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Do Not Go Gentle: Battling the Culture of Death
by Becki Snow
Originally posted to BNN 3/11/2005
A set of ancient medical books rests on a redwood shelf in a corner: they belonged to my Grandfather, at the turn of the last century. Upon opening them, one finds the hopes and dreams of human beings committed to ending the suffering of the sick and disabled - not by killing them, but by healing them. Through all the books, like a golden thread, is the unbreakable, unshakeable ideal that Life is to be chosen over Death...
Now, lay down the books, and pick up the newspaper. Read the new order, the new way of doing Medicine - the Culture of Death.
Comes the new dawn of the new century, and it is blood red: a new age is heralded, the New Medicine, the Culture of Death. Death to those who wish it: Death to those who do not wish it: Death to all but those who are deemed worthy of choosing whom shall live and whom shall die.
Imperfect children? Kill them.
Ill elders? Kill them.
Disabled adults? Kill them.
How it is that we have come so far? Is there enough time to analyze, to dissect, to understand what it is that is drives the Culture of Death?
No, there is not enough time. A monster is in this room, and we must destroy it - before it destroys us and all we love.
If we are fortunate, there will come a day when we will stare at the corpse of this ugliness and we will study it to find out how it came to invade our space - how it came to usurp the sacred culture of life that has existed for thousands upon thousands of years.
Now is not time to understand - there may be time later, if we live long enough to find out. But this is no gentle misunderstood beast; the Culture of Death has come in, invited, beckoned by those who wish it to visit us, the unwanted inconvenient, profitable masses.
Ethical? Only if it favors Death's Friends.
Indestructible? Only if it destroys Death's foes.
Inevitable? Only if we let Death thrive unchallenged.
Arm yourselves, all those who wish to live, to breathe, to be free to enjoy the same air as the rich, the young, the perfect wish to keep for themselves. Arm yourselves with the knowledge that this is a monstrous evil, good only in the minds of the few who wish Death to destroy us, the unchosen...
READ the Hippocratic Oath; the thousands of years of sacred Oath, not born of Christians, but of ancient Pagans. The same Pagans who brought to the world Democracy and freedom birthed this incredible frame of the Culture of Life.
Is this oath the work of extremists? Is it the cruelty of unwanted help? Or is it the pure unmitigated goodness of man, untainted by the machinations of Eugenics and Euthanists?
Hippocrates Hippocrates, the father of medicine
Hippocratic Oath -- Classical Version
I swear by Apollo Physician and Asclepius and Hygieia and Panaceia and all the gods and goddesses, making them my witnesses, that I will fulfil according to my ability and judgment this oath and this covenant:
To hold him who has taught me this art as equal to my parents and to live my life in partnership with him, and if he is in need of money to give him a share of mine, and to regard his offspring as equal to my brothers in male lineage and to teach them this art - if they desire to learn it - without fee and covenant; to give a share of precepts and oral instruction and all the other learning to my sons and to the sons of him who has instructed me and to pupils who have signed the covenant and have taken an oath according to the medical law, but no one else.
I will apply dietetic measures for the benefit of the sick according to my ability and judgment; I will keep them from harm and injustice.
I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody who asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect. Similarly I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy. In purity and holiness I will guard my life and my art.
I will not use the knife, not even on sufferers from stone, but will withdraw in favor of such men as are engaged in this work.
Whatever houses I may visit, I will come for the benefit of the sick, remaining free of all intentional injustice, of all mischief and in particular of sexual relations with both female and male persons, be they free or slaves.
What I may see or hear in the course of the treatment or even outside of the treatment in regard to the life of men, which on no account one must spread abroad, I will keep to myself, holding such things shameful to be spoken about.
If I fulfil this oath and do not violate it, may it be granted to me to enjoy life and art, being honored with fame among all men for all time to come; if I transgress it and swear falsely, may the opposite of all this be my lot.
Translation from the Greek by Ludwig Edelstein. From The Hippocratic Oath: Text, Translation, and Interpretation, by Ludwig Edelstein. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1943.
