Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition
To increase the demand for assisted suicide the New York Times published an article on September 3 by Emma Goldberg promoting a new assisted suicide "business". Goldberg describes it as a business "start-up" for assisted suicide. In reality the article is providing free advertising for a business and steering people to assisted suicide. Goldberg writes:
You can think of it as a start-up for better deaths.
They have created a one-stop shop, (name of killing center withheld), where people can get help meeting every legal and medical requirement for a death on their own terms. Patients get two medical evaluations and a mental health screening, as well as a prescription for the combination of drugs — sedatives, morphine, lethal doses of cardiac medication — that will kill them. Medical aid in dying is legal in 13 states, and New York has among the strictest regulations, including that patients must be state residents, have six months or less to live, and wait five days between getting the prescription and filling it.
Goldberg describes it as a "start-up for better deaths" which is a sales technique. Notice how the article states that New York has among the "strictest regulations". This is another sales technique because most people want restrictions on assisted suicide.
Goldberg describes the "business partners" with compassionate descriptors and explains the cost for being assisted in a suicide is $12,000 and states:
(...This covers medical consultations, psychological evaluations, logistical support, drugs and help for the grieving family after the death. The team also says it will care for people who cannot afford the cost.)
“The Hippocratic oath says do no harm,” ... “And I don’t think we’re harming anyone by doing this. I think we’re actually being compassionate and relieving suffering.”Your not harming anyone by prescribing lethal poison for the purpose of suicide?
I didn't mention the name of the killing center or the medical team because I don't want to promote the business. Sadly killing people may become a lucrative business and the New York Times seems willing to provide free advertising to help them make a killing.
4 comments:
I currently have a digital subscription to NYT but I'll definitely be sending them a letter and canceling it.
I read the complete New York Times article with sadness at the tone as much as the facts it reported. The whole was 'journalistic' in its attempt at a neutral tone but notable was the lack of a critique by those for whom this new approach is ethically problematically if not morally onerous.
But it's important to note, not being 'holier than thou' medical termination is already a business in Canada where for some physicians it is more than a part of their practice, an occasional act in specific cases, but the basis of a practice for those whose approach to patient care is almost entrely that of MAiD cases. The only good thing one can say about these MAiD Docs is that they are so experienced they probably will not mess up the correct administration of the drugs in a manner causing a long, drawnout, and painful death. But that's little good in the bad that one sees among practitioners whose only approach to care is termination.
One should also remember the statistically inevitable similarity between a significant number of medical homicide providers, and those dangerous perverts who consistently find their way into careers close to children.
"In 2293, technology causes the people of Earth to split into two factions. A savage group worships a god named Zardoz, while the Eternals are an intellectual oligarchy that created Zardoz to control the savages."
I was about 16 years old when I watched John Boorman's film *Zardoz*. That work of fiction sparked my interest in other literary pieces that foresaw humanity's impending disaster across various fields of 'knowledge'—that paltry knowledge which the so-called sciences claim to possess. It is staggering to see that the era of *Zardoz* has arrived so much sooner than expected.
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