There’s a growing expectation that the U.K. will follow down the path taken by Canada, the Netherlands and Belgium and introduce euthanasia during the next Parliament.
Personally, if appropriate safeguards against the exploitation of the vulnerable can be guaranteed and providing that the decision to cut short a life is made by the patient or, where he or she lacks capacity, the next of kin (on the condition that this person genuinely has the person’s best interests at heart), then I’d support such a change. However, I have two reservations. Firstly, I suspect once euthanasia is introduced it will gradually morph into the situation where, rather than the individual (or next of kin) making the decision, it will be the state deciding when your time is up. And secondly, I don’t think such a fundamental change to our way of life should be taken in Parliament; such a decision could only have legitimacy if it was put to a referendum. This is a game we all have skin in, we should all be party to the decision.
If you’re looking for an article that covers the morality of assisted suicide, then this isn’t it. Far better read Kevin Yuill in Spiked, Matthew Parris in the Spectator or Tim Stanley in the Telegraph. Should you want an even more learned opinion turn to Lord Sumption’s piece in the Telegraph. Each puts his case far more eloquently than I ever could. I want to focus on some of the bumps that we’ll encounter as we slither down the slope towards normalisation of state-sanctioned deaths.
Market leaders in bumping off those ‘useless eaters’ cluttering up their communities are the Canadians. In Canada about 5% of all deaths are carried out by the state. There, assisted suicide is called MAID (Medical Assistance in Dying).
Initially, MAID was restricted to the terminally ill, those, according to their doctor, with a life expectancy of less than six months. However, recent amendments to the regulations have extended MAID to something akin to a human right which it would be discriminatory to restrict just to the terminally ill, opening the doors to a whole host of others, such as the depressed, anxious and poor. There have even been minors who have successfully been accepted for MAID.
The Canadians produce an illuminating report each year on the progress of MAID. The latest report includes data for 2022. In Figure 1 you can see the growth in people opting for medical help in ending their life by province.
Remarkably, in 2022 6.6% of all Quebecois who died did so at the hands of the state. If the current rate of growth continues this figure will have almost doubled by the end of this year to 13%.
Figure 2 shows the uptake of MAID annually since its introduction in 2016 across all of Canada.
The uptake in MAID has consistently increased by just over 30% per year. At this rate in 2024 the number of MAID deaths will reach about 23,000.
The highest year for Covid deaths in Canada was 2022 (interestingly, a year after the 2021 vaccine rollout) when about 19,000 Covid deaths were reported. If the increase in MAID deaths continues to grow at its current rate (and why wouldn’t it?) in 2024 there will be 25% more MAID deaths than the peak year for Covid fatalities.
Canada has a population of around 40 million, about 60% of the U.K.’s population. Translate Canada’s projected 2024 MAID total to the U.K. and an equivalent figure would be about 38,000. These figures suggest that it won’t be that far in the future when we can expect the British state to be ‘helping’ over 100 people to die every day.
In Canada, the Netherlands, Belgium and other places where assisted suicide has been introduced, the wedge, while starting off thin has rapidly widened. The U.K. will be no different.
We don’t have to restrict ourselves to looking to other countries to see how thin wedges lever social change. In 2021 there were about 250,000 abortions in the U.K., not far off 30% of the figure for live births.
The 1967 Abortion Act made it lawful to have an abortion up to the 28th week if two registered medical practitioners believed in good faith that the continuance of the pregnancy would involve risk to the life of the pregnant woman or harm her physical or mental health or that of any of her family members.
Abortion was sold as a rare thing. It was expected to be the exception not the rule. I make no comment about the morality of abortion but I’m sure the sheer number of abortions carried out now would be a shock to the voters of 1967.
The Abortion Act required two medical practitioners to approve an abortion and it seems likely that any ‘assisted dying’ bill will adopt similar protection, but in reality it’s probable that this safeguard, as with abortion, will rapidly erode away.
The recent WPATH files lifted the lid on the treatment of people seeking gender reassignment treatment. Documents released in the cache exposed the failure of ‘two doctor’ protection. Rather than protect vulnerable people from hasty and invariably irreversible treatments, doctors and other practitioners all too often showed rather more entrepreneurial than medical concern, merrily signing off any consent forms that came their way for a reasonable consideration.
