It is known that the number of euthanasia cases not caused by a terminal illness or suffering is increasing every year in the countries, where euthanasia is legal…
Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course
From the Hippocratic Oath
On September 2nd, 2016, the Commissioner for Human Rights in Russian Federation Tatyana Moskalkova supported the idea to legalise in Russia the right to voluntary end of life at a meeting with students of Moscow State University’s Department of Law, by calling euthanasia a very humane decision. Though, she mentioned that she expressed her own point of view, “simply as an ordinary person”.
The Commissioner (in other words, an authorized representative acting under the authority of the supreme legislature of a country) for Human Rights in Russian Federation (including for the rights of people suffering from diseases), Doctor of Law Tatyana Moskalkova addressing the future legal professionals is expressing “a personal point of view”, which strongly contradicts the basic tasks assigned to her office, legislation, and, frankly speaking, the millenary tradition of our civilization. Despite all of this, she protects the right to easy death, preferring it to the human’s right to life (“euthanasia”, from Greek, means “good death”: eu – good, thanatos – death). And she does this with tongue in cheek (“simply as an ordinary person” although she is fully aware that her position, even expressed as an informal one, will have a strong impact on many people).
Right to life is declared in all the international legal instruments (the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted in 1948, the European Convention on Human Rights adopted in 1953, etc) as well as in the Constitution of the Russian Federation (“Everyone shall have the right to life”). A person, of course, could endanger his or her own life, even take his or her own life by committing suicide while exercising this right. But the attacks against his or her life on the part of other persons, including physicians, are criminal offences. Causing death by euthanasia is illegal under Russian law.
Besides the legal prohibition, there is also the Church. Its attitude towards euthanasia always was, and is, strongly negative. Euthanasia is considered to be one of the types of deliberate murder (“Thou shalt not kill”) and is regarded to be equal with an extreme degree of falling away from God.
Nazi Germany adopted a state policy of mass involuntary euthanasia of the civilian population. T4 program (abbreviation of Tiergartenstraße 4, a street address of the Chancellery department in Berlin) operated there since 1939. Over 70,000 people with various kinds of mental illnesses, including thousands of children with somatic and neurological disorders, were killed by 1941 (the year the program was officially ended). Even after the program was officially ended, gas chambers disguised as shower rooms were continued to be used in psychiatric hospitals in Germany. During World War II, gas chambers were widely used in death camps, where unprecedented in human history mass extermination of people took place.
In other words, the T4 program of racial hygiene tested on the civilian population of Germany developed into the mass extermination of persons of other nationalities considered to be “a biological hazard” to the German nation.
“But we are talking about compassion for seriously ill people that has nothing in common with German fascism,” a “progressive” resident of Russia could exclaim. A few years ago, the Public Opinion Foundation conducted a poll on the question of supporting euthanasia legalisation in Russia. It turned out that 32 percent are supporting euthanasia, a similar number is against. Over one-third of [those polled] had difficulty answering this question. So, Mrs. Moskalkova has some “support base”.
“Humane reasons” for ending human suffering according to the will of a suffering person (“mercy killing”) is the main argument of those supporting euthanasia.
However, analysing the euthanasia practice in some countries, one can discover that the patient is frequently euthanized at the will of patient’s relatives, or doctors, or the state rather than with the consent of a patient. And often euthanasia is not voluntary, but on the contrary – forced (performed without the consent of a patient).
But unlike the open fascist practitioners, modern proponents of the forced euthanasia hide in liberal clothing. In order to legalize forced euthanasia, they call for “mercy” for gravely ill people or “fairness” for the relatives of such patients and society as a whole. That includes “fairness” for insurance companies and the state, which are financing the healthcare and are forced to cut the assistance for “promising patients” because of the increase in the number of “unpromising” ones. You see, the care for older persons, terminally ill people and newborn infants with significant congenital disabilities becomes an unsustainable burden for the Western society.
It is amazing that all these pseudo-humane arguments are completely lacking the categorical norm of the right to life for each human, meaning also the duty of the relatives, family, and society as a whole to give even a terminally ill person an opportunity to fight death. But the consumer society we live in measures human’s life according to the scale of rationality and efficiency. If a person is still useful [for the society], it is reasonable to spend money for medical treatment, and if not … Such society sells easy death as a kind of medical care, as a service, as one of the possible ways to be free from suffering, as a right to easy die.
At the moment, there are no countries, where forced euthanasia is legalised, but voluntary euthanasia is legal in some countries. In 2002 the Netherlands opened Pandora’s box by legalizing euthanasia at state level, and afterwards the same was done by Belgium, Sweden, and Switzerland. In other words, this action took place in those small European countries (many of them, by the way, are monarchies), which are considered as “grounds” for the implementation of anti-norms for human living, such as legal prostitution, drugs, same-sex marriages, “gender diversity”, suicide, killing and dismembering of the animals in front of children, and so on, and so forth.
It is already known that the number of euthanasia cases not caused by a terminal illness or suffering is increasing every year in the countries, where euthanasia is legal.
