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Newsgroups: bit.listserv.christia
Date:         Mon, 21 Dec 1992 13:34:28 -0500
From:         Nocens <kilroy@GBORO.ROWAN.EDU>
Subject:      Responsibility and Final Actions

In a previous article, Michael Kline quoted Rush Limbaugh as claiming that
Jack Kevorkian kills people.  I objected, since each death was caused by an
action taken by the person who died.  Whatever goes on before then, crossing
the point of no return is done entirely by the person who wants to die.

In reply, people have said "give me a break", and assumed that I think it
is proper to provide equipment and encouragement for people who want to die.
Zane of Dharan assumed that I think Dr Kevorkian has no culpability; and
Michael Kline wrote this about a paraplegic named Joni:

> According to kilroy, Kevorkian would have been doing her a service to
> put her out of this misery she was in.

As usual, everybody is jumping up and down because I disagreed with some
commentator -- nobody can be bothered to find out what I actually think before
they start running off at the keyboard.

Just because I believe a given accusation or argument is unfair, that does not
mean I disagree with the main point of the person making the argument.  (It is
depressing, but not astonishing, to discover that so many people on Christia
still do not understand this.)

I did not say that Dr Kevorkian had no culpability for the deaths he has
helped to engineer, that he was doing anybody a favor, or that I support him
in any way.  All of the assumptions about those points have been wrong.  (I
*did* say that I was unhappy about Dr Kevorkian, but nobody seems to have
noticed or cared about that.)


I said only that it was inaccurate to say that he is killing people; he was
not the one who killed the people that have died.  Surely he has a lot to
answer for, in that he counsels them to commit suicide instead of counselling
them to live while they can.  And while many of his victims might be well be
dead without his help, some might still be alive.  Just the fact that somebody
_might_ be alive carries a lot of weight.

But the final decision to die -- and the final action to carry that decision
out -- lies with the person who dies.  That makes the lethal action one of
suicide.  This subtle but important distinction is what has kept Dr Kevorkian
out of prison thus far.  He has gone to court several times on murder charges,
and in each case he has been released because the people who died flipped the
switches themselves.  The decisions from the courts were all in agreement: if
the people who died were the ones who activated the machine, then the death
was a suicide.


It might be worthwhile for us to have a discussion about assisted suicide; is
it immoral?  Do we as Christians have any right to make non-Christians keep
living when they don't want to?  Do we have a responsibility to convince
someone that he should continue living?  Suppose our arguments do not work;
are we justified in using force to keep someone from killing himself?  When
someone such as Dr Kevorkian disagrees with us, what degree of force should
be used to stop him?

Suppose instead someone writes a book about how to commit suicide, giving
exact and detailed instructions on how to quickly and painlessly do yourself
in.  (Say, explaining how to collect apple seeds and prepare them so that you
get the maximum dose.%) Should we stop distribution of this book?  If so, on
what grounds?  Is the author culpable for the deaths of the people who die?
If someone uses the information to kill another person, is the author culpable
for the murder?
 --
% Seeds from fruits in the rose family (including apples, apricots, peaches,
  cherries, and others) contain cyanogenetic glycosides.  When ingested, an
  enzymatic reaction with these chemicals releases hydrogen cyanide gas.
  Turkey, a big apricot country, has reported 9 cases of lethal poisioning
  from apricot seeds since 1957.
 --

What if someone writes a book on surviving in the woods, and it includes a
list of deadly plants -- a list which potential suicide victims can use to
arrange their own deaths?  Do we stop this book?  If so, on what grounds?
Is the author culpable for the suicides?  If someone uses the information
to kill another person, is the author culpable for the murder?

Thirteen lines up, I mention a common source of hydrogen cyanide gas; if one
of our listowners (in a fit of depression brought on by weeks of posts about
homosexuals and Predestination) does himself in by eating a gallon of peach
pits, am I partly responsible?  What about the people who posted all the
depressing articles?  Suppose instead that the listowner (having given up on
polite requests to stop the P-word discussion) mails a fruitcake to each
person discussing Calvinism, and the main ingredient is ground up apple seeds.
Am I responsible for those murders?

 *

If it could be kept out of the gutter, which I doubt, a discussion of death,
culpability, and suicide might be worthwhile.  But if the debate is biased
from the start by the use of inaccurate terms (eg, Mr Limbaugh's description
of assisted suicide as "killing"), then it will never get anywhere.  If every
article which says "this argument is no good" is interpreted as `what you
think is wrong', then all we are doing is wasting our time.  Nobody will
listen to anybody else, nobody will change his or her mind, and all the
non-Christians who watch us will see followers of Christ acting like children.

On the other hand, I don't think that state of affairs would be particularly
unusual for Christia.  Yet again I've been flamed by people I mostly agree
with because I disputed a bogus accusation.  Another flame war under the
heading "Christian love" probably won't hurt anything.


Darren F Provine / kilroy@gboro.rowan.edu
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