On a semi-related note, if we just let disabled people die, their genetic defects going with them, wouldn't we speed up the process of overcoming the problems all together? Removing defects from the gene pool should well decrease the number of cases said disability arises in children, meaning less people ultimately suffer.PrinceOfShapeir said:Oh, dear God.Clearing the Eye said:Part of me wonders if all we do as a species to alleviate the burden of the disabled is a good thing. While on the surface any bridge over the gap between mainstream society and those hindered in some way is a marvelous thing. But something makes me question the affects of, for example, keeping people alive when they should otherwise be dead. I'll go off on something of a tangent here, so skip my post if you're here purely for the OP.
I watched a documentary last night about a young woman (21) utterly crippled by a lung disease that rendered her incapable of living without the constant presence of her oxygen tank. The disease is almost always fatal and totally incurable--the only hope is a transplant. She had a few ups and downs during the filming of the doco, including her beautiful marriage to an amazingly strong man whom she loved dearly. Ultimately, after about six months waiting on the transplant list, two separate let downs when a set of lungs was available but unusable, knowing any day could be her last, her heart and lungs could both no longer keep her alive and she was hooked up to a machine to keep her alive in a coma like state. The machine could only keep her going for a maximum of ten days and on the tenth day, the machine was removed and she was manually kept alive by nurses. With minutes left to live and with her entire body virtually dead, a pair of matching lungs became available and she survived.
It was a pretty amazing story (how played up for the documentary it was, I don't know) and the family seemed pretty special in a seemingly never ending hour of darkness. They had a lot of love and no one ever gave up--least of all the poor woman going through it. It was nice to see it work out for them (thanks to the amazing doctors and a donor, R.I.P.) but I was left wondering how "right" it was for us as a people to do what we did--to let live those that should by all rights have died.
I guess right and wrong may well be defined by positive and negative affect on life (what better yard stick). But there's still something unnatural about it all that won't let the issue lay in my mind. As if the greater forces of evolution pester and hiss the technology we use to overcome its totalitarian rule. Ironic than that it is through evolution that we have access to these means, lol.
Funnily enough, I attempted suicide several years ago and was saved by doctors and take antidepressants every day. Fuck you, survival of the fittest, I guess.
Nature does not have a course. Nature is not a sentient entity. Evolution does not have a mind. There is no 'should have' died. Whether you believe in God or not, the fact that she -did not- die proves that she obviously wasn't intended to die by any cosmic plan.
I guess it's a soft eugenics.