Draft version
WHY DOES THE RIGHT NEED TO MURDER TERRI SCHIAVO BY EUTHANESIA?
A personal opinion.
It all boils down to money. And allegedly ''post-human'' philo-Semite Nietzscheanism, the neocon and fanatical kind that pretends to ''return'' us to a cast society of the elected few, but with a new ''eyes blinding'' Temple uniquely entitled to voice the ''authoritative'' opinion for the masses just as Dostoievsky's Great Inquisitor. To paraphrase Bertolt Brecht: ''They starved the communists to death. No one moved. They starved the Jews to death. No one moved. They starved all opponents to death. And still I did not protest. When they starved me to death, there was no one left to protest.''
But this cold-blooded murder could still be avoided easily. Terri Schiavo could quickly be saved from a cold-handed murder by euthanasia. It would suffice that a private clinic or a private hospital (religious or preferably secular) asks her transfer with the promise of granting her all the medical treatments available. Including serious, loyal and non-murderous intensive care.
Money? Yes, money. The statistics indicate that because of the general increase in human longevity, around 70 to 80 % of all the costs weighting on the Health Care system and caused by the average citizen living in a rich country, are incurred duringthe last 3 years of life. In the USA, the Health Care system is largely private. The financial drain is therefore felt by the owners much more than in Europe where the cost are mutualized by a national public system. These costs drive the profits of private clinics and hospitals down (in reality it even does so to a greater extend than wide-spread medical incompetence hidden behind the neocon attack against so-called frivolous law-suits). This incompetence is clearly manifested in the present case and the fraudulent but convenient definition of ''vegetative state'' of a person that still interacts with her loved ones. A definition which moreover is beside the point, which is the right not to starved because incompetent doctors and judges cannot agree with one another on a purely and demonstrably scientific basis. You are free to characterize this incompetence as a divergence of expert opinion. But still you should grant that such legitimate scientific divergence should imply the protection of life not its forceful ending. If you do not you have overstepped your bonds, whoever you are.)
Around 40 million American citizens (leave or take a few thousands) cannot afford any private insurance. Medicaid and Medicare supply for their needs but only when they are in dire straits. And therefore are deemed to cost to much to the system! The McDo and Wal-Mart economy which is presently delocalizing paying and permanent jobs in Asia cannot have any consideration (pity? Charity?) for the life of poor disenfranchised citizens. A new slavery and a new domesticity is what the neocons Nietzscheans have planned for them. And this is incompatible with an authentic intensive care policy that would legally exclude euthanasia.
Exactly the same logic applies to Bush's attack on Social Security. Those damned three last years of human life which are so costly for ''new-born'' again neocons who would rather use the extra cash for tax rebates for their rich friends. Who can still remember that when Old Age Security was first introduced in Anglo-Saxon countries, it was calculated to take action exactly three years before the average dying age of the working population? Europe did not do better until its was pushed by the fear of strong communist parties and the social competition of the Eastern Bloc at least until the early seventies. The great American economist J. Galbraith had spoken of the need for counter-weights to oppose the suicidal greediness of private and now globalized capital.
It has been said in Europe that society should avoid what is called ''thérapeutique acharnement'' (therapeutic relentlessness). But we can all see that no rich person, be it the Pope, the ''prince'' Rainier of Monaco, or even a rogue scandrel like Yeltsine, is ever deprived of the best health care available at public expense. Would you bet on Renquhist asking for his own euthanasia if he will ever need intensive care again? The sad fact is that, in our Nietzschean societies, some people with wealth and social status have come to see themselves as ''divinely elected people''. In effect, an un-American and different cast of citizens with different democratic rights. (They even wage imperial preventive wars in the so-called ''Greater Middle East'' and elsewhere in order to suppress any external rejection of these odious beliefs. But to do so they also need to permanently suppress American democratic dissent, for instance through liberticide laws such as the Patriot Act.)
Furthermore, authentic intensive care means dying in dignity. This does not and cannot means to be helped to die, in any way, shape or form. What it means is to have one's right and dignity protected so as not to die in pain while excluding any suicide or request to accomplish suicide. In fact, when suicide happens in the ''normal population'', for instance among the Youth or the depressed, it is clearly and rightly seen as a failure of personality and above all a failure of the social system of prevention and care. A weakened person cannot be allowed to request a suicide simply because s/he would not do so in ''normal'' circumstances.
Pain is problematic. Not in the sense that it cannot be controlled. In fact it can and routinely is in the hospitals. Patients are given increasingly massive does of morphine with that specific excuse until they quickly die from the edemas caused by the massive intake of morphine. The problem with pain is that the doctors (all supposed experts and highly paid citizens who have taken the Hippocratic oath pledging never to impair life) have no time to study pain and to help first assess it scientifically (a tolerable level of pain does in fact constitute the way the body triggers some of its defensive and self-healing mechanisms) and, second, control it so as to make it totally tolerable to the patient. And yet, such pain killers, less lethal than morphine and causing no edemas, do exist. But they have one important draw back: they prolong life! A human and publicly financed and controlled intensive care policy as a part of a public Health Care system is still to be invented. In the USA, certainly, but equally in Europe where the roguest Nietzschean capitalists are now aiming at privatizing the existing public systems despite the fact that they only cost 9 % of GPD as against 15 % for the private and deplorable American system.
