The little gods among us

Posted by Anthony on November 23, 2009

Courtesy of the Drudge Report today I’m treated to an article about a person who had been diagnosed as being in a coma who actually had been fully conscious for more than 20 years.

The idea that somebody could be misdiagnosed as being in a ‘vegetative state’ takes on significance when we remember that in some corners this is an excuse to kill the person.  Think Terri Schiavo.

In the article, it is hard to blame the doctors for their misdiagnosis as it appears from the article that the technology to verify that Rom Houben was actually conscious has only recently been around.   In truth, there could only have been ‘blame’ if in fact Rom had been ‘terminated’ despite being conscious.  Would we have ever learned this if some ‘humane’ and ‘compassionate’ person or entity had decided to pull his plug?   Obviously, no.

As the article illustrates, people have woken up from comas and ‘persistent vegetative states’ before.  Perhaps a great many more would do so if we didn’t whack them as soon as we tend to do.  Maybe it just takes the brain that much longer to heal, or re-wire, and we rarely see it only because of our impatience.

We continue to discover that for as much as we know about human biology and the brain we also learn how much we don’t know.  We also learn that we frequently make mistakes.  Big ones.

Some times, we have excuses.  Technology may not be where it is needed to be.  Other times it is our own impatience and arrogance.  Compare and contrast this story with an essay by my favorite Nazi-in-Development, Jacob Appel.  In a recent article titled “What’s so wrong with ‘death panels’?” he says, “The stark reality is that some patients are leagues beyond hope.”

Because of this, he sees the need for ‘ethics panels’ who will decide when this is the case.

Yet the evidence is that people- even very educated and very sincere doctors- can make mistakes.  Appel begins his article with the example of:

Baby RB, who survived thirteen months with a rare and progressive genetic disorder known as congenital myasthenic syndrome, which left him paralyzed and prevented him from breathing on his own. By his final weeks, the baby’s lungs filled with fluid multiple times each day, so that the child likely felt as though he was choking to death. All attempts at therapy had failed. According to medical authorities, no child had every [sic] recovered from such a state.

No child had ever recovered from such a state, and none ever would if Mr. Appel has his way.  For you see, it is self-evident that unless you try, it won’t happen.  Moreover, what is incurable today may be curable tomorrow.  New drugs, new procedures, new therapies, etc.  Who knows what tomorrow will bring?

Apparently people like Mr. Appel know.  In their omniscience they know what the future holds.  They know what science will be able to accomplish and what it won’t.  In their omnibenevolence, they know what people ‘likely felt.’  They feel our pain and their empathy is infinite.  Somewhere, there is a “desperate patient on a gurney in the emergency room, waiting for a hospital bed, whose care is delayed because — in all states but Texas — first come is still first served.” And Mr. Appel sees him.  Mr. Appel sees all.  Mr. Appel knows that this person’s plight, or fate, or condition is more deserving than those for whom ‘all hope has failed.’

Ok, maybe Mr. Appel does not know all this- but put him on Mt. Olympus with the rest of his pals- and form an ‘ethics board’ and you can be quite certain that betweenst them all they definitely know.

It may seem that this article has turned into a diatribe against Mr. Appel.  Calling him a Nazi in training may rub some the wrong way, but I would ask you to compare his arguments and their practical effects with the comments left by some white supremacists on one of my recent posts.  You will see that they are practically the same.

But in fact Mr. Appel is just one more example of the little gods among us who think they know more than the rest of us, care more than the rest of us, and are more fair and just than the rest of us.

There is only one thing they lack, as yet:  our obedience.  But they desire it, and they are working to obtain it.  Mr. Appel wants a ‘national medical futility law’ because like all fascists, it is unthinkable that individual states could be left to decide such important things on their own.  They must be decided by Congressional aides and legislators and judges in back rooms out of sight from the rest of us to keep it from being polluted with ‘politics.’

Yes, I have singled out Mr. Appel, and his article warrants even more attention, but know this:  he is one among many.   It will be these people manning these various ‘panels.’  The little gods are loose in America but as yet they do not decide life and death.  This power they desire but they can only have it we give it to them.  Don’t.