[lit-ideas] Re: Terri's case-more than the religious right...
- From: "Veronica Caley" <vcaley@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 25 Mar 2005 10:26:31 -0500
Marlena, re Nat Hentoff's article, I find it typical of the right wing type
arguments. He is trying to draw an analogy between Ms. Schiavo's situation
and other handicapped persons with various degrees of impairment and to the
Nazi behavior toward anyone they considered inferior. I don't accept the
analogy. The issue with Ms. Schiavo and the rest of our lives is more
along the lines of the question of when is a person more dead than alive?
Compare Ms. Schiavo's case to the actor Reeves. He was conscious until
near the end. He was 'here.' Ms. Schiavo has been laying in that bed for
fifteen years. I take the neurologists take on her condition. Handicapped
people are very afraid that they will be next.
I think that's unjustified but I understand it.
I don't know Mat Hentoff's political position at the moment, but this
article sounds like it could have been written by anyone in Right to Life.
Hentoff also used to be pro-choice. He has changed his mind on that as
well. I am not trying to guess his motives, but he too is interfering in
something where he really doesn't belong. The family dispute was what led
to the courts. Over twenty judges have ruled on this in seven years. Why
is Hentoff more qualified than they?
There is moral here. Keep good records of your wishes, make a video and
talk to your family while you are able to talk. Since this issue has split
the Evangelicals, I guess many of them disagree with him as well.
Veronica
> [Original Message]
> From: <Eternitytime1@xxxxxxx>
> To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Date: 3/25/2005 4:24:41 AM
> Subject: [lit-ideas] Terri's case-more than the religious right...
>
>
> Hi,
> Nat Hentoff has written a number of articles on Terri's case--beginning
with
> 2003 (actually in, I think, October). He does, from what I've been
reading,
> have a problem (at this point in time) with the legislative world
> interferring...as that does (as I wonder) appear to raise questions of
constitutional
> safeguards, etc.
>
> But, here is one of the articles which detail how it is not just the
> 'religious right' who are involved in the outcome of this case. and I
would imagine
> that they are horrified at what happened in Texas...and he kind of
alludes
> to how this was coming towards the end of his article...
>
> Looking at all angles,
> Marlena in Missouri
>
>
_http://www.villagevoice.com/generic/show_print.php?id=48917&page=hentoff&is
su
> e=0348&printcde=MzMzNTIyNTY2MQ==&refpage=_
>
(http://www.villagevoice.com/generic/show_print.php?id=48917&page=hentoff&is
sue=0348&printcde=MzMzNTIyNTY2MQ==&re
> fpage=)
> L25ld3MvaW5kZXgucGhwP2lzc3VlPTAzNDgmcGFnZT1oZW50b2ZmJmlkPTQ4OTE3
>
> Nat Hentoff
> It's Not Only About Terri Schiavo
> Barriers to Killing Come Down
>
>
> by Nat Hentoff
> November 21st, 2003 1:40 PM
>
> People already have the right to refuse unwanted treatment, and suicide
is
> not illegal. What we oppose is a public policy that singles out
individuals
> for legalized killing based on their health status. This violates the
Americans
> With Disabilities Act, and denies us equal protection of the laws.
> Disability opposition to this ultimate form of discrimination has been
> ignored by most media and courts, but countless people with disabilities
have
> already died before their time. â??Not Dead Yet: The Resistance, a
disability
> rights organization, Forest Park, Illinois, October 28, 2003
>
> ____________________________________
> In 1920, a prominent German lawyer, Karl Binding, and a distinguished
German
> forensic psychiatrist, Alfred Hoche, wrote a brief but deadly book, The
> Permission To Destroy Life Unworthy of Life. In his new book, The Coming
of the
> Third Reich (Penguin), Richard Evans notes that Binding and Hoche
emphasized
> that "the incurably ill and the mentally retarded were costing millions
of
> marks and taking up thousands of much-needed hospital beds. So doctors
should be
> allowed to put them to death."
> Then came Adolf Hitler, who thought this was a splendid, indeed capital,
> idea. The October 1, 2003, New York Daily News ran this Associated Press
report
> from Berlin:
> "A new study reveals Nazi Germany killed at least 200,000 people because
of
> their disabilitiesâ??people deemed physically inferior, said a report
compiled
> by Germany's Federal Archive. Researchers found evidence that doctors
and
> hospital staff used gas, drugs and starvation to kill disabled men,
women and
> children at medical facilities in Germany, Austria, Poland and the Czech
> Republic. . . .
