Friday, January 19, 2024

The importance of competitively presenting life-affirming care

Gordon Friesen
Gordon Friesen
President, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Undoubtedly, the human will for personal survival represents an enormous economic force. And yet, like all brute forces of nature, like wind, fire and water, this power must be structurally harnessed in order to produce useful effects.

In the realm of consumer economics, such harnessing is done by cultivating the urgent perception of a need to choose (among competing services), and the promotion of one particular choice, as that which will most closely respond to consumer needs and desires.

The most powerful industry-shaping tool available to life-affirming physicians, therefore, lies in the effective presentation of a medical practice which faithfully embodies their life-centered ideals.

By thus presenting their practice, in clear contrast to that of more utilitarian colleagues, a deep rift is boldly and deliberately opened in the medical marketplace: a schism which may only be resolved through the operation of patient choice.

The essence of this strategy lies in the translation of ideological debate to the realm of real competition in practice. For in all simplicity: if doctors propose life-affirming services --and if patients select those services-- then the life-affirming future of the medical industry will be assured.

And conversely: once a clearly articulated life-centered clinical program is presented with competitive intent, the ultimate penetration of utilitarian death-medicine can rely only upon the success with which its authors may themselves succeed in presenting death as a superior clinical option.

Considering the human will to live, and considering the observed history of Hippocratic medicine (considering, that is, the reasons why people go to doctors in the first place); and considering, also, the advanced state to which medical science has now progressed: it would seem unthinkable that advocates of death-as-care might widely prosper in a commercial environment where these two alternatives are frankly compared.

But unthinkable, that is, only if life-affirming physicians accept the challenge of vigorously presenting their case.

Gordon Friesen
President, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition
euthanasiadiscussion.com

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