Suiciding

 

I recently read an article on the Chuck Colson web site by John Stonestreet that exposed a predicament in Canada of the government having to pay a premium to doctors to conduct physician assisted suicide. Here is what he states the problem is: “Many doctors who initially expressed a willingness to lend deadly so-called ‘medical assistance’ have changed their minds. Unfortunately, the growing reticence of early practitioners to continue offering this lethal service is not because they now take the moral qualms seriously. No, the problem is that they’re not being paid enough to kill their patients.”

Now, I am a cynical person to the very core, I freely confess that, so I wonder what could the doctor’s reticence to “offing” their patients be? Not being paid enough? How much does a overdose of morphine cost? What I think is happening is that the doctor’s are weighing the income they give up by suiciding (yes, that is now a word, so say I) their patient as opposed to keeping them alive to the bitter end on expensive drugs and therapies. Bottom line (and it always comes down to the bottom line) is that the doctor will get more money keeping patients alive than to suicide them. Does anyone not sense the free for all slide, a slide that has only one direction? I remember watching my nephew plunge down one of these things only to find at the bottom his bathing suit was shredded.  There is no turning back on one of these bad mamajamas–once the plunge is begun, there ain’t no turning back.

Here are two paragraphs via Wikipedia of the original Hippocratic oath:

I will use treatment to help the sick according to my ability and judgment, but never with a view to injury and wrong-doing. Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course. Similarly I will not give to a woman a pessary to cause abortion. But I will keep pure and holy both my life and my art. I will not use the knife, not even, verily, on sufferers from stone but I will give place to such as are craftsmen therein.

Into whatsoever houses I enter, I will enter to help the sick, and I will abstain from all intentional wrong-doing and harm, especially from abusing the bodies of man or woman, bond or free. And whatsoever I shall see or hear in the course of my profession, as well as outside my profession in my intercourse with men, if it be what should not be published abroad, I will never divulge, holding such things to be holy secrets.

I am no expert on Greek history or philosophy, but Truth is Truth and there is much to be lauded in this excerpt to “help the sick”, “pure and holy” art, “abstaining from intentional wrong doing” and keeping “holy secrets”.  There is a condition of sanctity here, a reverence for the doctor and his job, a respect for the patient and his dignity, but in broader terms, a message to the community that human life matters in a way that no other lives do.  As Christians, we would recognize God’s decree that humans, made in His image (“Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. ” Genesis 1:26a), are to be treated as if treating God Himself.  Does that go too far?  I don’t think so.  Our fellow human beings are the closest person we have on this planet to God, Himself.  As His image bearers, we reflect Him to all creation.  We do so poorly and incompletely hence why the world is in such a mess, but that does not alter God’s created design.  And that created order says “And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” (Genesis 1:26b) Humanity was designed to rule the world, as God’s representative, of course, and under His supervision.

So why should doctors receive a premium for physician assisted suicide?  Well since we have already killed God, why not each other?  With a gun?  With a syringe?  What does it matter? The value of human life on this earth ranks up there with the paramecium squirming around on a microscope slide.  But back to the other slide, the one that is hurtling humanity deeper into the abyss of insignificance–we are well beyond being able to claw our way back to the top and what lurks at the bottom (is there even a bottom?)  promises to be violent and savage.  Why?  Because when human life has no value, it can be cast aside at the will of whomever is at the top of the heap, and that promises not to be the aged and the unborn and certainly not the physically or mentally handicapped.  It is a vision of savage Darwinian “survival of the fittest” that removes all compassion, empathy for the weakest of society, and places all power in the hands of those who can grab it first and hold on for dear life (?).  Syringe anyone?