From: nyikos@math.scarolina.edu (Peter Nyikos)
Subject: Re: The theatre of the absurd
Keywords: You expect me to mark my deletions?  Dream on... 
Organization: USC  Department of Computer Science
Date: 10 Nov 92 01:57:38 GMT

In <1992Nov3.005245.12388@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu> kcochran@nyx.cs.du.edu (Keith "Justified And Ancient" Cochran) writes:

>In article <1992Oct30.195615.18284@acd4.acd.com> wdo@TEFS1.acd.com (Bill Overpeck) writes:
>>In <1992Oct29.004833.12681@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu> kcochran@nyx.cs.du.edu 
>>   (Keith "Justified And Ancient" Cochran) writes: >
>>In article <1992Oct27.205204.682@acd4.acd.com> wdo@TEFS1.acd.com 
>>   (Bill Overpeck) writes: >>
>>In <1992Oct23.233107.24256@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu> kcochran@nyx.cs.du.edu 
>>   (Keith "Justified And Ancient" Cochran) writes: >>>
>>
>>>
>>>>>Right after we aquit Dr. Kevorkian for his part in the deaths of
>>>>>his "patients".
>>>
>>>>If I was on the jury at his trial, I would acquit him.  
>>>
>>>No surprise.
>>>
>>>>Because I feel
>>>>that the "individual right" to decide when your life is over is a _good
>>>>thing_.  You apparantly feel it's a _bad thing_.  Why?
>>>
>>>Many times the individual in question is depressed.  Depressed people
>>>have impaired decision-making abilities.  In the absence of depression,

I would put it in less clinical terms.  In the Netherlands, where
euthanasia is still technically illegal, but laws against it are
not enforced, many if not most of voluntary cases of active euthanasia
[there are quite a number of involuntary cases, too] involve not
people who are terminally ill, not people who are in uncontrollable pain,
but people who feel they are a "burden" to others.

The potential for exploitation of this group is tremendous.  Already
some tribes in which old people who no longer contribute leave,
voluntarily, to die
of starvation, are held up to us as admirable by some writers.

>>
>>>>let's leave the medical community out of such decisions.  The notion
>>>>of our healers doubling as our executioners is just a bit too macabre 
>>>>to support.  Also, on another level, I simply don't think it's our
>>>>^^^^^^^^^^^
>>>
>>>Why?  I have no problem supporting the concept.
>>
>>Fortunately, most of us seem to, including most of the medical
>>community.

So did anthropologist Margaret Mead:

	Throughout the primitive world the doctor and the sorcerer
	tended to be the same person...With the Greeks...the distinction
	was made clear.  One profession, the followers of Asclepius,
	were to be dedicated completely to life under all circumstances,
	regardless of rank, age, or intellect--the life of a slave,
	the life of a foreign man, the life of a defective child...
	This is a priceless possession which we cannot afford to
	tarnish, but society always is attempting to make the physician
	into a killer--to kill the defective child at birth, to leave
	the sleeping pills beside the bed of the cancer patient.
	...It is the duty of society to protect the physician from such
	requests.
				--quoted in _Psychiatry and Ethics_
				  by Maurice Levine, M. D.
				  
>"Most of the medical community" is slowly changing its mind.  Thank God.

I wonder which God Keith is thanking.  The evil Demiurge of the 
Gnostics, perhaps?  Or the evil god of the Zoroastrians, the one
(Ahriman, I believe he is called) in
conflict with the good God Ahura-Mazda?

Or maybe Chthulu? :-)
I hope Clinton is a lesser evil. :-)

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