While approval to proceed with assisted suicide may rest on the opinion of two doctors, the critical question is who initiates the request? One of the great ironies of assisted suicide is that people with ‘locked-in-syndrome’ may find themselves in a ‘Catch-22’ situation; they may wish to exercise their right to suicide but their condition precludes them from applying for state sanction. Conversely, people with a mental condition that attracts them towards suicide for spurious reasons (can I recommend Kevin Yuill’s Spiked article on such a case) may, against all advice, succeed in getting the state to kill them.
I predict that in the near future the issue of who initiates the request to end a life will move from the individual to the state. The demographer Paul Morland, appearing on a recent episode of Nick Dixon’s podcast The Current Thing, explained that Japan passed the milestone of 100 million population in the late 1960s. At the time it had five or six workers for each non-earner. In the 2030s its population is predicted to again cross the 100 million population threshold, only this time going in the opposite direction, by which time it will have five or six non-workers for each earner. How can a society so heavily skewed to ‘takers’ rather than ‘givers’ do anything other than ‘cull’ the infirm?
This is the prospect that euthanasia heralds. Eventually, perhaps in our lifetime, will the state decide on your date of death?
During Covid about 95% of all ‘Covid’ fatalities were of people with other conditions sufficiently serious to get a mention on the death certificate. Few deaths were of otherwise fully healthy people. I suspect we all know the statistics that show that the average age of Covid fatalities was the same as the average age for deaths from all causes.
Back in spring 2020, Nobel Prize winner Professor Michael Levitt predicted Covid would ‘pull forward’ about four to six weeks of deaths. Five weeks of deaths constitutes about 10% of a year’s fatalities. His expectation was that there would be a short sharp wave of ‘excess’ deaths inflating mortality data in 2020 before it settled back to its normal level in 2021. Most fatalities would be of people close to death, who in many cases would have died soon with or without Covid. In a normal year, nine people in 1,000 die, they have an average age of about 82 and have multiple health problems. In 2020 one additional person in every 1,000 also died; like the other nine they averaged about 82 and they too had other health issues. Essentially, this is exactly what will happen with assisted dying. The deaths of those nearing the end of their life will be pulled forward, but this time, as a nation, we’ll be cheering, rather than in 2020 when the nation went mad, bankrupting the country to avoid the pulled-forward deaths of exactly the same profile of people that we’re about to condemn.
Now, imagine if another pandemic similar to Covid struck again, 10 years after the introduction of assisted dying, by which time 10% to 15% of all deaths were coming about through euthanasia. Assisted suicide would have been normalised. Rather than issuing essentially passive DNR notices, how much more likely that we’d start actively bumping off the elderly and vulnerable at the earliest sign of illness? How much more likely if relatives weren’t allowed to visit? A perfect example of Hannah Arendt’s banality of evil.
Is it hard to imagine a test being introduced to determine whether someone would be ‘better off dead’? Let’s suppose the hospitals are full, it’s determined that the prospects for recovery are slim, off you go! And once introduced, would you be surprised if such a test were retained once the ‘pandemic’ had abated? Given the WHO’s realisation of the fun it can have with a pandemic, the likelihood is that we’ll be seeing many more in future.
I’m not sure where I stand on ‘euthanasia’. I’m not sure where I stand on capital punishment or abortion either; there seem to be highly persuasive arguments on both sides. My only strong views on any of these issues is on who should make the decision to adopt the principle of having the state kill and I think that should be the people rather than Parliament. I’m perfectly happy for the Government to make decisions on road speeds, pensions, the funding of the armed forces and a whole host of issues, but I do think that if, as a nation, we take it into our heads to kill our own people, then we should all be party to that decision. What’s more, should we vote in favour of euthanasia then any extension, such as the state taking control of when to exercise the coup de grace, should also be subject to a further referendum.
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Does look like the “vaccine” mandates in the US are starting to backfire badly on the Democrat coronapanickers:
“A judge tonight issued a restraining order against Frat Order of Police Pres John Catanzara to prohibit him from posting on social media or making any statements telling officers to refuse to get the vaccine. Chicago also filed a lawsuit against him for endangering public safety.“
“ENTIRE MAINE COUNTIES WILL BE WITHOUT PARAMEDICS“
Democrat coronaplotters.
