Good Men May Be Mistaken - More Thoughts on the End of Life Assistance Bill

In my previous post, I wondered who or what it is, that is creating the relentless push for euthanasia; if this is something that is directed or if it is a general zeitgeist that is prevalent at the moment. It isn't the first time that something like this has happened and in the early 1900's a similar discussion was taking place amongst the chattering classes and had enthusiastic support from left and right. Many people whom we now term as great were involved in it. I'm talking of eugenics and the campaign to introduce compulsory sterilisation for 'defectives' in the 1912 Mental Deficiency Bill.

The starting point for this debate was in the 1840's with Francis Galton, a cousin of Darwin. He studied the hereditary lines of 'great men' and concluded that unless something drastic was done, the breeding of degenerates was going to outstrip the breeding of more worthy people. From this, the seed of eugenics and sterilisation of the poor and the mentally ill was sown.

By 1905 this idea was reaching its peak. The main opponents to it were GK Chesterton and Josiah Wedgewood (another cousin of Darwin's) who did a filibuster of 150 speeches sustained by barley water and chocolate. (His modern descendent, Tony Benn, is also against euthanasia). But it's the people who were for it that make the interesting reading.Leonard Darwin, George Bernard Shaw, Winston Churchill, Beatrice and Sidney Webb, the Fabian Society, Arthur Balfour and none other than William Beveridge. There are more here. It also gained support from the Archbishops of Canterbury and York and Dean William Inge, Chesterton's bete noire. These people did the rounds of the Fabian Society, used their influence in church and government to promote it and gave professorships at universities to supporters.

Today it seems almost inconceivable that this happened. And to be fair to those who supported it, we have the benefit of hindsight. The horrors of the Nazis Aktion T4 programme had not been realised. But nevertheless the fact remains; for nearly 40 years, this idea was common currency amongst the brightest and best of our society. America, Sweden, France and Germany all enacted sterilisation laws. The UK escaped by the skin of its teeth. Good men may be mistaken. Great men may be mad.

Chesterton devoted an entire book to arguing against this bill. Amongst other things he said was this;

It is necessary to point out the essential fact which the eugenists seem to have forgotten all over again. We breed cows for milk; and not for a moral balance of particular virtues in the cow. We breed pigs for pork. . . . Therefore we cannot, and do not, criticise them in the way in which we criticise our fellow creatures when we call them feeble-minded; or when we betray our own feeble-mindedness by calling them Unfit. For the very word Unfit reveals the weakness of the whole of this pseudo-scientific position. We should say that a cow is fit to provide us with milk; or that a pig is unfit to provide us with pork. But nobody would call a cow fit without naturally adding what she was fit for. Nobody would call up the insanely isolated vision of the Unfit Pig in the abstract. But when we talk about human beings, we are bound to break off the sentence in the middle; we are bound to call them Unfit in the abstract. For we know how varied, how complex, and how controversial are the questions that arise about the functions for which they should be fitted.

In this argument, Chesterton puts his finger on the fallacy behind eugenics and what I believe is the fallacy underlying the assisted dying debate. The assumption underlying the legitimacy of those in favour of such things, is usefulness. A person has worth if they are industrious, make money, stand out, are independent and not a burden; they are useful. By contrast, if they do not have any of these attributes then they are not useful, therefore they have less worth. It is a seductive argument, because we need people to work and produce and pay taxes. And it is particularly appealing to people who work hard, make money and are independent. All their perception of their worth is tied up in being useful. And that is the glamour that is seducing the likes of Terry Pratchett, AC Grayling, Zoe Wanamaker and others to supporting this.They cannot bear the thought of being dependent on others or being limited by illness or disability. But the darker side of that view is how it affects their perception of others. If your worth is measured by these things, how do you then measure people that aren’t useful?

One of the things that has nagged me about this debate is this; the people who are promoting this bill are people of independent means with powerful friends. Whether or not euthanasia gets passed, they will go when they will and not a second before. If they want to take a poison, they have the friends to obtain it for them and to protect assisting relatives in any court battle afterwards. Which means in short that this bill isn’t about them. It’s about ‘helping’ other people. People that they don’t see very much of, that ‘aren’t the same’ as them, who aren’t very useful; at least not as useful as they are to society. And they do not seem to be aware of that value judgement. It underlies the feting of Susan Boyle and Stephen Hawking; they are celebrated, not simply because they are disabled, but because they are disabled people who are also useful. But the girl who lives near me with the same condition as Susan Boyle is not being feted or celebrated. Nor is anyone else with disability.

This post has wandered somewhat, but to get back to the point; what and who is driving this? I think that in part this is a fashion, a way of being avant garde. Sex is no longer taboo; death still is and the breaking of it holds a fascination. It’s also to do with the political climate. We are in a time of austerity and a growing elderly population. And the great unspoken debate going on underneath this is how they are all going to be provided for. These two forces are feeding off one another and creating a maelstrom into which the poor, the old and the disabled are being sucked into. As indeed they always have done. Those who speak of putting down animals in pain should reflect that we also put animals down when they are too old to work, too expensive to keep and when they have too high a medical bill. But what may save us is what saved us the last time; the experience of others. We have not yet enacted this legislation. Others have and we may benefit from their misfortune. In March this year, a petition with 100 000 signatures to allow those over 70 who consider their life 'complete' assistance to die, was presented to the Netherlands parliament. Let's hope for all our sakes that this doesn't succeed.