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21. The Abuse of Holocaust Studies: Mercy Killing and the Slippery Slope
- Temple University Press
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21 THE ABUSE OF HOLOCAUST STUDIES: Mercy Killing and the Slippery Slope Peter H. Hare The magnitude of Holocaust literature (including films) in the last twenty-five years is difficult to grasp. Probably no other event in the history of humankind has been as intensively examined. Although every decent human being applauds the effort to record and understand the horrors of the Third Reich, this tidal wave of literature carries with it dangers as well as benefits. I share Alan Rosenberg's view that the Holocaust is "a transformational event"! that "implies a deep and sweeping criticism of existing culture,"2 but we must be on our guard against the abuse of the cry "Never again!" As much as we may dislike to think of it in terms of fashion, it cannot be fairly denied that the Holocaust has become a fashionable topic among intellectuals and to a lesser extent in the general population . We need not be cynical to be suspicious of the motives of persons attracted to this fashion. Emotional satisfaction can be gained by expressing horror of such an indisputable evil. In a world of ambiguities and dilemmas, it is gratifying to have something that no one denies our right to despise. Caught up in this fashion, we naturally shrink in horror from any proposed action that people suggest might lead even indirectly to another Holocaust. If, for example, we are critical of Israel's foreign policy and are told that the abandonment of that policy will somehow start the world down a slippery slope at the bottom of which will be the destruction of Israel and another Holocaust, we are reluctant to press our criticism despite the paucity of evidence offered in support of this prediction. We are so overawed by the certainty and enormity of the evil of the original Holocaust, that mention of the mere possibility of another Holocaust is sufficient to dissuade us from pressing our criticism. "Never again" has paralyzed our critical faculties. Although the Nazi analogy can be used almost anywhere in ethical 412 Copyrighted Material The Abuse of Holocaust Studies I 413 or political debate, in this essay I want to limit my attention to its use in bioethics,3 more particularly to its use in the slippery slope argument against mercy killing or active euthanasia. If readers come to understand the dangers of the analogy in the debate about mercy killing, they will have little difficulty understanding them in other debates. I should first explain what I mean by "mercy killing." Mercy killing is the use by one person of active means (e.g., lethal injection, shooting) to end the life of another for that other person's sake. I focus on mercy killing instead of "letting die" (passive euthanasia) because if mercy killing can be shown to be defensible, then a fortiori passive euthanasia can be too. In my usage, mercy killing may be of a tenninally ill (e.g., cancer) or of a chronically ill (e.g., paralysis) patient; it may be voluntary (e.g., a cancer patient pleads for death) or nonvoluntary (e.g., a severely defective newborn or someone in an advanced stage of Alzheimer's); it may be done by a health professional (e.g., a physician) or by a nonprofessional (e.g., a family member). I believe that there are circumstances in which such killing is morally permissible and even obligatory and that changes should be made in the law so that people can do their duty without severe legal sanctions. Readers will all be familiar with cases, but perhaps I should mention two cases involving Alzheimer's disease that are illustrative of this profoundly disturbing problem. John Kraai, a physician outside Rochester, New York, was charged with second-degree murder in the insulin overdose death of Frederick Wagner, eighty-one, the doctor's childhood friend and long-time patient. Kraai told police that he had given Wagner three injections of insulin in Wagner's room at a nursing home because he could not bear to see his friend suffer the degenerative effects of Alzheimer's disease. Three weeks later Kraai, seventy-six, was found dead in his driveway, the victim of an apparent suicide. He had delivered more than 5,000 babies in his career and still made house calls at the time of his arrest. Fifteen hundred mourners attended his funeral where he was eulogized as someone who had "lived and died a doctor above all." Even more heartbreaking is the...