PROLIFE TO THE VERY END OF EARTHLY LIFE

Posted by on Nov 18, 2014 in Euthanasia

Practical prolife arguments against euthanasia.

Dr. Philip G. Ney 10/11/2014

Introduction

Desiring to share eternity with people who chose Him as their best friend, God made humans in His image, to last forever. God’s enemy seeks to destroy His creation from the top down. Although Jesus the Messiah conquered the Devil and death, He has allowed Satan to provide people a choice. It is amazing that so many people choose to serve Satan who promises nothing but a painful end. These benighted people work Satan’s purpose well, especially by making the choice of death to look like a good end. Prolife people must realize that death is always a lethal enemy, never to be accepted but always courageously fought for oneself and one’s fellow humans.

Euthanasia is not a new idea. The Romans practiced assisted death for crucifixion victims that were slowly losing an agonizing battle to stay alive. They thought it was merciful to break their victim’s legs, thereby hastening death from suffocation. By dismissing His Spirit, Jesus avoided euthanasia. His example can be followed by God loving people who have finished their course and completed their 10 tasks. (1) Seeing that there is no possibility of avoiding death by any cause, they commit their spirit into the hands of a loving Father who in His own time will welcome the person into his eternal presence. This usually avoids the final agonies and death struggle, and always comforts those about to be executed and dying persons.

 

1. No Benefit

In medicine it is incumbent upon any practitioner to show beyond reasonable scientific doubt that all treatments he/she recommends or performs is:

  • beneficial,
  • indicated,
  • has few lasting side effects,
  • used only when other less invasive and more reversible therapies have been tried without success,
  • performed in good faith (personal long term follow-up),
  • done only with fully informed consent,
  • done after a careful examination and clear recommendation for treatment has been made.

Although proponents of euthanasia in its many guises have shouted and manipulated the thesis that euthanasia is good for: the nation’s health care bill, society, physicians, the family and the patient, there is not a shred of evidence to support their claims. Moreover they haven’t even tried to determine whether or not euthanasia is good treatment or not, and don’t think such an endeavour of scientific medicine is necessary. They don’t need science when they have the media backing them so vociferously.

  1. No benefit for patient. There are elevated serum post-mortem catecholamine levels in everyone. These indicate that there is a final death struggle. The highest levels are found in those who died by poisoning. Euthanasia is poisoning. ‘Dignified death’ by physician assisted suicide is the least dignified way to die. There is more struggling.
  2. No recorded evidence that the family benefits. The opposite is true.
  3. No evidence that the nation is healthier and saves health care money. The opposite is true.
  4. No evidence of benefit to the performing physician and his professional colleagues.
  5. No past or present scientific study to show any kind of benefit.

 

2. Effects of Euthanasia on the elderly, handicapped, dying or mentally ill

  1. These people have reason to fear being hospitalized. Resisting a physician’s recommendation for hospitalization usually means delayed diagnosis and less effective treatment.
  2. The offer of euthanasia puts many people especially those in this group into acute mental conflict that reduces their quality of life, shadows their retirement and thereby shortens their life.
  3. With Doctor Assisted Death (DAD), those sentenced to death will have less opportunity to complete their 10 essential tasks and therefore will die with less satisfaction, peace and dignity.
  4. There will be less time for their spirit to grow when there is less concern for the body and mind.
  5. DAD is practiced with obvious derogatory discrimination. Those from a lower socio-economic class, with less education, with no medical coverage and handicapped are more frequently euthanized than are the privileged.

 

3. Effects on the average family

  1. Euthanasia tempts family members to put material self-interest rather than elder honour first.
  2. Euthanasia splits families into quarrelling for and against groups.
  3. Families will be sorely tempted to spend in anticipation of an inheritance coming soon, thereby putting themselves into deeper debt and increasing the pressure on them to agree to Doctor Assisted Death (DAD) for their elderly family members.
  4. If any family member agrees to assisted euthanasia in any way, they are likely to have Guilt Laden Grief (GLG) which often becomes Prolonged Pathological Grief (PPG) that is frequently misdiagnosed as Depression of Chemical Origin (DCO) by physicians. Antidepressants are usually prescribed. The medication numbing of grief associated feelings interferes with mourning so the grief is not completed and may result in depression which continues for long periods, not because of any abnormal brain chemistry but because the underlying grief does not resolve. This mechanism helps explain why there is a pandemic of depression and massive use of a panoply of antidepressants.