READ MORE AT NOVA.COM
This is no tattered cloak to be cast aside and replaced with new morals; this is the shield which separates a patient from unscrupulous sorcerers, from men and women whose knowledge of the medicinal arts could be used to poison and taint and kill those who stood in the way of the powerful and the perfect. This is no ancient curiosity - it is the thing that transformed a profession from a tool of death into a bastion of life and cure. It is the vehicle of thousands of years of progress against disease and disorder, the ramrod which drives home the need to heal the sick rather than dispose of them.
It is what stands in the way of the new sorcerers, the new purveyors of Death. They no longer take the oath: they destroy the old, the feeble, the unwanted, all for a fee. Why should the words of thousands of years ago stop them from achieving all they wish to achieve? For gold, they will end the lives of those who cannot meet the highest bid - after all, what harm is there in destroying the suffering rather than healing it? Especially if the road to destruction is paved with currency...
Now the Beast is in the door: the Culture of Death has been bidden by those who once took the oath to protect us, the very doctors and medical personnel who once stood in our defense. They have found their Master is not a code of ethics, is not a God, is not an Oath - their Master is Mammon, and they will heal only those who will worship Mammon with them.
Oh, but it is not so, the purveyors of Good Death say; their love of Death is fueled not by love of money, but by pure altruism. They are prompted by the need to release those who have no "quality of life" from burdening those who do have "quality of life": it is only Good to keep such creatures from becoming burdens to the system, from being unwanted elements in our otherwise Perfect world.
But even in our generational memory, such treatment of the disabled and unwanted was considered to be not Good, but Evil.
From the National Holocaust Museum:
EUTHANASIA PROGRAM
The term "euthanasia" (literally, "good death") usually refers to the inducement of a painless death for a chronically or terminally ill individual. In Nazi usage, however, "euthanasia" referred to the systematic killing of the institutionalized mentally and physically handicapped, unbeknownst to their families.
Planning for the Euthanasia Program is thought to have begun in July 1939. In October 1939 Hitler signed a secret authorization in order to protect participating physicians, medical staff, and administrators from prosecution; this authorization was backdated to September 1, 1939, to suggest that the Euthanasia Program was related to war measures. The secret operation was code-named T4, in reference to the street address (Tiergartenstrasse 4) of the program's coordinating office in Berlin. Six gassing installations were eventually established as part of the Euthanasia Program: Bernburg, Brandenburg, Grafeneck, Hadamar, Hartheim, and Sonnenstein.
The victims of the Euthanasia Program originally included both children and adults with physical disabilities or anomalies or with mental illnesses. Patients were selected by T4 physicians for death. These doctors rarely examined the patients in this process, but often based their decisions on medical files and the diagnoses of staff at the victims' home institutions.
READ MORE FROM THE HOLOCAUST MUSEUM
Ah, but this is different, the advocates of the Culture of Death explain. This will be voluntary. They continue: if sick, unwanted, or imperfect people are made aware of their choices, if they are made to see it is Good to die, then they shall surely choose Death. Death is preferable to imperfect life, they tell us; they speak as if it were always so. But it was not always so, not even in our own lifetimes.
Spoke the poet, Dylan Thomas:
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
The purveyors of the Culture of Death beckon to us from the side of the Beast:
"Starvation is good. Suicide is good. Death is good. Come stand in the line; for a fee, they will process us so we may serve the needs of the perfect, the powerful, of those who pay the most. The white coats and the sterile conditions will help to allay our fears until the hospital doors are locked behind us and we must face our deaths sans water, sans food, sans mercy, damned by your own sheepish apathy. It is the new way of Medicine. It is the way of Good."
They are wrong. Only those who love Death could ever believe that destruction of life is "Good".
The ancient medical books were not wrong; those who defeated the Nazis were not wrong; the poet was not wrong.
Life is Good.
There is no more time to reason with this Monster, to analyze it, or to understand it; it seeks to take power and destroy the Culture of life.
The time for battle is come. Take hold of the wisdom of the thousands of years, the belief the Life is Good; take courage, and prepare to do battle with the Culture of Death. It will not be the first time that mankind has battled this Evil -
but if we do not win, it may be the last.
Becki Snow blogs at The Question Fairy.
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