Posted on 06/12/2011 6:18:09 AM PDT by marshmallow
Fury at suicide on BBC
A DESPERATELY ill man will be shown on TV choking and begging for water before he dies in a suicide clinic.
The harrowing scenes to be screened by BBC2 on Monday are set to spark outrage.
Millionaire hotelier Peter Smedley, 71, was filmed swallowing a lethal dose of the barbiturate Nembutal - helped down with a praline chocolate.
He gasps for breath. Within a minute his face turns red and he chokes as he pleads for water.
The documentary Choosing To Die shows an "escort" at the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland holding on to Peter as he convulses on a sofa.
His wife of 40 years, Christine, 60, holds his shaking hand.
The staff member tells the camera: "He is losing consciousness, very soon the breathing will stop and then the heart."
After motor neurone disease sufferer Peter dies the Dignitas worker tells Christine she can cry and "let it all out".
Author Sir Terry Pratchett, who made the programme, says to a background of haunting pipe music: "This has been a happy event.
"He died peacefully, more or less in the arms of his wife, quietly."
Sir Terry, an Alzheimer's sufferer and supporter of euthanasia, tells clinic staff he was "impressed".
The camera cuts to snow falling outside the corrugated iron Dignitas house on an industrial estate.
But campaigners Care Not Killing attacked the BBC for its "one-sided" programme.
(Excerpt) Read more at thesun.co.uk ...
|
Lord Jesus, you healed so many people during your public ministry. I bring before you now, in prayer, all those who are terminally ill -- those afflicted with cancer, AIDS, and other illnesses.
|
|
Look lovingly and compassionately upon them. Let them feel the strength of your consolation. Help them and their families to accept this cross they are asked to carry. Protect them from euthanasia, Lord.
|
|
Let them see you carrying their cross with them, at their side, as you once carried yours to Calvary. May Mary be there, too, to comfort them.
|
|
Lord Jesus, I know and believe that, if it is your will, you can cure those I pray for (especially N.). I place my trust in you. I pray with faith, but I also pray as you did in Gethsemane: your will be done.
|
|
Bless us, Lord, and hear my prayer. Amen.
|
| Reprinted from "Queen of Apostles Prayerbook" with permission of copyright holder, Pauline Books & Media, |
But I can’t help but wonder if this is the absolute most death-glorifying culture and immoral of all the ages.
You may be onto something.
There have been other, older, more overtly violent cultures--the Romans, for whom the most grisly executions and disembowellings were set up as crowd-pleasing public attractions--and certain other cultures for which war in itself, not so much for whatever supposed good was to be achieved by it, was the end.
But the "attraction" of death (so to speak)came precisely from its being horrific and (in a sense) a novelty. It was outrageous and bloody and disgusting, of course--but that was why people went to see it, for the same reason that any fifth-rate movie studio can be sure of at least a meager income by releasing a slasher or splatter film to draw in the sorts of people who are amused by the artificial massacre of teenaged fornicators and jerks ("Hah! They deserved it! So that makes my enjoyment of it okay! I am justified in my contempt of them and their spurious values! Punish 'em some more!"--and so forth). This is (to put it mildly) both aesthetically and ethically repugnant--but it derives its visceral appeal from the fact that we do indeed find the things we see horrific. This is not exactly an appeal to the noblest elements of human nature, but it has its roots in the natural repugnance we have for violence, blood-letting and death. It is an abuse of a healthier element of human psychology.
But the kind of thing presented in the above-mentioned film is a new, and more contemptible, variety of horror. It is, in a sense, an execution upon a public altar, a sacrifice performed to a sociological doctrine, the obvious horror washed away by the morally-deficient prat who has to try to convince us that this is a "beautiful" thing--and to no effect, as anybody with a healthy set of human emotional reactions can see for himself that what he has just witnessed is essentially the state-sponsored suicide of a man whose choice has earned him agony, excused by the idea that the man chose it himself, "choice" now having become the all-excusing and validating (and sanctifying) principle of any and all actions (so long as they are state-approved and validated, and can save a few bucks in its health-"care" system--you know, "the triumph of the will."
What was (from the point of view of Hell) wrong with the Nazis was the fact that they were so over-the-top obviously evil--all that lock-step goose-step jack-bootery, and the evil-looking uniforms, and the death-processing centers, and the world-domination rhetoric worthy of a comic-book villain: any quasi-enlightened nation with even a vague memory of Judaeo-Christian (or, shoot, even the nobler elements of pagan) virtue would recognize it for what it was: it looked and smelled evil, and of course had to be resisted and destroyed.
