The Culture of Death
There are those who say that St. John Paul II was exaggerating, or at least being unduly harsh, when he coined the term “Culture of Death” in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae. If only that were the case. The secular world simply insists on offering death as the “compassionate” response to all sorts of things: suffering at the end of life, difficulties at life’s beginning and, increasingly, trouble in between. Today I’d like to explore one recent example of the Culture of Death at work, and a second tomorrow.
The Architect of Obamacare
Let us consider Ezekiel Emmanuel, brother of President Obama’s
former Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel.
Ezekiel, one of the prime architects of the monstrous Affordable Care
Act (a.k.a. Obamacare), published a piece in The Atlantic last week
called “Why I Hope To Die At 75” [here]. The wide-ranging essay explores at great length the disadvantages
of old age: reduced productivity, lessened vitality, the host of physical
ailments that proliferate as we age, but, interestingly, doesn’t focus on the effect of
these things upon ourselves:
Doubtless, death is a loss . . .
But here is a simple truth that many of us seem to resist: living too long is
also a loss. It renders many of us, if not disabled, then faltering and
declining, a state that may not be worse than death but is nonetheless
deprived. It robs us of our creativity and ability to contribute to work,
society, the world. It transforms how people experience us, relate to us, and,
most important, remember us. We are no longer remembered as vibrant and engaged
but as feeble, ineffectual, even pathetic.[my italics]
It is selfish of us, you see, to force others to experience
our decline: the compassionate thing is to quit while we are ahead. Emmanuel is most emphatic that he is not
advocating euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide, quite correctly pointing out
that “the answer” to the desire to actively bring about one’s own death “is not
ending a life but getting help. I have long argued that we should focus on
giving all terminally ill people a good, compassionate death—not euthanasia or
assisted suicide for a tiny minority.”
Just One Man's Opinion?
So what is
he advocating? He claims that he will refuse any “life-prolonging” treatment of
any sort: “I will stop getting any regular preventive tests, screenings or
interventions. I will accept only
palliative – not curative – treatments if I am suffering pain or other
disability.” After a lengthy recitation
of the routine treatment he intends to forgo, Emmanuel says “I will die when
whatever comes first takes me.”
We could just
dismiss this as no more than one opinionated man’s personal view, and Emmanuel
encourages us to do just that:
I am not saying that those who want
to live as long as possible are unethical or wrong. I am certainly not scorning
or dismissing people who want to live on despite their physical and mental
limitations. I’m not even trying to convince anyone I’m right. . . And I am not
advocating 75 as the official statistic of a complete, good life in order to
save resources, ration health care, or address public-policy issues arising
from the increases in life expectancy.
But he gives the game away when he adds:
What I am trying to do is delineate
my views for a good life and make my friends and others think about how they
want to live as they grow older. I want them to think of an alternative
to succumbing to that slow constriction of activities and aspirations
imperceptibly imposed by aging. Are we to embrace the “American immortal” or my
“75 and no more” view? [my italics]
There Are Opinions, And Then There Are Opinions
And what is the point of thinking of alternative ways to
live if not to bring about change? In
truth, underneath the welter of medical facts and figures and the personal
focus, we see two very familiar arguments: the “quality of life” argument
(i.e., a “diminished” life isn’t worth living) and the “appeal to compassion”
(we should spare our family and society the “burden” - including the financial
burden - of our infirmity).
Ezekiel Emmanuel |
Nonetheless,
isn’t that just his opinion? No, because
when a prominent man, one with a “Dr.” in front of his name expresses his
opinion, buttressed with all sorts of impressive medical sounding data, and in
very engaging and (truth be told) well-crafted prose, it has an impact. The more often such opinions come from such
sources the less unthinkable such opinions become in the wider world, until
they eventually become commonplace. We
have seen this strategy employed to perfection in recent years in the campaign to redefine marriage.
There is also the
fact that, despite his disclaimers, Ezekiel Emmanuel is still has a great deal
of influence on public policy: in addition to his well-known public connection
with Obamacare he is the director of the Clinical Bioethics Department at the
National Institutes for Health. Add it
all together and, as Ben Shapiro points out in a piece on the Breitbart site [here],
. . . his opinion carries weight.
Enough weight that the same day
Emanuel’s piece published, a 21-member Institute of Medicine panel announced
that we need to revamp our end-of-life care. “The current system is geared
towards doing more, more, more, and that system by definition is not
necessarily consistent with what patients want, and is also more costly,” said
David M. Walker, former US comptroller general and chairman of the panel. The
panel also encouraged end-of-life conversations with as many elderly folks as
possible, and that costs could be slashed by thinking about aging differently.
Does that sound like anyone we know? Perhaps its no coincidence, as Shapiro points out, that "Ezekiel Emmanuel was elected in 2004 to the Institute of Medicine".
Finally, while Emmanuel explicitly opposes
euthanasia and suicide (and I don’t doubt his sincerity), the attitude towards
aging that he is validating and encouraging will inevitably make those
“options” more and more acceptable; and if the public thinks there’s nothing
wrong with it, why shouldn’t the government facilitate it . . . or require
it? The slope is getting more slippery
all the time.
Next: What could be funnier than abortion?
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