For example, a Court allowed to euthanize two twins with congenital deafness because both of them began to go blind. And there was no “unbearable physical suffering”. “Unbearable mental suffering” more and more frequently becomes a reason for the killing.
In the Netherlands, a doctor euthanized an elderly person, who was not seriously ill, but simply tired of life. The doctor was acquitted. [On October 14th, 2016, The New York Times informed that a law legalizing assisted suicide for older people, who are generally healthy but feel they have completed life, was proposed in the Netherlands. This law was supported by the Health Minister of the country. – Editor]
In Belgium, in 2013, a case of 44-years-old transsexual, who asked the doctors for euthanasia after a botched sex change, was widely discussed. The doctor was acquitted, and the patient killed by him became the very first transsexual, who committed suicide because he did not like the results of sex-change operations.
In 2016, the Netherlands State Commission on Euthanasia allowed to euthanize a young woman suffering post-traumatic stress disorder after going through sexual abuse in her childhood. Human rights activists rightly express their fear that this decision creates a precedent for psychiatrists, who can now consider euthanasia as a “medical treatment” of mental disorders resulting from sexual abuse.
Absolutely healthy people have a possibility to die, in case they want this, in Switzerland. For example, the Dignitas clinic protects the interests of a healthy woman, who wants to die together with her terminally ill husband, in other words, to conduct sati [Hindu funeral] custom in a modern civilised country. Of course, there were such tragic incidents in history, but the possibility of suicide under the patronage of the state has never been considered in Europe before.
In this regard, Switzerland can be considered as a new model of consumer society. The most liberal conditions to die are created here. Therefore, suicide (or euthanasia) tourism is flourishing in Switzerland. There is even an expression “to go to Switzerland”, meaning euthanasia, in the UK. In Switzerland, suicide business is flourishing under state legislative support and full approval from the population.
In 2011, a referendum took place in Zurich (euthanasia is legal in this canton). The results showed that the majority, 85% (!) of 278,000 voters in the referendum, rejected the initiative to completely ban euthanasia for the Swiss and their guests [from abroad]. In Switzerland, six organisations provide the necessary legal and medical assistance for those willing to commit suicide. Four of these organisations are dealing with foreigners and have been barely able to cope with a stream of people willing to die in recent times. The average price for euthanasia in Swiss clinics is 4,000 Euro. There are state programs aimed at providing assistance to people unable to afford euthanasia. And these programs are available not only for the Swiss but also for the foreigners. 150-200 tourists receive such assistance annually. Most suicide-seekers come from highly developed countries – Germany, the UK, France, Italy. Special programs have been established for suicide tourists. For example, if a client is able to move around, he or she will be invited to go sightseeing in Switzerland (it is tourism, after all). Then, after a medical examination and signing the documents testifying the decision of the patient, the death-seeker gets a glass with a fatal dose of sleeping drug, causing death by respiratory arrest. A firm can even arrange funerals if one pays additional 3,000 Euro.
Belgium is one of the first European countries, where euthanasia has been legalised (in 2002). 10 years after, the euthanasia cases were 2% of nationwide deaths in Belgium. Additional studies showed that a large part of physician-assisted suicides were administered without knowledge and against the will of the killed patients (involuntary euthanasia!). In 2013, euthanasia without standard medical indications, i.e. without “unbearable physical suffering”, was legalised in Belgium. Euthanasia of children was legalised in 2014. And the killing of children has no age limits. It should be noted that there was an attempt to oppose the adoption of this law in Belgium. 160 Belgian paediatricians stated that the modern medicine has medications for pain treatment that makes this law unnecessary. However, the supporters of the law claimed that “rights of children are violated” because children would not be able to make a decision as to euthanasia by themselves. The law was adopted. The Belgian population (according to the polls – 75%) supports euthanasia.
It is already being discussed in a number of countries that an opportunity to die must be given to those unable to provide for themselves (homeless, impoverished people). In 2013, the then-Deputy Prime Minister of Japan Tarō Asō offered the Japanese elderly to “hurry up and die” in order to relieve the state from the payments for their medical care. And this isn’t his only such statement to Japanese elderly. It must be noted that the 74-year old Tarō Asō is not only a state official, he is a member of the influential Japanese family of manufacturers.
It becomes clear that the reasons for euthanizing people are growing like a snowball in the Western countries. And it can happen that, due to the turn in the socio-political situation (war, a technological disaster, etc.), the isolated cases of “mercy killing” could develop into the programs of forced mass-euthanasia of the impoverished, severely injured, homeless, “those with moral suffering”, deviants, undesirable people and others, as it had happened in the case of Nazi T4 program in Germany.
Source (for copy): https://eu.eot.su/2017/02/09/right-to-easy-death/
This is the translation of the article (first published in “Essence of Time” newspaper issue 199 on October 15, 2016) by Vera Sorokina on euthanasia, one of the elements of the culture of death. Fascism worships death and, at the same time, turns death into means of achieving its inhumane goals, from enslavement to extermination. Last time they failed, and so now they try to enter through the back door, make people accept death.
We encourage republishing of our translations and articles, but ONLY with mentioning the original article page at eu.eot.su (link above).
