Greater than H: The Thuggery of Ethicists

By Pamela F. Hennessy

October 6, 2006

The October 2006 issue of the Journal of Medical Ethics (JME) features an opinion piece penned by Dr. Heather Draper of the Centre for Biomedical Ethics titled "Research and patients in a permanent vegetative state".

In it, Draper concludes that experiments involving the transplantation of certain animal organs to humans should include trials on patients who have been diagnosed in a permanent or persistent vegetative state (PVS).

She argues that keeping someone who is PVS alive, in order to carry out such studies, should be a consideration as the subject is a contributor to the good of the masses and, therefore, no longer a burden on society. Following such a trial, however, Draper assumes the same posture of the well-oiled right-to-die propaganda machine and believes the unwitting subject should be allowed to die with 'dignity' through the removal of no longer needed nutrition and hydration.

At first blush, this seemed to me to be the most cyclic and convoluted line of reasoning I'd ever come across. That a medical ethics journal would even entertain such a contradiction in ethics as fodder for a printed publication is a bit of a mystery to me, but it was not to be the strangest thing I would read that morning.

It was Draper's citation to another train wreck of an opinion piece that topped even her own insane logic and made me stare blankly at my monitor for quite some time. It is an article penned by An Ravelingien, a member of the World Transhumanists Association.

Ravenlingien's article, "Proceeding with clinical trials of animal to human organ transplantation: a way out of the dilemma" is a piece even more confounding than Draper's and it suggests what I consider to be extraordinarily dangerous attitudes about our fellow man and woman.

To be clear: Transhumanists are people who believe the human condition can be greatly improved upon through the use of technology and inter-species minglings. They have followers from scientific and spiritualistic communities that firmly believe humans can be forcibly evolved into beings so superior to homo-sapiens that they merit the moniker "Posthumans."

In "Proceeding with clinical trials of animal to human organ transplantation", Ravelingien argues that, from an ethical standpoint, patients in PVS are ideal experiment subjects due to what she perceives to be a lack of the essential human traits while maintaining biological life.

Indeed, she refers to such patients as "living cadavers" as opposed to human beings or even people.

She states that an agreement in the medical community must be reached that such patients are basically dead and -- in doing so -- medical professionals could assume the posture that such a patient has no interests in whether or not his or her prior wishes were respected.

This is a horrifying concept.

The right-to-die lobby has long argued that the intentional removal of ordinary care from a severely brain-injured human being should be permissible if his or her wishes supported such an action. They took that argument a step further in supporting the rights of guardians and conservators to take such steps through a well-organized marketing campaign of the concept that no one would want to live in such a way. Therefore, the act of dehydrating or neglecting a vulnerable person to death was out of respect for that person, their wishes and the individual's dignity.

Now, we see what they were really after.

I've long said that ending the lives of vulnerable people has nothing to do with the individual's wishes or dignity itself. Rather, these horribly misguided groups seem to be creating a duty to die based on the cost of care and the strain on our current system of healthcare delivery.

In sum, they're full of it.

Enter now the voices from the pseudo-philosophical ethics community espousing not a right-to-die, but an obligation to be made into a natural resource for scientific study -- whether you like it or not.

Ravenlingien's words should haunt: "a PVS body similarly has no interests in whether or not its prior wishes are respected."

These people aren't ethical. They're selfish. They're hooligans. They're reprehensible players in the movement to devalue and dehumanize ailing and disabled people to the degree that you get on board with them and support the concept that some of us are people and the rest are simply here for our benefit.

These belligerent attitudes are currently honed very tightly on the disabled community, but I'm certain that the receiving end of this nonsense will broaden quickly -- as it has in the past.

At the moment, it seems as if a disabled person simply cannot get a break. There are groups who want you dead because they believe it's kinder to "let you go", there are some who want your healthy organs and, now, there are those who believe you have a duty to us "normal" folks to have a pig's kidneys implanted into your body without your consent.

A casual observer may see the circular arguments of these "ethicists" as rather confusing. I don't. In fact, it's all rather simple. They support the standard eugenics model which reinforces the insanity of euthanasia. And, they do it by telling you it's for the good of all.

Now that's just stupid.

With each little nudge and push, these groups are reducing the basic human rights and liberties of those who are unable to fight them off. That makes them thugs. They sell their madness by smearing the word "ethics" all over their verbal rubbish. That makes them liars.

Soilent Green and Logan's Run were movies that depicted social breakdown in a way most viewers considered to be exaggerated and something of a folly. I don't think we're so far off from embracing such attitudes as a society and it has me in fear of what's next.

When something starts out as an attack against the weaker members of our society, it surely cannot turn out well. And the intentions of those shoving these attitudes down our throats should be scrutinized to the point of raising blisters.

Pamela F. Hennessy is the Founder of the Partnership for Medical Ethics Reform (www.forethics.com) and volunteered as a representative of the Terri Schindler-Schiavo Foundation from 2002 to 2006.

Copyright © 2006 North Country Gazette.

This article posted October 28, 2006.