The real triumph of Hell will come when it can convince its victims that the deaths and indignities and personal violations it has planned for them are actually their "rights," and watch with delight as their victims march proudly to the gas-chambers and the scaffolds and firing squads set up for them, having been taught to choose these horrors for themselves, and to become willing participants in their own slaughter, which is the final indignity, the cherry on top of the repugnant dessert that Hell will consume happily, the little aftertaste of a despair that came too late which adds to the tang of the dish--though they will, of course, have a maitre d', snappily dressed in the deepest black, and with only the barest suggestion of horns under the hair, standing nearby to tell the dessert, as if goes down the gullet, what a happy dining experience it has provided for its consumers.
It is called the Dover Effect - film footage of flag-draped coffins arriving at Dover.
It ALWAYS creates anti-war histaria, a’la Viet Nam.
As I said in my previous post, I know there were more brutal ages.
My point was that this present age is as brutal but it tries to cover it with the spin that what we are doing is actually more moral than far more moral ages.
Those previous ages knew they were brutal and glorified the brutality.
This age is as brutal but carries out its brutality under the guise of a moral mandate. And to me, that is far more evil.
Well thought out and well written.
You’ve stated my case in very good detail.
I replied with a far more abbreviated explanation to another comment in my post 44 before I read yours. Had I read yours, I would have simply pointed the other freeper to your reply.
The BBC has sunken to showing snuff flicks!
Must be the “in thing” on UK television. Last week, another of their programs had an “assisted suicide” to end a long story arc for a quadriplegic character. In that tale, it was the mother and boyfriend helping out.
The humanist culture of death is “progressing.” It will come to be imposed on people socialists find economically unuseful. That is called eugenics.
“What do you do if you have a Prius?”
________________________________________
Well, in that case, you probably live in San Fransicko, so you try to jump the rails of the Golden Gate bridge, or fisherman’s wharf.
You had already stated your case clearly. I just belabored the dickens out of it--but thanks for your kind words!
I replied with a far more abbreviated explanation to another comment in my post 44 before I read yours. Had I read yours, I would have simply pointed the other freeper to your reply.
Well, if I had read 44, I could have saved myself a lot of time! (Not, I suppose, that I would have done anything more useful with it!)
Thank you very kindly!
It saddens me that this is the "Discworld" author, Sir Terence David John "Terry" Pratchett, OBE, the second most popular British novelist after J.K.Rowling. Of course he is also a self-described Humanist and an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society. He joined others in protesting the recent Papal state visit to Great Britain.
Thus it is not surprising that he feels that life is a disposable thing, I presume. Since he has announced the unfortunate onslaught of Alzheimer's Disease, I predict that he too will seek to end it before he is called home naturally. Very mixed feelings upon my part.
Will the last European please die facing Mecca? It will make that transition ever so much more peaceful. /sarc
Like the other poster said, we're not even close to the top of the list. Let's leave aside the Aztecs who sacrificed as many as 10,000 prisoners a year in ritualized public ceremonies, and consider at our immediate predecessors, the Victorians. It's been often noted that as much as our society glorifies sex, the Victorians glorified death. Look at their dark poetry, their elaborate mourning customs, and their almost comically dramatic graveyard monuments as just a few examples of what I mean.
Didn’t the National Socialists already run this experiment?
Yes. So apparently he offered this spectacle as what he thought would be a service to humanity.
It is possible to look at the same scene and depending on the confessional perspective see different meanings. Thus a pagan would watch an execution happily, as a hunter observes his prey die, and a Christian would see Jesus Christ in the worst criminal. Likewise, what we see in the gasping for air and the convulsions might not be what the mass media apparatchiks expect you to see.
That a suffering man would seek an end to his suffering I can understand. But here we have something intended as a culture-forming event for all of us. We are supposed to learn to see ourselves as animals.
Author Sir Terry Pratchett, who made the programme, says to a background of haunting pipe music: "This has been a happy event.
My first response is a short and rude phrase that would certainly cause the Religion Moderator to excise my message.
Fraud jack fought off death to the last second but pushed it on the fragile
God hates death most of all. After all look at what the salvation of man cost Him. More than any of us can pay back. Then think how He must feel when most people refuse His gift, one way or another. It’s just so un-necessary.
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.