I shall soon be approaching the point where, with help from my grandson, I shall be rehashing the blog and removing a lot of the articles. It will then be divided into two parts, the biographical information which I believe is what interests most people, together with essays on things that interest me, and less on political carping. This change has come about because I have repeated myself a number of times, and said the same thing in different contexts, to little effect. It seems to me that people, especially in responsible positions, don’t seem to learn from past experience. Obviously, if I see some outstandingly stupid or an unreasonable occurrence, I don’t think a ball and chain and iron mask would keep me silent.
This is the last time I shall write an essay on the subject of euthanasia. This 90th celebration of one of the greatest massacres of all time, together with the repeated interest in the second greatest massacre, World War II, together with the daily recording of killing going on round the world, represents annihilation so obscene, so unnecessary, so unproductive and so useless, yet is repeatedly perpetrated at the behest of some individual or individuals. While at the same time those in dire need of relief from indignity, incredible agony, and mental distress, even if some actually have some mentality left, are allowed to continue unabated, because governments will not grasp the nettle of euthanasia. Caring for the elderly is causing governments considerable concern with respect to cost, as articsles in the press point out. This I believe is one of the reasons that euthanasia is on the backburner because governments are afraid that if they introduce it, some will see it, as a money-saving exercise. This is not a valid reason.
At my age, whether we like it are not, we are forced to face our demise, because death has caught up with relatives and friends of a similar age. It is not so much the act of dying that perturbs me, it is the prior conditions that occur, as a result of illness, general deterioration, and above all the loss of a mental capacity, and the indignities one can be subjected to, and the problems this makes for others. There is an excellent American website, euthanasia.com, which includes British information, giving all the pros and cons, and the fact that the medical profession is split. It mentions a slippery slope, implying that deregulation can in time, cause the moral values to be watered down. We need regulation of a rigorous kind. The word kind is important not only for selection, but for the relatives, and for the individual who finds his condition, either physically, mentally, or both, to be unbearable, to a degree that all will agree to a cessation. The problem is that no one will give this agreement, and the end result, of not having done so, can be a disaster to the individual, if he doesn’t succeed, and the family in either case. After all, forewarned is forearmed. If you were to be interested enough to cherry pick from the information given on euthanasia.com, you would realise a lot of these problems should not be laid at the door of the doctors, who are currently understandably refusing to take them on. Governments should, universally, set up strongly structured advice centres, legally based assessment centres, and some type of form, which enables an individual to arrange for his own termination under circumstances that are acceptable to the authorities, the family and the individual, in every respect.
We, the very old, just by visiting friends and relatives incarcerated in so-called ‘homes’, which by no stretch of the imagination, and the efforts of those running them, could be called home, dread the possibility, that we too are destined for this sterile existence.