Often in the sturm und drang of a world gone mad, there comes, through the chaos and insanity, some brief moment of clarity. Such times pass by quickly, and are quickly forgotten — as this brief instance might have been, courtesy of my neighboring bell weather state of Oregon:
Last month her lung cancer, in remission for about two years, was back. After her oncologist prescribed a cancer drug that could slow the cancer growth and extend her life, [Barbara] Wagner was notified that the Oregon Health Plan wouldn’t cover it.
It would cover comfort and care, including, if she chose, doctor-assisted suicide.
Studies have found that chemotherapy can decrease pain and time spent in the hospital and increases quality of life, Caton said. The Oregon Health Plan started out rationing health care in 1994.
We have arrived, at last. The destination was never much in doubt — once the threshold of medical manslaughter had been breached, wrapped as always in comforting words of “compassion” and “dignity,” it was only a matter of time before our pragmatism trumped our principles. Once the absolute that physicians should be healers, not hangmen, was heaved overboard, it was inevitable that the relentless march of relativism would reach its logical port of call.
Death, after all, is expensive — the most expensive thing in life. It was not always so. In the remote past it was the very currency of life, short and brutal, with man’s primitive intellect sufficient solely to deal out death, not to defer it. There followed upon this time some glimmer of light and hope, wherein death’s timetable remained unfettered, but its stranglehold and certainty were tempered by a new hope and vision of humanity. We became in that time something more than mortal creatures, something extraordinary, an unspeakable treasure entombed within a fragile and decomposing frame. We became something more than our mortal bodies; we became something greater than our pain; we became something whose beauty shown through even the ghastly horrors of the hour of our demise. Our prophets — then heeded — triumphantly thrust their swords through the dark heart of death: “Death, where is your victory? Death, where is your sting?” We became in that moment something more than the physical, something greater than our short and brutish mortality. We became, indeed, truly human, for the very first time.
But we knew better. We pursued the good, only to destroy the best. We set our minds to conquer death, to destroy disease, to end all pain, to become pure and perfect and permanent. We have succeeded beyond our wildest dreams. The diseases which slaughtered us were themselves slayed; the illnesses which tortured and tormented us fell before us. Our lives grew long, and healthier, more comfortable, and more productive. Our newfound longevity and greater health gave rise to ever more miracles, allowing us to pour out our intemperate and precipitous riches with drunken abandon upon dreams of death defeated.
