« February 2005 | Main | April 2005 »

March 31, 2005

Would you believe we're worse than . . . .

The Nazis?

In the aftermath of the judicially-ordered starvation-killing of Terri Schiavo, America has achieved a dubious distinction: We are now more depraved than the Nazis, whom we prosecuted for crimes against humanity a mere sixty years ago.

Now, I realize that I'm making a spectacularly outrageous charge, and admit that we're not even in the same ballpark as the National Socialists when it comes to depriving people of their rights -- not to mention their lives. But there is one area in which I think the accusation is reasonable, and supported by the historical record.

A review of the Nazi's murderous practices reveals that 70,000 people were euthanized, killed, without their permission, because they were living "lives not worth being lived," at least according to the likes of Adolf Hitler and his followers.

All aspects of German society was implicated in the killings, from the judiciary to the medical profession. Nurses were actively involved in more than 10,000 of the killings, with 14 nurses standing trial more than twenty years later in Munich during the 1960s.

The road to the killing of the sick, the mentally ill, began in Germany in 1920, when a pamphlet, "The Sanctioning of the Destruction of Life Unworthy of Living," coauthored by a physician, was widely read. The cause was helped by the success of a novel in the 1930s, Sendung und Gewissen (Mission and Conscience), wherein a woman with multiplesclerosis is euthanized -- killed -- by her husband. Widely read, this book helped the German public grow accustomed to the idea that some people ought to be killed because others judged their lives to be unworthy of continuing.

The novel was subsequently made into a popular film, the first of several dealing with the concept of "lives not worth living." The medical profession was receptive to the cost-based arguments in favor of killing the ill, which often began with proposals to limit treatment to the elderly.

"It must be made clear to anyone suffering from an incurable disease that the useless dissipation of costly medications drawn from the public store cannot be justified" and "...it made no sense for persons 'on the threshold of old age' to receive services such as orthopedic therapy or dental bridgework; such services were to be reserved for healthier elements of the population."

"You Are Sharing the Load! A Genetically Ill Individual Costs Approximately 50,000 Reichsmarks by the Age of Sixty," read a poster from the mid-30s. Students were indoctrinated about the neglible worth of the handicapped through the use of high school textbooks with math problems using the cost of caring for the mentally ill as examples.

In the late 1930s, a Reich Committee comprised of three medical and phsychiatric specialists drafted a proposed law calling for the "destruction of life unworthy of life."

In 1939, a Ministry of Justice panel proposed:

Clause 1: Whoever is suffering from an incurable or terminal illness which is a major burden to him or others, can request mercy killing by a doctor, provided it is his express wish and has the approval of a specially empowered doctor.

Clause 2: The life of a person who because of incurable mental illness requires permanent institutionalization and is not able to sustain an independent existence, may be prematurely terminated by medical measures in a painless and covert manner.

The Germans instituted a protocol requring physicians and midwives to report the birth of mentally ill or deformed children. A panel of physicians would examine reports -- not the actual child -- and decide if the child should be killed. The parents were then contacted and told to bring the children to "treatment centers," where they were informed that, for the child's well being, special "care" would be provided.

The children targeted for euthanasia were either starved or given an overdose shortly after they arrived at the medical facility.

Sound familiar?

In the pediatric unit of Haar, for example, 332 children died of deliberate starvation or by an overdose of Luminal [Phenobarbital]. This drug was mixed into the children's food every morning and night until they became unconscious and developed pneumonia. Some were also given injections of morphine and scopolamine (Burleigh, 1994, p. 102).

Here's where I maintain that Americans have demonstrably devolved to a point where, morally, we are worse than the Nazis. I say this because vast segments of the American public maintain, without shame, that Terri Schiavo ought to die, and that those of us opposed to her death were deserving of opprobrium.

How did the Germans feel about killing the sick, the ill, the defenseless? They were ashamed.

The nursing staff of the pediatric unit of Haar was led by a senior nurse, Emma D., and two younger colleagues, Emma L. and Maria S. They were forced to swear an oath of loyalty, pledging eternal silence regarding what went on in the clinic, under pain of death. Initially, however, they swallowed the line that what they were doing was scientifically important, rationalizing the high number of deaths as being merely what one might call collateral casualties. Although they sometimes requested transfers, and undoubtedly found the work disturbing, nonetheless they also regarded it as necessary to 'release' the 'regrettable creatures' in their care from their suffering. Like many nurses who worked in these clinics, they received a 25RM-per-month [approximately $80 US] supplementary payment, know pejoratively as 'Schmutzgeld' [dirty money]. The doctors sometimes received a 250RM [approximately $800 US] Christmas bonus. In some clinics (notoriously the Kalmenhof at Idstein), the tensions of the job were soothed by a visit to the wine cellars to mark every fiftieth killing with copious amounts of wine and cider (Burleigh, 1994, p. 104-105).

That's right, the Germans at least had the vestiges of a conscience, such that they knew that what they were doing was, hmmm, what do those Taliban-Wing-Republican-Christers call it? "Wrong!" Yes, that's it.

The Nazis had to bribe people and swear them to silence to engage in the kind of cold-hearted extermination that the American Judiciary and the ACLU defends.

The Germans expanded their euthanasia programs from just children to include mentally ill adults, some of whom were sane enough to comprehend what the doctors and nurses were about to do -- and to request they be given last rites by a priest.

The bottom line is that we have become a society wherein it is acceptable to call for the court-ordered starvation of a woman as the "humane" means of ending a "life not worth living."

We should be ashamed.