That’s fine, they don’t want the plebs flying anyway. As long as private jet owners are unaffected then it’s nothing to worry about.
Here’s best wishes to anybody and everybody who stands up to this thuggish tyranny.
Thank you.
Joe Biden’s “mandate” isn’t mandatory. There’s no Executive Order or legislation to back up what he’s ordered. It’s unconstitutional, not legal, and probably unenforceable if enough people refuse to go along with it. I hope plenty of people refuse and make it unworkable.
I think at this point Biden knows he has become a despot and given the political environment in the US is literally risking his life in this autocratic gamble. It kind of reminds me of how Gadaffi has behaved before his fall.
Seems unlikely this is “Biden”. Presidencies are usually a team effort to varying extents, but in Biden’s case he’s actually senile, as well as corrupt and incompetent. This is definitely a despotism by a political clique, not by one man.
I was just going to say something similar. I genuinely think Biden does not know whether he is Biden or Brandon these days.
That makes it worse than Gadaffi, Sadam Hussein et al. We knew who they were and that they knew what they were doing.
Who is pulling Biden’s strings? It isn’t just one person and it isn’t the WH staff, they just help the strings to get pulled. Maybe the Manchurian Candidate wasn’t just a movie after all.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) promised to stand up to Biden’s vaccine mandate if it ends up actually existing.
DeSantis isn’t the only Governor who is threatening legal action against Biden.
Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt(R) said he is “ready to take Biden to court” over his vaccine mandate:
100percentfedup reported:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/10/governors-ready-sue-biden-vaccine-mandate-mandate-doesnt-yet-exist/
That’s why Biden isn’t publishing it, because the moment he signs it into law the lawsuits against him can start. He is hoping to achieve the effect of an executive order (looks like plenty of people have indeed fallen for the deception that there is an EO) without issuing one, thereby denying the possibility of any legal pushback for as long as possible.
Our government has been operating from the same playbook, threatening things just to frighten people into complying. For example, they have pointed out that closure of schools during lockdown was not based on any legal mandate. It was all voluntary compliance, apparently.
They pulled the same trick many times from the outset; working from home, wearing masks, social distancing, rule of 6 and now vaccination which is why, I believe, there is still yet to be a successful prosecution under so-called Coronovirus legislation.
Nothing is changing.
Same tactical deception used to stimulate compliance when it was announced the FDA approved the Pfizer “vaccine” that isn’t yet available.
I’ve just watched a 20 minute YouTube vid about the worldwide elimination of smallpox (achieved mid 1970’s).
Seems the UK did make smallpox vaccination mandatory, 1930s, but the US were in the same predicament as now.
Central Government wanted to mandate it nationally but had to defer to States Rights. Some Governors refused and even passed the decision to local Health Authorities (Counties?).
But that was before the likes of the Nuremberg code, Unesco & Human right legislation etc. Some argue they aren’t legally binding, but the intention was there.
Anyway I think the penalty for non-compliance of smallpox vaccines was a small fine, the US has mandated vaccines before, it’s all part of the liberal ideology, in any as we know these only have emergency use authorization supposedly because there are no alternative treatments.
In any case the legal situation is going to get interesting over the next year.
Frances Hoare that said that English common law gives us an inherent right to bodily autonomy.
I think human rights law in general is a career with a bright future …
Man made laws are a nice civilized concept, I don’t know much about Frances Hoare, but I always say nobody can give you rights, they can only take them away.
But all that means is that they can’t physically pin you down and force the stuff into you.
Yet as the recent ruling in NSW has shown, as regards any so-called rights (to work, to travel, to exercise, to have your hair cut, to spend money, to go to church, to meet with friends etc), the state can suspend all those because they are not infringing your bodily autonomy (only your personal autonomy).
After all, that’s what the state has done to us all in lockdown – suspend all our rights – and the courts have gone along with it.
The judge ruled that the state can’t take away your rights because of race, sex or political opinion, but they can take away just about everything for refusing the vaccine since objecting to vaccination is not a protected characteristic in Australia.
The judge ruled that it was the very purpose of the public health law to deprive people of their rights as deemed necessary by a minister of state, and it was not his business to question the decision and impementation of a minister of state, nor to have regard to the fairness of the measures. And to top it all he pointed out that Australia doesn’t have a bill of rights, so don’t expect any.
