"Laissez-faire eugenics"

Culture of Death: The Assault on Medical Ethics in America

By Wesley J. Smith

Reviewed by Dave Andrusko

"...[T]he dignity of life has come under assault in recent years from people who regard the right to life as provisional - - something that withers away when a person falls ill, loses mental faculties or is too young to survive the cold, cruel world. Such thinking turns every able-bodied American into a candidate for 'compassionate' murder, should he or she suffer a grave injury or fall prey to the natural ravages of age. It also puts Americans with disabilities on the endangered species list. The sure tip-off for such thinking is the aggressive and jarring use of euphemism."

Tony Snow, April 30,Washington Times

"Bioethics presents us with a true ideological conflict, albeit one of which most people remain unaware."

Wesley J. Smith

Wesley Smith's latest book, Culture of Death: The Assault on Medical Ethics in America, is one of those just-in-the-nick-of-time contributions whose value to those of us engaged in daily hand-to-hand combat against what Smith labels "medical cleansing" is incalculable. Do yourself and the millions of medically vulnerable people in America a huge favor and immediately purchase Smith's ninth book. (Culture of Death is available at bookstores. If the store is sold out, you can special order the book. Other options include going to the publisher's web page at www.encounterbooks.com; calling the order number, 1-800-786-3839; or going to www. amazon.com.)

Written by a passionately committed advocate determined to shape public policy in a more life-affirming direction, Culture of Death has a number of agendas. Clearly at the top of Smith's to-do list is rending the veil that hides the inner sanctum of a new secular priesthood: the professional bioethicist.

By "bioethicists," Smith means a " 'cadre' of experts: moral philosophers, academics, lawyers, physicians, and other members of an emerging medical intelligentsia." More specifically, Smith has in mind the creme de la creme, the very highest priests who teach, lecture, testify, get cited by overly impressed judges, and generally hobnob with their fellow high mucky mucks at prestigious international symposia.

Smith's overriding point is that while many bioethicists will modestly insist they exert little influence, in fact this aw shucks pose is belied by the enormous power they wield. They are ones who are dictating the course of discussion, in and out of courts and legislatures, which is deciding who remains within the protective circle of the human family and who will be the next "weakest link" to be kicked off the island. What ought to scare the socks off of all of us is that, courtesy of the utilitarian calculus cheerfully employed by the professional bioethicist, the list of "them" (as opposed to "us") grows longer every year.

There are several common threads that weave the book's seven chapters together: the odd way these people think; their relentless relativism [nothing but nothing is self-evident]; the almost sneering hostility to the idea of sacrifice when the one who needs our help is frail, ill, or cognitively impaired; and the willingness (even eagerness) to follow the (inhumane) logic to its logical conclusion.

I have corresponded with several prominent bioethicists who insist Smith is patently unfair. Their main contention (angrily voiced) is that Smith over-emphasizes the most extreme examples, such as Princeton's Peter Singer, whom they tell me is not at all representative of the "mainstream."

But try walking them up to the danger points that Smith warns about and you quickly find out that while Singer is the first to jump off the deep end (his latest scholarly enterprise is to defend bestiality), many of his most prominent colleagues are only a step behind.

They are quite willing, for example, to "entertain" the idea of taking organs from people who are not dead, including those in a so-called "persistent vegetative state" and even those who are scheduled for execution.

Likewise, many of them are closet supporters, if not open sympathizers, with animal liberation ideology. The relevance for us is that their wholehearted embrace of the moral equivalency of animals and human beings leads to a "willingness to dialogue," if not actually advocate, experimenting on what bioethicist R.G. Frey calls "defective humans."

Actively hostile to religion and organized religion's dedication to the moral equality of all human beings, most of the leading bioethicists have long since adopted a rigid hierarchy of human life. All of us must earn our basic human rights daily, just as we do our daily bread, meaning that we can start out in the morning as members of what they call (in that strange language of theirs) the "moral community" only to lose membership an hour later if we are in a serious automobile accident.

And to talk to them of the notion that people owe each other a duty of fidelity based on what theologian and bioethicist Paul Ramsey once called "covenant responsibilities" rooted in "justice, fairness, righteousness, faithfulness, canons of loyalty, the sanctity of life, hesed agape [steadfast love], or charity" is to invite a blank stare. Caring for the most weak and vulnerable among us is, to the thoroughly utilitarian mind, simply stupid. Why waste of resources on people, many of whom would be "better off dead?"

Sanctity of life? Are you kidding?

Which is why it's easy for them to casually sign off on infanticide, reflexively embrace health care rationing, and single out for special praise the merits of euthanasia and assisted suicide. Faced with a medically vulnerable, cognitively disabled patient, most bioethicist's first instinct is to invoke the mantra of "futile care" to justify cutting off everything, including nutrition and hydration.

Second in moral gravity only to the loss of lives such a world view makes inevitable is how this rancid philosophy coarsens our sensibilities, sanitizes brutality, and diminishes our intuitive revulsion to treating people as if they were nothing more than meat.

Culture of Death is must reading, let me assure you. Get your copy soon and bring it to the National Right to Life Convention, where Mr. Smith will be speaking. For further details about NRLC 2001, go to the ad on pages 26 and 27.

Smith remains an incurable optimist, both because he has dedicated his life to public policy and because he firmly believes in the basic decency of the American people.

As he writes on the concluding page:

"Is such a system [one grounded in a firm commitment to the sanctity and equality of each human life] possible? It won't be easy, but I am optimistic. The fog is lifting, the jagged ethical rocks toward which we are steaming are finally coming clearly into view. We are not yet beyond the point of no return. We still have time to change our course toward a life-affirming open sea."