Posted by Mike Lief at 11:57 AM

This guy needs a Tic-Tac

From the Great White North comes this tale of Canadian ingenuity. Click with caution, 'cause this one's really gross.

TORONTO -- An accused drunk driver tried but failed to foil a police breathalyser after stuffing his mouth full of feces. "I don't think alcohol alone would make you do something as disgusting as that," Insp. Tom McDonald said.

Arrested Sunday after his pickup was pulled over on a highway just outside Barrie, Ont., the 59-year-old driver was put in a cruiser and taken to a police station for testing.

Sgt. James Buchanan said the prisoner vomited, urinated and defecated in the rear of the squad car.

After arriving at the station, he said the man grabbed a handful of his own waste "and placed it in his mouth, attempting to trick the breathalyser machine."

It didn't work, Buchanan said.

Breathalyser tests registered twice the legal limit of alcohol in the man, he said. The man was charged with impaired driving.

In all my time as a district attorney, having reviewed hundreds -- maybe thousands -- of DUI arrests, nothing rivals the sheer committment of this Canuck to do whatever -- and I do mean whatever it takes to try and beat the breathalyzer.

Most Americans prefer the more hygenic technique of lying about what they've had to drink, or whether they have any physical problems that might interfere with their ability to complete the field sobriety exercises administered by the cops.

The award for the most honest goes to a fellow pulled over by drunk driving in my county, who when asked, "Sir, do you have any physical defects?" replied, "Yeah, my dick is too small."

Ahem.

Oddly enough, he chose to plead guilty, rather than run that one by a jury of his peers.

Posted by Mike Lief at 08:46 AM

March 28, 2005

What of the right to life?

I've written about the right to die in my book, "And the Walls Came Tumbling Down: Closing Arguments That Changed the Way We Live--From Protecting Free Speech to Winning Women's Suffrage to Defending the Right to Die," in the chapter dealing with the Karen Ann Quinlan case. I haven't said much about the Terri Schiavo case -- apart from a great post-dinner conversation at my bride's family's house Sunday night.

But I find it ironic that the debate in the country has shifted from society's predisposition to err on the side of life when it comes to the severely ill, where Quinlan's parents had to fight for years for their daughter's right to refuse heroic medical measures, to today, when Schiavo's parents are losing the battle to keep their daughter from being killed. And I find it even more ironic that the court's have said, "Let us err on the side of life when it comes to convicted killers, preventing the execution of 17-year-old stone-cold murderers, but brain-damaged women are unworthy of such caution and not in need of such protection."

The key distinction between the two cases -- apart from the State, the doctors and the courts wanting to save Karen Ann and the courts refusing to save Terri's life, is that Karen Ann's desires were reliably known. Her parents testified that she had expressed a lack of fear about dying, and a willingness to meet her Maker when He deemed her time on earth to be at an end. Karen Ann was a deeply religious Catholic -- as were her parents -- and refusing mechanical means of extending life was consistent with their faith.

Ultimately, she was taken off the respirator, but continued to breathe on her own, until she finally passed away years later. No one denied Karen Ann food or water, and I don't hesitate to say that all parties, most certainly her parents, would have been horrified at the suggestion that they starve their daughter to hasten her death.

Schiavo, on the other hand . . . . There has never been a reliable record that Terri intended to reject all life-saving measures, certainly not food and water. To rely upon the representations of Michael Schiavo about her wishes is a fool's errand. Michael Schaivo did not raise the supposed statement by his wife regarding medical treatment until years after her illness.

Terri is not on a respirator; unlike Quinlan, heroic measures were not being used to keep her alive. A feeding tube is not comparable to being on a heart-lung machine.

What troubles me is the issue of others deciding when a life is not worth living. It is far closer to 1930s Germany than I'm comfortable with, and before anyone accuses me of hysterical Nazi-phobic ravings, take some time and acquaint yourself with the eugenics policies of the Nazi regime. During the Weimar regime of the 1920s, handicapped children were integrated into society, and Germany led the world in their efforts to provide for the needs of the handicapped. Later, mental defectives and children suffering from severe handicaps were euthanized by the Nazis years before they turned to industrial-scale extermination of the Jews.

Neither those children -- nor Terri Schiavo -- had a say in whether their lives were unworthy, whether society was better off without them burdening the rest of us by dint of their existence.

My bride's uncle was extremely upset by what he perceives to be the intrusion of the Congress into a deeply personal family decision. I, on the other hand, believe that, although imperfect, the actions of Congress were of the utmost importance, inasmuch as two parents were crying out for assistance, while the courts prevented them from saving their daughter's life.

Returning to Germany, terrible things occurred in a Western nation when its political system, it's legal system, and its people lost their moral compass. Pastor Martin Niemoller spoke of the end result when good people fail to act to prevent great evil.

Should the people and their elected representatives stand by and do nothing in the face of injustice? I'm disappointed that no elected official had the courage to do as Pres. Andrew Jackson, who, when he defied a ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court, said, "[Chief Justice] John Marshall has issued his decision; now let him enforce it!"

As a result of the Karen Ann Quinlan case, patients are routinely given paperwork to fill out, telling hospital administrators of their wishes should they need to be revived.

Who would have thought that within a scant thirty years, we'll need to have forms to tell health care professionals, "I do NOT want you to kill me; I do NOT want you to starve me; I do NOT want you to decide that my life is not worth living unless I so decide."

Chilling.

Posted by Mike Lief at 04:16 PM

March 21, 2005

One of these things is not like the other

Compare and contrast, then discuss.

Heh.

Posted by Mike Lief at 06:03 PM