The New York Times > Health > When Torment Is Baby's Destiny, Euthanasia Is Defended

Humans are not the only tool making species, birds and primates make tools as well. We have brought the rule making instinct to a high peak of development. Today's Times describes physicians in the Netherlands who have developed guidelines for ending the lives of babies whose birth defects doom them to

"what is certain to be a brief life of grievous suffering....
The doctors, Eduard Verhagen and Pieter J. J. Sauer of the University Medical Center in Groningen, in an essay in today's New England Journal of Medicine, said they had developed guidelines, known as the Groningen protocol. The guidelines have been described in some news reports over the last several weeks, and the authors said they wrote their essay to address 'blood-chilling accounts and misunderstandings.'"

As a bureaucrat, I might be expected to welcome this. There's nothing like a well-designed rule to warm the cockles of one's heart (ed. --but bureaucrats don't have hearts). In this case I'm not sure. The assisted suicide law in Oregon seems to have worked okay, so is there anything wrong in principle with this effort? I'm reluctant to go along with it, but not sure whether it's the "yuck factor"--the desire to avoid contemplatin truly unpleasant circumstances--or wisdom.

My crack at wisdom would say something like--in these circumstances, you can't win. Some babies will be killed and be saved great pain. Some will be killed who might have survived through the pain and had a life. And sometimes the rule will be misapplied. It's not clear that having the rule will improve the results.

I don't know. Tomorrow I'll think something different.