 

4. Doctor-patient mistrust

  1. People tend to assume the medical profession is unified on every medical issue. They too readily believe all physicians are equally supportive of euthanasia. Their distrust of their own physician will mean he/she must waste precious time explaining even simple procedures and convincing people, especially the elderly to take a proper prescription.
  2. Because patients distrust their physician, they will more likely turn to alternative remedies thus wasting money they can ill afford and avoiding appropriate treatment until their conditions requires more expensive treatment.
  3. Doubting their physician more will often result in patients demanding more 2nd opinions, more lab tests and more exploratory procedures.
  4. Dubious patients will take more of their physician’s time asking questions without accepting simple explanations.
  5. Skeptical patients are more likely to start mal-practice suits.

 

5. Effects on the medical profession

  1. Less confidence in physicians because some perform euthanasia will result in more pathological dependence on all doctors.
  2. Dependent patients diminish the sense of satisfaction of making patients well that keeps the weary physician going. Without it the medical profession is becoming less attractive and lowers the standard of medical education.
  3. Lower ranks of the medical profession, nurses, lab techs etc. will be forced or subtly forced to comply in carrying out euthanasia related tasks against their morals, instincts and commitment to good practice. For example, because of the doctor’s orders they must withhold fluids (strictly interpreted to mean don’t moisten the cracked and bleeding dying patient’s lips with water). They have to endure the moaning and pleading while the busy physician flits from one bedside to another.
  4. The profession will split into pre and post Hippocratic style physicians resulting in many discussions, debates, arguments etc. in a once harmonious profession. These disagreements will take up more and more of the physician’s time which is invariably billed to the insurance provider.
  5. As confidence in the medical profession wanes so does the placebo effect of all a physician’s activities. This will mean “I know my doctor wants to make me well so I will try to please him” is less effective and medical care more expensive.
  6. The major effect of inert placebo and the placebo effect arising from the patient detecting the chemical changes inside them, will markedly diminish. The predictable result is that most medications will become about 50% less effective. Thus higher doses and a greater variety of combinations of medications will significantly increase a nation’s health care costs.
  7. With sanctioned medical killing of the most helpless, there will be less interest and effort in finding and providing better palliative medication and care.
  8. The physician’s accustomed self image of a person who always tries to treat the most hopeless cases will change, making the temptation toward the power over life by killing or curing less easily contained.
  9. Euthanasia is likely to increase malpractice insurance because some people will survive and others change their minds and sue the physician for mal-practice.

 

6. Effects on world- wide human ecology

  1. Human life depends on ecological balances more than that of various species now threatened with extinction. A sensitive indicator of a tip toward a pro-death imbalance is the lessening concern for those with so called “lower quality of life”. This leads eventually to a folk philosophy, “You should only live as long a life is enjoyable.” This will lead to a shorter average life span, fewer workers and consumers in a world already lacking sufficient people.
  2. The world is happiest when people are outward looking with hope of a better future for all. With more pessimism about the future of human-kind, there is less hope for the future generation and more talk of death and killing, particularly war and euthanasia. These two have gone together in the past. There is nothing more senseless and less economic than war.
  3. When people have babies they plan for the future of their children. This is hope operationalized. When the world is hopeful people are more inclined to have children and care for their elderly and handicapped. With more children the world is more hopeful on all fronts.
  4. The ancient respect for the elderly will decline and with it the loss of much wisdom and patience.
  5. With easy access to clean medical killing, the world will more easily give up the struggle to survive. More apparently sane, competent people desiring to end their lives will require more counsellors to dissuade them or at least to determine if their decision is rational. Those found to be incompetent by reason of mental illness but not wishing to grasp the exigencies of life will require more social workers and more social assistance.
  6. With officially accepted and promoted killing of the “less valuable” there will be more “murders” of those contributing to less pleasure in life. There will likely be more murder-suicides easily justified by, “but they were suffering so much,” and thus lighter sentences. There will be more people imprisoned, requiring more prisons and the demands for more taxes.
  7. Rather than promoting patience and maturity there will be more people muttering, “Since I’m going down, I am going to take you, who made my life so miserable, with me.”
  8. With less honoring of the elderly and greater hunger, there could be more cannibalism.
  9. The concept of mercy will change from curing to killing with unrestrainable consequences.

