[ Editor’s note: This story originally was published by Live Action . ]
By Cassy Fiano-Chesser
Live Action
A prestigious medical journal specializing in ethics …
[ Editor’s note: This story originally was published by Live Action.] By Cassy Fiano-Chesser Live Action A prestigious medical journal specializing in ethics has published an article promoting the use of euthanasia implants for people with dementia. Authored by Margaret Battin, an 80-year-old philosopher, medical ethicist, and Distinguished Professor at the University of Utah, and Brent Kious, an assistant professor at the University of Utah, Ending One’s Life in Advance asked readers to consider the idea of an “advance directive implant” (ADI) which would allow a person to use a timer-based implant that would kill them automatically without help from anyone else. The Hastings Center Report is a peer-reviewed medical journal examining issues of bioethics. It points out that millions of Americans suffer from Alzheimer’s disease or dementia each year. This is painted by the authors as a fate worse than death, as they explain, “Some of us, at least when in command of our faculties, think we would not want to live with dementia.” They believe that having dementia would turn someone into a burden, causing family members to suffer financial and emotional costs, but committing suicide while still lucid would waste the person’s “still-good life.” They claim a better alternative to living with dementia would be to implant, in essence, a time bomb, inside of oneself. The article states: Readers react in horror, while authors double down The authors did acknowledge the horror of what they are suggesting, writing that the responses they received from readers were not positive. “While some regarded it as a potentially welcome innovation, others were distressed,” they wrote. “We quote: ‘Yuck,’ ‘Gross,’ ‘That causes me fear, disgust.’ One early reader described the ADI as creating ‘a living thing with a dead kill-switch inside it’ and said that was ‘the grossest thing I’ve ever heard.’” But this idea is nothing compared to actually living with or caring for a person with dementia, according to the authors.
