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| Britain |
| Where's King Arthur when you need him? |
| 2005-01-21 |
| It's hardly unusual in this day and age for people to make off-the-wall statements. And it's a little disturbing, to say the least, to hear such statements from a woman whom the Sunday Times-Review has called Britain's "pre-eminent medical ethicist" and "philosopher queen." But that's what happened when the Times-Review interviewed Baroness Mary Warnock last month. Warnock once voted in the House of Lords against legalizing euthanasia. Now she's become an advocate. Why? Well, as reporter Jasper Gerard put it, "Warnock explains that she has changed her public position on euthanasia because the public has changed its position." Truth determined by majority vote? This is Britain's pre-eminent ethicist? Please. Britain is in big trouble. There's more to Warnock's position than that, however. It's only fair to note that she watched her husband suffer from lung disease before he died, and that this also affected her views. But the more deeply you look into her altered viewpoint, the more dangerous it becomes. It's not just that she's come to believe in so-called "mercy killing" for the elderly and ill. She believes that the elderly and ill have a duty to let themselves be killed to ease the "burden" on their families, and she has suggested that doctors are sometimes overzealous in trying to save the lives of babies who are born with health problems, or whose parents can't care for them. "Dr. Faustus, conjure up Dr. Mengele's ghost for us." After all, Gerard writes, "The baroness . . . declares firmly there is no place for spiritualism or sentiment in the law." (I suspect he meant to say spirituality, but the point is clear enough.) Warnock even went so far as to say that "some lives are more worth living than others." |
| Posted by:Korora |
| #5 It’s hardly unusual in this day and age for people to make off-the-wall statements<< My butcher has problems cutting a good slice of veal . *chuckle* |
| Posted by: MacNails 2005-01-21 9:42:44 PM |
| #4 Under Socialism everyone and anyone is a scientific or linear economic production unit - those that don't produce enough [for the State], or can no longer produce, are defective units whom must either be re-worked or discarded. The Party = State is the be-all, end-all producer, consumer, and arbiter-defender - wealth and prosperity is for the Party/State, not the masses nor for individuals whom are not part of the ruling elite or defenders of the Party/State - you know, Lefty UNIVERSAL/PUBLIC UTOPIANISM!? |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2005-01-21 9:35:14 PM |
| #3 Yeah, Anonymoose, I want to hear more about this. |
| Posted by: Secret Master 2005-01-21 3:02:39 PM |
| #2 OK, so what was the state? Oregon? I thought their rationing plan failed. |
| Posted by: Mrs. Davis 2005-01-21 11:53:00 AM |
| #1 No, it's a matter of money. Some years ago, a US state enacted a health care plan based on logic, of all things. They compiled a great list with three columns: what is the medical condition?; what does it cost?; and how effective is its treatment? The purpose was to *ration* public, as in, "free", medical care to the poor. Not private care, which was a different system, left untouched. At the head of the list were conditions like "hairlip", easy and inexpensive to treat, greatly improving the quality of life for the patient, and with a high success rate. At the bottom were a few things like multiple major organ transplants for extrememly premature infants. A single surgery of this type might cost $1M, almost never worked, and even when it did it consigned the infant to a lifetime of extreme and expensive disability. By just outright refusing to perform the bottom five of these procedures, out of thousands of procedures, enough money was saved to preserve the entire system. After a few years, the system was so successful, that thousands more poor people were included in it, without raising the cost to the state. Just eliminating that single $1M surgery freed up enough money to pay for hundreds of poor women to get the pre-natal care they needed--that would help preclude the half dozen infants that needed the surgery each year. By not giving that surgery, you wouldn't *need* to give that surgery. This program was not only generated, vetted and endorsed by everyone they could include in the process, but it was also universally shunned by every other state and the federal government, and receives no special mention in the MSM outside of its state. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2005-01-21 11:30:53 AM |