They Came For the (insert group)and I Said Nothing, I Wasn't a (member of that group)*

[bronchitikat]

Oh look, MPs are debating a Private Members Bill on Assisted Dying.  Now I know there are all sorts of arguments for and against such a thing.  I merely point people in the direction of Abortion.  Illegal in this country til the mid sixties, it was legallised provided that it could be proved that the mother-to-be's health would otherwise be

Comments

[annelaure]

In Switzerland you can be "put to sleep" on demand, even when you're reasonably young (50's) and don't suffer for any terminal disease, but just because you don't want to grow old(er).
In two weeks I'll attend a talk show in Toulouse about the whole palliative care unit, held, among others, by the deputy Leonetti (search Leonetti law), and several of the doctors I work with. It's going to be interesting.

[bronchitikat]

Now palliative care I'm all for. Trouble is the bean counters of the world tend to rate it as 'too expensive'. So it's use gets severely limited.

Bet they wouldn't be so 'it's too expensive' if it was one of their parents, or them!

[annelaure]

You "cost" more in your last couple of months, specially when you're terminally ill (cancer usually) than you did in most of your life. It's just not a valid reason for me. The speakers at the conference talked about that subject, among others (how medicine become "judiciarized", how things are more and more a question of costs, and how they don't seem to find a way out of it..

[bronchitikat]

Once upon a time most of Europe, and the Americas, took a more 'Christian' view of life - that every one mattered and having a 'good death' also mattered.

Then we turned to worship Mammon. Hence things are increasingly ruled by the Bottom Line.

It comes to something when some of the richest countries in the world say that care of the dying is 'too expensive'!