Alfie's Treatment is a Warning; This is the New "Palliative Care," The "Third Path" to Euthanasia

Life Tree has an interesting and enlightening article about the Third Path, which is a method of "passive euthanasia" that encourages people to reject even ordinary treatment (food and water and ordinary medication) to bring about death. If people don't choose it, however, there's often a creative way to impose it. Here's a bit from the article:

“Under traditional medical ethics, the guiding principle is ‘do no harm.’ But contemporary bioethics abandons this…in an effort to find the utilitarian goal of the ‘greatest good for the greatest number.’ Under these principles, preserving the life of the human patient is not considered paramount.”

Strategy and Program Design

Have you noticed that people in this more nuanced wing of the euthanasia movement seem to be working from the same set of talking points?
Everyone should have an advance directive to protect himself from unnecessary medical treatment at the end of life. 

Withholding/withdrawing food and water is a natural – and even pleasant – way to die, and is a perfectly ethical means of controlling the time of death. 

“The principle of double effect” can be used to justify terminal sedation.

The people who are talking these points are financed by powerful foundations.

Among the major foundations spearheading this effort are 1) the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which funded the research, and infrastructure, and 2) George Soros’ Open Society Institute/Project on Death in America, which funded a cadre of professionals. In the last 10-15 years these two foundations provided well over $300 million to advance the integration of their version of palliative care into the American health care system...

In a culture which truly respects each life, death will never be imposed. In a culture which values life only on a utilitarian scale and in which resources become scarce, each person who faces a life-threatening or chronic condition will find that life endangered. This will be especially so among the elderly, as imposed death will be offered as the morally ethical choice. We must arm ourselves with the truth so that we are able to reject EVERY effort to impose death.

Alfie is a sick and vulnerable cog in the bureaucracy of socialized medicine. He is seen as a leech on the system who sucks up scarce medical resources that could be used for transgender surgeries and experimental reproductive technologies. Even if families raise the money to care for Alfie (and Charlie Gard and all the others vulnerable souls sacrificed to the idea of "perfection"), the system wants him dead! To care for him and have him survive, especially in a handicapped state, encourages others to embrace life and demand the same care. We can't have that, now, can we? Think of the money wasted on useless eaters.

There's a saying that perfection is the enemy of the good. That is certainly true here. We live in a society that talks a lot about the rights of the disabled, but is quick to kill them off if they're identified in the womb. In Denmark in 2016, all but four babies with Down Syndrome were murdered in utero. Iceland kills almost 100% of Down babies. In Great Britain, 90% of babies diagnosed with Down prenatally are aborted. Increasingly, the way to "eliminate" an imperfect condition is to eliminate everyone who has it.

Suppose the same approach were taken with heart disease, high blood pressure, leukemia, diabetes, auto-immune diseases, etc. Pretty soon, hospitals wouldn't be necessary; most of the population would be dead. And with the growing move to genetic screening, we can expect more and more pressure on parents to eliminate their babies in the womb suffering from incurable diseases or conditions.

In Dickens A Christmas Carol, the Ghost of Christmas Present reminds Ebeneezer Scrooge of his callous words when asked for charity. The ghost shows him Tiny Tim and the bitter old man's heart is touched. Will Tiny Tim die, he asks, and receives his own words back:

“What then? If he be like to die, he had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”

And then the ghost warns him

“Man, if man you be in heart, not adamant, forbear that wicked cant until you have discovered What the surplus is, and Where it is. Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die? It may be, that in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man’s child. Oh God! To hear the Insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much life among his hungry brothers in the dust.”

How many so-called doctors, scientists, judges, and politicians need to be admonished with the ghost's words today? Many I think.

How Alfie is being treated is a warning. Sick babies in the womb, sick little ones on children's hospital wards, sick adults labeled and dismissed as "vegetables," those with DNR on their medical charts -- all are targets for the "third path" palliative "care" and hastened death. Get rid of the imperfect and make more room for the perfect.

When you look at Alfie, recognize that you and your family may be next.