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Pastimes : The Boxing Ring Revived -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (4688)	2/20/2003 5:14:31 PM
From: The Philosopher	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 7720

Hmmm. I wouldn't say that leglislative enactments and court decisions "make" public policy, but they certainly reflect core principles of justice and fair play. I think you have to separate the legal sphere (legislation and court decisions) from the political sphere (the way in which public policy is made). The latter has no direct impact on the lives of individuals, but is entirely process oriented. The former is a process of threatening or using force (the police power, which is the ultimate enforcement mechanism for government) to force desirable acts or punish undesirable ones. Two quite different issues, IMO. The actual laws, of course, as I have said many times, are in fact an embodiment of the moral and ethical principles of the society. No disagreement there. But do you really think it is desirable for a society to use its police powers to force people to continue to undergo what is for them unbearable "pain, misfortune, and incapacitation"? I don't think it's a matter of saying that those who prefer to continue to live in face of those are suckers, but a matter of saying that the individual has the right to choose for him- or her-self how he or she will deal with those. When you say you fear it will become a "duty to die," do you mean a legal duty, or a societal expectation? I think it is highly far-fetched to suggest that legalizing suicide will lead to a law requiring people under certain circumstances to accept euthanasia. I think that isn't on a slippery slope, it's in an entirely different mountain range. If you mean that children will encourage their parents to move on, well societies have dealt with that concept in various ways for millenia. It's nothing new, and I have no reason to believe that the right to die movement will have much affect on society's attitude toward an obligation to take one's life before its time. However, I do think that society has a right--indeed, an obligation--to look more candidly than it yet has at the enormous cost to society which the medical advances of the past thirty or so years have caused to be incurred during the last days of life. The figures I have seen various places differ somewhat, but are startling -- something like 30% of all Medicare expenses are incurred during the last few days of life, when realistically there is no hope of prolonging life more than a few days, but the medical profession, and society, have not yet accepted the inevitability of death and the cessation of any but pallative care beyond the stage where death is imminent. So we pour billions of dollars into these therapies, while denying basic care to so many healthy people, including pregnant women and infants, in desperate need of it. That is not the same issue at all of forced euthanasia, but it IS a belief that our society needs to look at whether the medical advances of the past fifty years have been matched by advances in our moral and social principles and practices.