Terri Schiavo is being murdered for ideological, political and financial reasons. The neocons have imagined what is known, in mathematical games theory, as a ''win-win'' situation. The judges and the doctors pretend to respect the patient's will and dignity (a will which in this case has never been expressed except by an allegedly adulterous husband living with other person now for quite a while. The husband has the right to do what he wishes for himself. But he cannot take a decision for his wife without any signed document from her and against the will of her parents. Even if such a will existed society could not condone euthanasia.) The politicians from the Democrat side do not dare intervene because they fear the creation of a judicial precedent. (In fact, politicians have a duty to intervene in this case because a person is being murdered by the cold-blooded deprivation of food and liquids, a case which should already have triggered the preventive action of the police and the social services both State and Federal, and perhaps also the World Health Organization. The truth is that Terri Schiavo is not dying now of her medical condition. She is starved to death. The State intervention only need to reassert the right of any individual to be protected against injuries to his/her person and not to die from hunger. The State is not here called to legislate on any other issue.)
In reality it might well be that neocons will surf public opinion for political gains. It is part of the dynamics of a win-win policy when the initiators believe that they can directly or indirectly control all the moves. If they think that they politically need to, they will then take the opportunity to instrumentalize the case of Terri Schiavo in order introduce their own agenda (such as the abortion) even if this is totally irrelevant to the case at hand. Cowardice and demagoguery have always been the death bed of authentic democracy. And the Procrustean bed of soft or hard fascism.
This supposed win-win situation is aggravated by the class origin of most ''experts'' involved. It is well known that the judges and the doctors are all ''experts'' who come mostly from the same wealthy classes. Even American bourgeois sociologists will tell you that this is relevant to their thinking. They do not need to resort to conspiracy. They share the same ''sets of beliefs}'' and they have their long hands on all the levers of power (including the academic and mediatic ability to create the public opinion they need in order to ''democratically'' proceed with their censitarian and class policies. And you can be certain that they have all read the statistics and they all have extensive private insurance for themselves and quick access to the most select private clinics. While some of their friends have already asked to be frozen until nanotechnology can repair their broken cells, they have concluded that the health costs caused by poor working American or European citizens are just not worth it. Even if you factor in the high-quality jobs involved in any extensive geriatric national policy, and the important Economic Multiplicator Effect these jobs would quickly unleash, not to speak of increased structural micro and macro-productivity, such a policy would still mean a certain amount of social redistribution of collective wealth which is totally antithetic to the neocon (Republican or Democrat) philosophy which relies on the massive transfer of socially created wealth to the richest 1 % and 10 % though a flat tax policy squarely applied to personal income taxes as well as capital gains and dividends.
The noecon fraudulent and very fragile win-win scenario could easily be made into a Waterloo of the Nietzschean right-wing both within the Democratic and Republican ranks. In no way should this issue be left into their hands and the hands of the most vocal elements of the most radical and demagogues churches. In fact, the right-wing churches are facing their own Waterloo in this case: their hypocrite sermons are in direct contradiction with their financial greediness.
As for strict SECULAR advocates of the separation of Church and State, the absolute sanctity and dignity of life should always come first, when science is able to describe it as human life and when the only thing missing to re-establish its primacy is the organized solidarity of the local, national and internal human communities to which we all belong as strictly equal members.
To speak with absolute (personal) clarity: there is no scientifically or ethically acceptable way to compare the status of an amalgamation of cells forming a developing fetus before three months (or before the ''day after'', for that matter) and a person already born, be s/he handicapped or not. In the first case, the mother is the only person allowed to decide whether or not she wants to contribute freely to the general reproduction of the human species. Once the fetus has acquired distinctively human characteristics, then the decision belong to society as a whole, but not before. With is should also come societal responsibility such as maternal and parental leaves, child support, public health and dental care and the like. In the second case, the PERSON is already part of the human community and represents our species inheritance and its distinctive potentiality for successful or unsuccessfully adaptation. As such that person should be doubly precious to society and to the human species.
To repeat though: in the present case this is not the issue. The issue is pure manipulation for ulterior political, religious and financial motives. THE ISSUE IN TERRI SCHIAVO'S CASE IS COLD-BLOODED MURDER BY PLANNED AND FORCED STARVATION. (a)
Paul De Marco, professor of International Relations.
March 28, 2005
a) Please note that in its attacks against the International Community and the UN, the (neocon) United States of America has refused to recognize the right to be protected against starvation as a universal right. With the full backing of the supposed religious Right. At the same time, to protect its collective behind, in this case as in others, the US Administration has refused to recognize the jurisdiction of the Criminal Penal Court (which might very well apply in this case). It only recognizes international kangaroo military courts staffed by the same people who imagined and implemented the war crimes perpetrated at Mazar-e-Sharif and Abu Ghraib. The secular forces should get their thinking straight and immediately go the barricades in the name of individual and social concrete human rights, instead of leaving the field entirely to the Right-wing. If they can form a progressive alliance with the most progressive and less archaic Churches, so much the better. Or else, we have to do it alone. The majority will be with us if we speak frankly, in plain language and without ulterior motives. I had already said so in my ''Lit du neo-fascisme'' and its Annex ''Les origines du nazisme''. (see Fascism/Racism/Exclusivism Section of http://lacommune1871.tripod.com . Lack of thinking and cowardice is the beginning of death. It is unacceptable. Terri Schiavo with her varied and intentioned expressions teaches this invaluable lesson also.