UK Pundit: Suffering, Disabled Children Should be Smothered

I first saw this on Prison Planet but I know some of you are picky about where others find information so I found another site. I don't know how to embed video so here's a link.

Video Snippet

In my opinion I admire her stating this in public as 99% of people are going to judge her as a eugenicist, and I suppose in a sense, that she is. It reminds me of a paper I had to do once upon a time regarding assisted suicides. My conclusion was that a doctor helping his patient in this manner is fulfilling his role as sometimes the only "cure" for something is death- and a truly empathetic doctor would give his patient that ultimate "cure" if said patient had nothing but suffering and horror in front of them.

I don't know if I put this in the right forum or not...this is the first thread I've started.

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Not really sure what I want to say yet.

People are going to judge this every way they can.

Personally i don't think you can judge it until you've been the parent of a child that is so disabled that he/she has no life left and will suffer it in agony.

I'm not saying it's right, and i'm not saying i'd do it, but there are plenty of parents who have done this very thing before.

This lady is not advocating just killing a kid for no reason.

If things ever got that bad, i think i'd ask the authorities to take the child away. That said, not all authorities are that great at listening, especially here in the UK.

CX.

reply to post by CX




Well exactly... euthanasia is always a difficult subject to discuss and It's a very emotional one.
I don't disagree with what she's saying in principal, could have had a little more tact maybe.

I dunno.... every case would have to be done on an individual basis.

Hmmmm It's a very difficult topic.

Which is why this thread has had a lack of response I'm sure.

I'll weigh in...

IMO this is dangerous talk. Most of us can have an emotional reaction, actually two emotional reactions at once, when hearing this. We simultaneously revolt against the idea of killing even as we identify with the empathetic desire to keep others from suffering.

But, within that lies the conundrum here. What defines "suffering"?

Is 'suffering' a state of living with utterly diminished capacity? The state of being vegetative? Or of being profoundly retarded? The truth is that we cannot really understand just how fulfilling of a life these people experience, as they are unable to tell us whether or not they "suffer"

Is "suffering" a function of measuring pain? If so, then how much pain would be required for this label, and who would set this standard?

My personal philosophy is "Where there is life, there is hope." I believe I'd want to live even if my pain level were to be such that comfort was impossible. But I do understand that others may not share my zest for life, and that is fair. We are all entitled to make that choice for ourselves.

What this woman proposes, though, is making that choice for another, and I see this as morally wrong.

And none of what I've said even begins to address societal implications if this kind of behavior were to be condoned or accepted. The potential for abuse is staggering.

Thanks for embedding it for me She definitely could have used a little more tact..but then I think that there's no easy way to say such a thing. She's going to be utterly demonized now.

Edited to add- if you go to the site I linked to, it shows a picture of a "normal looking" little girl as if this woman just wants to kill kids, and a lot of people will take it just that way too- sad.

reply to post by Hefficide




Well exactly.. it depends what kind of suffering and exactly who we're talking about here.
It's a very short clip and hard to really gauge exactly who they are talking about.

As you say, if someone is alive... there is always hope.


It's a massive subject and unless we know the specifics, it's hard to really know what these people were talking about.

I am so tired of Eugenicists trying to justify their desire for killing human beings.

There is absolutely no justification for taking the life of another human being based on their (assumed) suffering.

Today, we stand at the brink of great breakthroughs in gene and stem cell technology which have the potential to end all human suffering, without the (need???) to kill anybody.

It staggers me that 100yrs after the eugenicist movement gained a foothold amongst the elite as a supremacist master race ideology, that remnants of this undiagnosed psychopathic tendency still roam free.

There is no doubt in my mind that people who peddle eugenics are the lowest form of psychopathic murderer, they lack the spine to kill a healthy human adult so they prey on the weakest amongst us.

And worst of all, these particular type of killers seek permission and justification for their transgressions.

The eugenicist movement should and will be criminalized, there is no longer a place for such barbarity to continue.

Gene/stem cures. = creative/positive life sustaining/improving.
Eugenics. = destructive/negative life terminating.

Would this vile excuse for a woman be able to murder her own children if they weren't up to standard, you know i think she would.

Is it a difficult subject?....Not particularly, ask the child how THEY feel.

Of course this would mean allowing any 'suffering' to continue until the child is able to make such a choice at around the age of 14(pure opinion on that age) but it gives them the choice. And they are the only person who is able to make that choice.

Personally, if I was to lose my hands or my eyesight, my 'life' would be gone and I would probably decide I was 'suffering' enough that I would wish to end it. However thousands of people live perfectly happy in those conditions, it is not my place to decide if THEY are suffering, only to decide if I am. (I'm sure if it came to it I would be proven false and would move on with my life, but you understand the point I am getting at, we all feel differently.)

I think when we're looking into subjects like this we need to see all the shades of grey and not just the black and white of it. If you had a child that was truly suffering surely you'd want to "put them to sleep" because that's the kindest thing? It's exactly the same phrase vets use when a pet is suffering. And it is exactly the same thing.

Is it not the best thing for much-loved Fido, who we've tried everything for, and there's nothing else for him, and he's suffering so badly? Yes it is. If you had a child who was suffering, in pain, nothing left but to suffer, perhaps for a long time, I think euthanasia would be the kindest thing you could offer them. Horrifically sad I know.

I commented on that story when it was in the Daily Mail. I mentioned the poor babies of Fallujah and they censored it. (for some reason some news sites don't want that place mentioned). Putting some of them gently to sleep would be the best thing IMO. Maybe some of them will get better in time, but when, and how? Why is human life sacred when there could be a spirit that's freed from all that suffering.

I saw my mum die of cancer. She always told me, "if I get in 'that state' I want you to give me a little blue pill". She meant in a state of helplessness and agony and the "little blue pill" was her way of saying "finish me off".
She got in 'that state' on her last day, just a day after the doc told me she had 6-8 months left. He was wrong, lucky for her. It was awful.

If she'd lingered in that excruciating pain and folk started telling me that it would be immoral to help her out of it I think I would have exploded. That wouldn't have been the kindest thing at all. Life isn't sacred when you're trapped and tortured and there's no more chance of a cure. There's only one way out and the quicker the better.