night? I don’t think that today’s NEJM would publish Alexander. I think it has embraced the very mindset against which he warned.
LifeNews.com Note: Wesley J. Smith, J.D., is a special consultant to the Center for Bioethics and Culture and a bioethics attorney who blogs at Human Exeptionalism.
This is EXACTLY the mindset that exists in America and Europe today.
Freepmail wagglebee to subscribe or unsubscribe from the moral absolutes ping list.
FreeRepublic moral absolutes keyword search
![](http://i47.tinypic.com/15mn2hx.jpg";;)
This will be known as the generation of SUCK in the history books later if we survive...
Euthanasia is already right here in the USA. It’s called “Hospice”!
Sorry, but that's a fail. If it were true, Mr. Smith could point to other countries that had similar mass euthanasia programs at the time, and he can't.
This ideology existed throughout the world, including the United States. The Nazis, however, carried the ideology to its logical conclusions and had no qualms about fully implementing it. Nobody else, to my knowledge, did.
The is similar to Islam. Arguably, what ISIS is doing now is the epitome of Islam. But the problem is not Islam, as such, it's the guys trying to implement it.
I'm perfectly happy with people believing in eugenics or Islam, I just object to their trying to put these ideologies into full effect.
They killed my mother to an absolute certainty. Now, being honest, she was in her early eighties and was cardio challenged. But, low paid, low trained workers killed her prematurely through their incompetence . I will spare ALL the details.
We would have loved to have her around another year or two!
I was against her going to this place but the sibling vote was 2-1 against me!
Did you know that people with a terminal illness statistically live longer in Hospice than in a hospital?
I am totally opposed to euthanasia, but think Hospice is much superior to standard hospital care for those who are dying, and for whom there is no curative treatment.
Who are we to judge our own values as superior to the values of those who murder the weak, the sick, and the very young? [Liberals ask that question seriously.]
Thanks for the ping.
Now that's a piece of writing! So true...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.