There are two essential harms from [physician-assisted suicide]. First: Once doctors agree to assist a person’s suicide, ultimately they find it difficult to reject anyone who seeks their services. The killing of patients by doctors spreads to encompass many treatable but mentally troubled individuals, as seen today in the Netherlands, Belgium and Switzerland.
Second: When a “right to die” becomes settled law, soon the right translates into a duty. That was the message sent by Oregon, which legalized assisted suicide in 1994, when the state-sponsored health plan in 2008 denied recommended but costly cancer treatments and offered instead to pay for less-expensive suicide drugs.
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We’d be dour folk indeed if we did not respond in some way to the Brittany Maynards. But, surely one can ask, is poisoning her the best response on offer? And, since Hippocrates, most thoughtful doctors have said, “No.”
Thinking about the place of sentiments in our actions might be helpful. G.K. Chesterton addressed this issue in a 1901 essay entitled “Sentimental Literature”: “If sentimental literature is to be condemned,” he wrote, “it must emphatically not be because it is sentimental, it must be because it is not literature.” We all can immerse ourselves happily in tales of the loyal, courageous or romantic. The sentiments aren’t bad; it’s the literature—hackneyed, contrived, simplistic.
Physician-assisted suicide is sentimental medicine. It’s not the sentiments that are bad; it’s the medicine—bad because when assisted suicide is legalized, the sick don’t get more choices for their care; they get fewer.
(Paul McHugh, Dr. Death Makes a Comeback)
PAS isn’t the only sentimental medicine around.
The current standard of care for people with gender dysphoria begins with nonjudgmentally accepting the reality of the patient believing—knowing—that he was “assigned” (in the parlance) the wrong body at birth. Then, the patient is treated for any underlying anxiety or depression. He or she may also receive gender reassignment treatments, such as hormone therapy and/or sex change surgery. Dysphoric children may be prescribed puberty blockers to prevent their bodies from developing secondary sex characteristics, which can facilitate more-successful future gender reassignment.
(Wesley Smith) We all lead pretty busy lives these days, and we can’t stop and reflect on everything that crosses our paths. I had begun adopting the parlance “GLBT” just to avoid fights over terminology, but I’m thinking I was giving away too much with T and maybe with B.
Let’s back off a bit for perspective.
Dennis Avner never considered himself human. He related to the world as a cat. And he found, over the decades, obliging doctors, to the tune of some $200,000.
Then he committed suicide.
There are a lot of shitty comments on here about how he was obviously disturbed and unstable, and while I can’t speak for his mental health at the time of his death, he only pursued what made him happy and came by it honestly. He told the class his earliest memory was wondering where his tail went. The world lost a really kind, gentle guy and the body mod world lost a pioneer who did a lot for people seeking to identify themselves as more than their physical bodies allowed. Rest in peace, Cat.
(Mollymerly commenting at the Gawker, emphasis added)
Did the sundry plastic surgeons do Dennis Avner any favor by obliging his obsession as if it were no more remarkable than asking for peanut butter on your hamburger? Shouldn’t they have steered him to someone who might straighten out what was in his head?
Or how about sufferers from BIID (body integrity identity disorder), who find physicians willing to amputate healthy limbs, or sever a spinal cord, to conform the body to the psyche’s reported “identity” as an amputee or paraplegic?
A 2009 article published in the journal Neuroethics argued:
When faced with a patient requesting the amputation of a healthy limb, clinicians should make a careful diagnostic assessment. If the patient is found to have body integrity identity disorder, amputation of the healthy limb may be appropriate after a trial of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors and after careful consideration of the risks, benefits, and unknowns of all possible treatment alternatives. . . . Sufferers of BIID might be relieved to know that members of the medical profession will take their concerns seriously, and that, after careful deliberation, elective amputation of their troubling limb is a real possibility.
How does gender dysphoria – the conviction that you’re a woman despite your male body or vice-versa – differ from thinking, despite your human body, that you’re a cat, or that despite your intact body, you’re really an amputee?
I’m still intoxicated with the epiphany-by-analogy, so maybe I’m missing something.
Wesley Smith has given me these examples, but someone else had already planted the seed. Smith thinks of it, for one column at least, as involving a “a fundamental right to (let’s call it) personal recreationism.”
The current controversies surrounding gender dysphoria seem to be leading toward the establishment of a fundamental right to (let’s call it) personal recreationism. I understand why many see this as the most humane and liberating course. But nothing happens in a vacuum. Once that principle is accepted, there will be no limits.
I think of it more as a matter of doctors with no moral core, no sense that you are what your body is, regardless of what’s going on between your ears. They become, in the process, sentimental journeymen, forfeiting the right to be considered members of a learned profession however much we may admire their technical skills with scalpel and silicone. Or with a prescription pad for those whose tragedy is impending death on nature’s terms rather than their own.
No doubt many – most– of these cases are tragic, as evidenced by cat man’s suicide. There may be no real solution to the afflicted folks’ problems. I wish I had a more thundering response than to say “GLBT” is out of my vocabulary now.
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“The remarks made in this essay do not represent scholarly research. They are intended as topical stimulations for conversation among intelligent and informed people.” (Gerhart Niemeyer)
Tipsy Teetotaler ن 