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We could cure the common cold or solve the Gay marriage conundrum by respectively snuffing the snotty and burying the Gay.
My inner libertarian wants to believe that every individual has the right to do with their body what ever they please. However my inner conservative thinks that those who want to have themselves either chemically or surgically disfigured to make them into a simulation of their desired gender are mentally ill and utterly delusional if they think that any amount of “renovation” can ever make them into what they want to be. At the very best they can become a sad parody of their desire. Naturally such radical disfigurement can lead to terrible regrets as this woman from Belgium discovered after she had convinced doctors there to mutilate her body.
athan, born Nancy, Verhelst, 44, was given legal euthanasia, most likely by lethal injection, on the grounds of “unbearable psychological suffering” on Monday afternoon.
Wim Distelmans, a cancer specialist who carried out the euthanasia, is the same doctor who late last year gave lethal injections to congenitally deaf twins who were frightened they were also going blind.
“I was the girl that nobody wanted,” Mr Verhelst told Het Laatste Nieuws newspaper in the hours before her death.
“While my brothers were celebrated, I got a storage room above the garage as a bedroom. ‘If only you had been a boy’, my mother complained. I was tolerated, nothing more.”
This instance of “buyer’s regret” is by no means unique but the fact that this sad woman was Belgian meant that she could get assistance to commit suicide which raises the ethical question for the euthanasia enthusiasts, namely where do they want to draw the line when the mentally ill seek suicide as the final solution to their very poor life choices? Surely the next step in Belgium has to be to start helping the schizophrenics to die when they voices get too loud? or to offer the manic depressives the needle when the lows are to dark? What about those of us with chronic back pain? Are we too going to qualify for the blessing of death? What about athletes who get a nasty sprained ankle surely they too should be put out of the misery of failure when they can not compete? Maybe even sporting teams who suffer the anguish of loosing the grand final should all be given the phenobarbital blessing to save them from the anguish of defeat. (and to improve the sporting gene pool by culling failures ) Why stop there? We could cure the common cold or solve the Gay marriage conundrum by respectively snuffing the snotty and burying the Gay.
Oh hang on this line of argument sounds awfully familiar to me as it should be to any student of history, it is where the well oiled slippery slope could lead too and sadly there are far too many euthanasia enthusiasts who are either uncaring or oblivious to the negative consequences to the changes that achieve their desire to embrace the fleshless arms off death.
Do we really want to go there Comrades?
Related articles
- Nathan Verhelst Dies By Euthanasia Following Botched Sex Change, As Belgium Debates Extending ‘Death Rights’ To Children (medicaldaily.com)
- Woman elects euthanasia after botched sex change op… (telegraph.co.uk)
- I’m a monster: Belgian man chooses euthanasia after sex change (theprovince.com)
- Failed Sex Change Operation Drives Patient to Employ Medical Euthanasia (darkgovernment.com)
- Netherlands killing the mentally ill and senile (lunaticoutpost.com)
- Deaf Twin Brothers in Belgium Euthanized After Finding Out They Were Also Going Blind (theblaze.com)
- Man chooses euthanasia after botched sex change (smh.com.au)
Bring out your dead, Burn, Bury or Dissect? or Do funeral insurance ads shit you to tears?
One of the reasons that I have become rather adverse to change as I have got older is the way that change brings with it any number of unintended consequences . Add to that the development of my rather dark sense of humour and you might just appreciate just why I found this piece from Der Spiegel worthy of a post this morning:
Click for source
We can all appreciate this rather strange situation but it has also got me thinking if I am the only one to be totally over the endless adds on the TV for “funeral insurance”? this was almost unheard of just a year or so ago but now you can’t watch any of the free to air commercial channels without being implored to buy some insurance product “to protect your loved ones from the hefty unplanned expense” its all based in pinging people’s guilt chips and frankly I think that there is something quite unseemly and obscene about the whole thing. To be honest I bet that if you are really worried about covering the cost of your funeral it would be a better option to just save some cash for that purpose than pay a profit making stipend to some profit making insurance company many times the cost of the funeral over the life of the policy and who, sure as night follows day, will try to screw you over when it comes time to payout. .I have had to organise a few funerals during my lifetime and as sad as that task has been it was never too big a deal to cover the cost even from a modest estate. Frankly there are far more emotionally difficult tasks than finding mere money to pay for the box, the service and the disposal of mortal remains.
OK rant over, you can now go back to more happy thoughts on this day that is shaping up to be rather nice even though its Friday the thirteenth 😉
Cheers Comrades
Related articles
- Ten Don’ts For When I’m Dead (thelaughinghousewife.wordpress.com)
- A Good Sense of Humour Rocks! (newfoundlandtraveller.wordpress.com)
Whitney Houston, A line of coke in the wind
Ah another day and another dead celebrity Junkie and as the media goes into a its usual “oh what a sad and tragic loss of a “great” person” mode. So we have wall to wall headlines like this from the Herald Sun:
No one needs to pay a corpse and you can bet that sales of Whitney Houston’s music will now improve significantly, because quite simply dying is such a good career move these days when the media just loves to eulogise even the saddest slave to the white powder. I wonder just how long it will be before someone like the Queen of over sentimental songs about dead women, Elton John writes some ditty pointing out that Huston was found nude in the bath ?
I can just imagine lyrics that say ” her life was like a line of coke in the the wind…”
Yep that would be a big hit for sure.
Cheers Comrades
The house always wins because the machines are set up to make it so.
Some times I think that much of the push for euthanasia is an artefact from the fact that modern medicine can so successfully, for a time, hold death at bay even though each extra day of life is bought at a very high cost, How many of you out there have known family members who had cancer or some other horrid disease who repeatedly threw the dice with invasive treatments that may have extended existence but in reality gave no more life?
Perhaps what is needed is so much not doctors legally enabled to kill but more doctors who can be honest enough to tell patients that the invasive treatments are probably not such a good idea because if they fail (as they mostly do) then the last part of a person’s life will be very miserable indeed.
There are other options. You will need to choose them in advance though, before you become acutely sick and need to come to the emergency department. Option B can be whatever you want it to be: all treatments except mechanical life support, or surgery. This will depend on your own wishes as much as advice and recommendations from your treating doctors.
The option I want you to know about is Option C: Comfort measures only. Nothing happens that isn’t done for your comfort. All medications which might make you feel better are able to be given. You are kept clean and warm. You can have the chance for your family to gather round, to be pain-free and calm. You can say your last words to someone other than me.
This option has always been available. It is very infrequently requested. That’s because it must be requested before you come to the emergency department, when you are well enough to discuss it. I can’t offer comfort measures only if you haven’t talked about it with your loved ones: your spouse, your sons and daughters, your friends. They need to hear from you that you have thought about your death, and how you want it to be. No-one likes that conversation. Most never have that conversation, and go on pretending their death will never come.
Apart from it being your wish, I can only offer Option C if you do have an incapacitating and incurable disease. And of course you must be ‘of sound mind’. If all of these apply, then I can offer Option C and hopefully a good death. A death at a time of your choosing, with your loved ones gathered around you, as most of us hope it will be.
I am a plain speaking man who does not much like any one who shilly-shallys around the point and to my mind this is something that doctors need to do when their patients present with something like cancer. They clearly need to be blunt enough for people to consider the notion that accepting their end with good grace and dignity can be far better than ending their lives in a desperate attempt to fight off death. The fact is that attempting to forestall death is like playing the pokies , the house always wins because the machines are set up to make it so.
Cheers Comrades
Iain Hall's SANDPIT 