Maggie's Farm

Here's an e-mail exchange which took place between myself and a Canadian organization known as "Dying With Dignity."

Dear Dying With Dignity,

I admire the work that you are doing, and I wish you the best. I must add, however, that excluding euthanasia from the discussion is a failure on your part to create a complete conversation. In the future, I anticipate that millions of elderly will be euthanized. This number will greatly exceed the number of patients who voluntarily ask for the procedure.

You are catering to a small group; and ignoring the large group. That's not very responsible. Your organization should establish guidelines on who should be euthanized (for example, those who are brain-dead) when they should be euthanized, and who should do it. By avoiding this subject, you are sending the message that you're not really serious about helping people to die with dignity.

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Dear Ron, Thank you for your honesty.

I really respect what you had said and believe it or not we as organization are far from satisfied in regards to the legislation that governs MAID. We wish things were different especially around the eligibility criteria for mental health conditions and dementia. The example that you had outlined (brain dead) in your e mail is fairly well taken care of. Individuals with such a condition do not qualify for MAID but they will not be left to live. In situations like that life supportive measures get to be turned off, and individuals die. Individuals have been kept alive as a result of a dispute between the family and the hospital.

What i have learned in my years with DWD Canada is that you can have a good wishes and intentions, but you also need to be in synchronicity with what society can digest. So I do hear you Ron I really do but at the same time I truly believe that us coming up with guidelines like that would not change anything unless we can change things legally in courts, and according to our lawyers that is just not a possibility right now. If you have more questions or if you need further clarification please let me know.

Warmly,

Nino Sekopet
Personal Support Program Manager

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Nino,

That was a great response. I understand your position better now, and I hope that you succeed in giving people more control over their future. In America, we've got tens of millions of barely conscious elderly people being warehoused; because nobody knows what to do with them. They suffer a lot, and the only thing that they can remember is that they used to have children. They keep asking when their son or daughter is going to take them home. But those sons and daughters will never arrive; they never even come to visit. It's a human tragedy of enormous proportions. And since nobody wants to take moral responsibility for finding a solution, the problem just keeps getting bigger and bigger.

Honestly, when I walk through a nursing home, and see the human skeletons, I want to cry. They reach out to you from their bed, asking to be rescued. Did you ever read Dante's Inferno? Well, we've built an even better version, and the first circle of hell is filled with our own parents. Of course, the doctors don't want to appear unfeeling, so they've decided to starve old people to death. They think that's compassionate.

Nino, it's pointless to wait for public opinion to change. Nobody is ever going to ask for their own parents to be put down. At issue here is the legal and moral difference between euthanasia; and murder. Personally, I would have had no problem euthanizing my own mother when she was dying a slow, painful death from leukemia. But most children of elderly parents couldn't bring themselves to do that. That's why I believe that a new specialty of "Compassionate Euthanizer" should be created. The medical world will never agree to this, so it will need to be offered as a religious certificate, rather than a medical certificate. Hospital Priests undergo a year of training so that they can council grieving family members. A Com-Euth would receive similar training, plus medical training on how much insulin to inject, in order to obtain the best results.

Every nursing home would be visited by a Com-Euth once a week. During that time, the children or legal guardian of Com-Euth candidates would be contacted, and given a choice. They can attend the ceremony, or if they object to the procedure, they will have to assume financial responsibility for the continued care of the Com-Euth candidate. That's two thousand dollars a week. Nobody has that kind of money. So the net result is that almost one hundred percent of Com-Euth candidates will be euthanized; and then cremated. This doesn't cost much, so it can be done at State expense. But is it murder?

As I'm sure you know, everybody wants to be "The Good Guy." A nice person who would never kill anybody. Females, in particular suffer from this delusion. They always have coffee meetings, and talk about raising more money so that old people can be kept alive even longer. They are completely divorced from reality. I suppose that I could put-up a Com-Euth website, and get the ball rolling. All I can tell you is that there will never be a perfect solution. There will only be a group of men working in concert to bring the release of death to people who need it. After the website goes-up, I'll send you the link. Keep up the good work!

Sincerely,

Ron B. Liebermann