Where is the Mainstream Media in the Samuel Golubchuk Futile Care Case?

The mainstream media is obsessed with “choice:” Abortion? Choice! Assisted suicide? Choice! Removing feeding tubes? Choice! Futile Care Theory? That sound you hear is the crickets chirping. Indeed, the De Moines Register has already editorialized in favor of futile care, saying the doctors should decide.

What is going on here? As I keep saying to anyone who will listen, it isn’t about “choice.” It is about putting certain people out of our collective misery. If “choice” gets us there, great. If not, we will impose the duty to die, first through futile care theory—which is just beginning now—and then later through more explicitly terminating actions as occurs already in the Netherlands with its “termination without request or consent” permissiveness toward non voluntary euthanasia.

The current skirmish in this struggle is happeing in Canada where doctors are presuming the right to terminate Mr. Golubchuk’s life support, and have the temerity to claim that they have the right to decide when the burden of treatment outweighs the benefit of being alive. That led to litigation, and a crucial ruling due at any time.

Because of the “quality of life” mindset that permeates much of the media, the only media to cover this case with the level of intensity it deserves (from what I have seen) has been the Jewish press because Mr. Golubchuk is Orthodox. Jonathan Rosenblum, a pundit, gets it in this piece, “In Canada, the Schiavo Case With an Outrageous Twist:”

The claim of absolute physician discretion to withdraw life-support advanced by the Canadian doctors would spell the end of any patient autonomy over end-of-life decisions. So-called living wills, which are recognized in many American states, and which allow a person to specify in advance who should make such decisions in the event of their incapacity, would be rendered nugatory…

Just as Nazism gave anti-Semitism a bad name, so too did it discredit Social Darwinism. But just as anti-Semitism has reappeared, so has the assault on the concept of the sanctity of life. That assault is not limited to Princeton ethicist Peter Singer’s defense of infanticide, euthanasia and bestiality on explicitly Darwinian grounds.

Global warming activists speak of the duty not to reproduce, and view human beings as the enemy of nature’s order. So much for the view of man as the crown of creation. In place of the sanctity of life, we now speak of the “quality of life”—a term that explicitly assumes that some lives are worth more than others.

There is even talk of the “duty to die” and clear the way for higher-quality lives, which is why the American Association of People with Disabilities has been actively involved in so many cases dealing with the doctors’ right to terminate medical care. The rage for medical rationing in Canada, of which the Golubchuk case is but one example, derives from a desire not to waste resources on low-quality lives.

I disagree with Rosenblum’s final comment about the relevance of the judge being Jewish and I don’t think Darwinism leads necessarily to futile care theory, although the eugenics connection is apt. But read the whole piece. He has definitely connected some important dots.