The judge was looking for favour so that he can get a promotion, and has duly given the NSW government exactly what they wanted.
And thus Australians are now well on the way to totalitarianism.
ditto Italy and France.
Probably the mandates were entirely redundant. Smallpox captures the imagination in a way that covid never, ever will.
Nope. See comment above.
Smallpox disfigures, kills, and causes hideous suffering. Covid gives you a cough.
https://navigator.health.org.uk/theme/united-kingdom-vaccination-act-1853
It was made mandatory in 1853 but this was repealed around 1895 after a lot of pressure from people in general, as well as sections of the scientific and medical communities. There was a widely held belief that smallpox vaccination campaigns were followed by outbreaks of teburculosis; and also accompanied by “serum sickness”.
Smallpox vaccination was detested by many people and there is little doubt that it provoked serious disease and illness in some of those who were subjected to it.
There were many protests against the compulsion of smallpox vaccination. A major protest happened in the town (now a city) of Leicester in 1885 after which compulsory vaccination was effectively abandoned in the borough. Leicester had its own procedures for smallpox which centred around hospitalising the sick, while quarantining and supporting their family members, until they were shown to be clear. The policy was a success and Leicester was for the most part smallpox free thereafter.
In his later years, the great Alfred Russel Wallace campaigned tirelessly against compulsory vaccination.
An admirable man in every way.
I think Y.tube might be wrong, surprise surprise … well actually, nothing surprises me any more.
My understanding is that there was a 1853 UK mandate, requiring all children born to be jabbed, but the disease had a 70% fatality rate in children .. struth. The mandate was later abandoned.
I think since then the UK has been conspicuous in protecting our civil liberties fairly well. The USA has had some mandates of the type ‘no jab, no education for your children’.
If anyone knows better, do correct me. However, if we abandoned the last mandate in the 19th.C, that’s a fairly good precedent for not having another one … especially given the post-World War 2 human rights conventions and legislation. These were brought in specifically to stop the atrocities happening again.
YouTube are merely the host. This guy usually gets his facts right but it’s a subject worth investigating as seen in the comments above, including yours.
Sorry, I don’t know how to post links from Android
And this is the man in charge!
All due to Putin – as Tucker Carlson helpfully explains : Let’s Go, Brandon!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MX2FOHrreDU
https://nypost.com/2021/10/14/covid-regime-is-driving-americans-to-a-healthy-noncompliance/
This is ‘Irish democracy’.
Bring -more of- it on!
“Irish Democracy is when the populace simply doesn’t cooperate with the agenda.”
Not something that you get in Ireland, then.
The old, real Irish, suppressed by the English.
Not the EUropeanized wussies of today.
The ‘Native Americans’ of today have nothing in common with their heroic ancestors either.
“The ‘Native Americans’ of today have nothing in common with their heroic ancestors either.”
Nor in fact do the English of today have anything in common with their ancestors who brought modernity to the world and built a world empire from a tiny island.
Brilliant. All tyrants over reach. Lets hope that we’re nearing that point.
American Airlines and Amtrak join SouthWest Airlines in Freedom walkouts against mandatory vaccines …
Oops – it looks like Sleep Joe’s vaccine mandates are most unpopular – other than with GOP voters – with many essential government workers, ethnic minorities and the poor, most of whom normally vote Dem. Maybe they should change the phrase from ‘Let’s go, Branden’ (ahem) to ‘just GO, Joe’.
Don’t forget that anyone in the vicinity of the COP26 when Sleepy Joe is around – please remember to loudly chant ‘F Joe Biden’.
Rules for thee …
Inc Capitol Police, FBI, Congress, USPS …
Let us destroy society and create contingency plans to deal with the destruction we caused. -Joe Biden, 2021
Why is there a constant revolving door of failed politicians, economists and advisers. How can this miserable and dangerous cycle be broken? Until we get decent, intelligent and honourable men and women to stand for Parliament and employ decent expertise in field where expertise is needed, I think we should stand down all Governments and their advisers. We should close ALL international bodies like UN WHO etc and create small effective national Sheriffs who put their own country first and are willing to help others when needed.