 

7. Greater death agony

  1. The human mind and body were made to struggle to continue living. Even under the most dangerous and painful conditions, humans don’t easily give up. Thus there is one last desperate struggle to stay alive known as the death agony which appears to affect everyone in the final moments of dying. The amount of struggle is best measured in the levels of post mortem serum catecholamines (stress hormones) (2). The levels depend on the reason for death and are among the highest if the patient is poisoned. Thus giving people intravenous poisons is likely to be the least dignified way to die.
  2. Capital punishment by medication is one of the least merciful of killings.

 

8. Tampering with life protecting instincts

  1. Every species has a powerful instinct against killing its own kind. The Species Specific Instinctual Restraint of Aggression and Abandonment (SSIRAA) (3) has kept people from attacking and/or abandoning helpless humans. Once a person has killed or seriously injured a child, it become much easier to repeat the act. This mechanism helps explain why women who have abortions are more likely to abuse or neglect their children. Thus anyone who contributes to euthanasia has a reduced SSIRAA and cannot count on an inbuilt automatic restraint to help them contain their anger toward children or other helpless family members when they become murderously enraged or tempted to abandon them.
  2. Instinctual parent-infant, pair, fraternal, and rescue bonds formed in families result in automatic rescue and protection responses. All these are damaged by abortion. This has become an age where about 60% of women and men have significantly contributed to the termination of a child. The family defense bonds are weakened and consequently the helplessness of pitiable members of their family will more likely evoke attack rather than protection and nurture when they cry. Thus freely available abortion results in a greater demand for euthanasia and vice versa.
  3. With weakened instinctive protection, healthy family members more easily find rationalizations to justify euthanasia. Once these are well rehearsed in self-directed arguments, they are easily used to persuade others to adopt the same tactic.
  4. Helplessness instinctively evokes both attack and protection in mammalian species. Which eventuates depends on a variety of factors, some of which are described above. When nurture is the response, the rescued individual is usually accepted and the rescuer praised. Thus this behaviour, having been powerfully reinforced, is more likely to be repeated. If attack ensues, the individual is most likely to feel guilt but defends their actions by thinking then saying, but I had no choice. In this way they become less loving and more narcissistic, and narcissism is very difficult to treat.

 

THE BENEFITS OF BEING PROLIFE TO THE VERY END.

  1. People learn to be loving and more persistent in their loving by caring for someone who cannot repay them and who continues to wilt despite their best efforts.
  2. Children have an opportunity to speak to a domineering parent who now cannot constantly control the conversation.
  3. Children at last have the occasion to physically and emotionally care for a parent who always insisted they could look after themselves.
  4. Taking turns at caring for a dying parent necessitates greater family communication and cohesion.
  5. The family do not have guilt blocked grief and therefore can more quickly get on with their normal lives.
  6. The family learns the greater importance of hands-on care rather than a material gift.
  7. The dying person has more time to engage in finishing their 10 final tasks. Therefore they are more likely to relinquish life peacefully.
  8. The dying person has more time to grow in their spirit.
  9. The family has more opportunity to listen and learn wisdom as their parent slowly dies.
  10. Being close to a dying person helps all those around to see and accept their mortality.
  11. Peaceful dying is extraordinarily beautiful. It sheds peace on all those around.

Prolife dying ensures the person dies willingly with their tasks on earth completed and reconciliation with friends, family and God accomplished. Although it isn’t easy, the time of a good death is easier to predict. The dying person can leave with their family’s agreement, especially after they have committed their spirit to God.

 

CONCLUSION

The practice of euthanasia has no established benefits for anyone. There are at least 43 reasons not to use euthanasia, most of which have a large economic consequence, especially making health care more expensive. Although death is and should be regarded as an enemy, it can be peaceful and beneficial to families and society.

 

REFERENCES

  1. Ney PG. Christian Principles for Palliative Care, Victoria, Pioneer Publishing, 2007.
  2. Zhu BL, Ishikasa T, Mahiue T, Li DR et al. Post mortem serum catecholamine levels in relation to the cause of death. Forensic Sci Int. 2007; 173: 122-9.
  3. Ney PG. The Species Specific Restraint to Aggression and Abandonment. Retrieved from http://messengers2.com/the-species-specific-instinctual-restraint-of-aggression-and-abandonment/