You knew it would come to this. The push is on in Canada to persuade medical schools to teach students how to euthanize patients — that is, to commit homicide — known euphemistically as medical assistance in dying (MAID). Now, the Canadian Medical Educational Journal lists several suggestions on how to persuade medical schools to include lethal injection training in the curricula. From the study:
We identified numerous change driving and change restraining influences that impacted the inclusion of MAID topics in health sciences curricula. MAID inclusion into health sciences curricula may be aided by the use of faculty development modules to support knowledge attainment and reconciliation of personal beliefs. MAID entry-level competencies and inclusion of MAID in accreditation standards would support informed curricular placement, including the years and courses for content inclusion and leveling of student competencies.
Furthermore, MAID specific course objectives in courses would assist the consistency of MAID inclusion. It is essential to identify the forces impacting MAID content inclusion in curricula, so the drivers of change can be capitalized, and the “inertial constraints” are recognized and mitigated to move health sciences curriculum into an era of MAID as a legally available care option.
When the Canadian Supreme Court imposed a nationwide right to euthanasia on Canada, I thought that the medical community would fight back and that only a few bottom feeders would participate. But to my great shock, the medical and nursing associations have been the law’s greatest boosters and most enthusiastic proponents for expanding eligibility. This “study,” really an advocacy document, is just the latest case in point.
Think about this, too. Time that would otherwise be spent on teaching new doctors how to treat, heal, palliate, counsel, and diagnose serious medical maladies will instead be refocused on teaching them how to kill patients. Moreover, professors will be expected to convince students that killing the sick and disabled is proper and ethical practice. It is a subversion of everything that medical school should be about.
Finally, brilliant and talented would-be doctors may well decide to pursue a different career because being a doctor could now require them to lethally inject patients. I know that would stop me.
It’s all so disheartening. Euthanasia corrupts everything it touches.
HD Editors Note: Why Is This News Biblically Relevant?
In 2 Timothy Chapter 3, the apostle Paul describes to us what the character of mankind would be like in the last days. These characteristics would serve as a sign that Jesus’ return is fast approaching. Among this list is a “Loss of Natural Affection,” A society is required to have this characteristic to be able to murder the weakest among them.
2 Timothy 3:1-4 KJV – “This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God.”
Answers in Genesis in their Article “Is Euthanasia a Biblical Solution to Terminal Illness or Suffering?” wrote:
As people around the world grapple with the issue of whether euthanasia (“mercy killing”) and physician-assisted suicide should be legal, it is the desire to retain control over our lives until the end that motivates many to push for a legal “right to die” on their own terms. When we realize that this is tantamount to asking for murder-on-demand, the sanitized sounding word euthanasia takes on its true colors.
How should we as Christians view this issue? Whatever direction the legal systems of this and other nations take—and whatever unhappy surprises our own lives may hold for us as individuals and for those we love—how can we be certain that our thinking on this issue is correct? It is quite easy to be caught up in the emotional rhetoric surrounding this subject and to be overwhelmed by emotional distress when we hear bad news from our doctors. Without a firm foundation in the Word of God, the decisions we make and the beliefs we hold about these complex issues may be swayed by emotions and governed by the fallible pronouncements of secular ethics committees or even resource utilization guidelines. Therefore, to prepare ourselves for the unexpected, it is important to base our thinking on the Word of God from the very beginning. Let’s get this straight in our minds now.
From the beginning—back in the Garden of Eden—human beings have wanted to take control of their lives. We see this in the historical account of Eve’s yielding to the serpent’s temptation to “be like God” (Genesis 3:5) and in Adam’s decision to follow her in rebellion to God.
The Bible does not condone the taking of one’s own life or euthanasia. It simply does not. God exhorts us to defend the “speechless … who are appointed to die” (Proverbs 31:8–9), not to kill them. God forbids murder (Exodus 20:13). Euthanasia—the destruction of another person’s life even to end their suffering—is a form of murder. It is wrong to do it and wrong to ask someone to do it for you. Having the choice to “shuffle off this mortal coil” through our own hand or the hand of another is not God’s plan for us. We human beings do not have the authority to make that decision for ourselves or our loved ones.
Yet despite all the appealing talk of “dying with dignity”—and who in their right mind would desire to die without dignity—suicide, even when assisted by a physician’s lethal prescription, and euthanasia—which is just a nice word for murder with a presumably merciful motive—are not acceptable options unless we are nothing more than animals.
But we are not just animals! We—every one of us—are all made in his image and therefore all human beings have lives of special value to God, so much so that Jesus Christ, God’s Son, gave his own life for us (John 3:16; 1 Corinthians 15:22; Hebrews 2:9–10). God’s account of creation recorded in the Bible is consistent with what we see in the physical world and validates his ownership of humanity and his right to set our standards. And apart from a source of truth from someone greater than man, no person’s moral judgments are more valid than another’s. Human beings have many ideas about right and wrong, but as described in the biblical book of Judges, when God’s Word is ignored, everyone does what is right in his own eyes (Judges 21:25), and that is a recipe for disaster as much now as it was during the days described in the book of Judges. Only God who created mankind is justly in a position of moral authority over all mankind.
We must not, therefore, yield the ground to those exhorting us to embrace death prematurely—much less to put subtle pressure on others to do so—but rather focus on how we live in the light of God’s truth until life’s end.
This is a complex issue, and this article is not intended to address every aspect, much less to review the legal ramifications of laws and court decisions that can change in a day. This is, instead, a reminder that we need to base our thinking on the Word of God, which never changes and can be trusted to guide us through life and death.