> "The Nazis launched the drive to root out what they called 'worthless
lives'
> [and 'useless eaters'] in the summer of 1939, pre-dating their full-scale
> organization of the Holocaust, in which they killed 6 million Jews."
(Emphasis
> added).
> The more than 200,000 "worthless lives" terminated by the Nazis before
the
> Holocaust included few Jews. Most of those killed were other Germans
considered
> unfit to be included in "the master race."
> Among the defendants at the Nuremberg trials of Nazi leaders and their
> primary accomplices in the mass murder were German doctors who had gone
along with
> the official policy of euthanasia. An American doctor, Leo Alexander, who
> spoke German, had interviewed the German physician-defendants before the
trials,
> and then served as an expert on the American staff at Nuremberg.
> In an article in the July 14, 1949, New England Journal of Medicine, Dr.
> Alexander warned that the Nazis' crimes against humanity had "started
from small
> beginnings . . . merely a subtle shift in emphasis in the basic attitude
of
> the physicians. It started with the acceptance, basic in the euthanasia
> movement, that there is such a thing as life not worthy to be lived."
That shift
> in emphasis among physicians, said Dr. Alexander, could happen here, in
> America.
> Actually, the devaluing of apparent "imperfect life" had begun years
before,
> in the United States. Various academics, in and out of the medical
> profession, had successfully advocated and instituted a eugenics
movementâ??the
> perfecting of future generations of Americans by deciding who, depending
on their
> hereditary genes, would be allowed to have children. The unfit would no
longer be
> permitted to reproduce.
> These American eugenicists provided German proponents of a "master race"
with
> inspiration. As Robert Jay Lifton wrote in his invaluable book The Nazi
> Doctors (Basic Books), "A rising interest in eugenics [in America had]
led, by
> 1920, to the enactment of laws in twenty-five states providing for
compulsory
> sterilization of the criminally insane and other people considered
> genetically inferior." (Emphasis added).
> Paying attention in Germany, Heinrich Himmler, one of Hitler's
executioners,
> said the Nazis were "like the plant-breeding specialist who, when he
wants to
> breed a pure new strain . . . goes over the field to cull the unwanted
> plants." Under the Nazis, there were eugenics courts to decide who could
have
> children. In the United States Supreme Court (Buck v. Bell, 1927),
Justice
> Oliver Wendell Holmes, ruling that 18-year-old Carrie Buck should be
involuntarily
> sterilized, famously wrote:
> "If instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to
let
> them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are
manifestly
> unfit from continuing of their kind. . . . Three generations of
imbeciles
> are enough." Only Justice Pierce Butler dissented.
> In this country, the eugenics movement lost its cachet for a time because
the
> Nazis had gone from sterilization of the disabled to herding the
> religiously, racially, and politically unfit into gas chambers.
> But there has been an American revival of eugenics in certain elite
circles.
> A few years ago, an archconservative who had talked with some of the
> present-day, would-be purifiers of the American stock told me they were
delighted at
> the deaths from AIDS of homosexuals.
> But to protect the disabled from "mercy" killings, as well as
eugenicists,
> another movement was forming here. Not long before he died, Dr. Alexander
read
> an article in the April 12, 1984, New England Journal of Medicine by 10
> physiciansâ??part of the growing "death with dignity" brigade. They were
from such
> prestigious medical schools as Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and the University
of
> Virginia. These distinguished healers wrote that when a patient was in a
> "persistent vegetative state," it was "morally justifiable" to "withhold
> antibiotics and artificial nutrition (feeding tubes) and hydration, as
well as other
> forms of life-sustaining treatment, allowing the patient to die." They
> ignored the finding that not all persistent vegetative states are
permanent.
> After reading the article, Dr. Alexander said to a friend: "It is much
like
> Germany in the '20s and '30s. The barriers against killing are coming
down."
> Next week: The growing conviction among American doctors, bioethicists,
and
> hospital ethics committees that it is "futile" to try to treat certain
> patients, and therefore, medical professionals should have the power to
decideâ??even
> against the wishes of the familyâ??when to allow these valueless lives to
end.
> If the courts finally permit the husband of brain-damaged Terri Schiavo
to
> continue to press for her death by starvationâ??by again removing her
feeding
> tubeâ??more of the barriers to killing may come down in other states. So
this
> isn't only about Terri Schiavo. It could be about you.
>
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