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Popping the filter bubble and the sanctity of life.
This Tuesday I was presented with a piece of Trivia that brought me up short.
My initial reaction was to quite literally exclaim "bullshit!" but having looked into it, there does appear to be a case. According to the Sixth Annual Report on Medical Assistance in Dying in Canada (which is currently the most recent report available) Canadian doctors euthanized 16,499 individuals in 2024, an increase of 7.5% over the 15,343 euthanized in 2023. Meanwhile The Trace a website maintained by the Gun Control advocacy organization Everytown USA maintains that there were 14,651 instances of Homicide by Gunshot in 2025. While this number does not include self-inflicted gunshots (IE Suicides) it does include an estimated 1,200 cases where the shooting was likely justified (IE suspects being shot by police or by would-be victims) and at least 2 instances of execution by firing squad.
Upon review of those numbers and their associated trend-lines where instances of euthanasia in Canada have increased with each consecutive year since it was legalized, while homicide in the US has been trending downward for the last 5 years from it's Pandemic-era peak it actually seems likely to me that more people are killed by doctors in Canada than are killed by guns in the US. Not "per capita" but by raw quantity (16 thousand people and change versus 14 thousand and change).
Considering the above in the context of another story that came across my feed a couple weeks ago. A Ghoulish Proposal Gets a Prestige Endorsement, it seems to me that there is a concerted effort on the part of certain factions to commodify and devalue Human life. See this story from the New York Times last year Organ Donors are too Rare we Need a New Definition of Death. I expect the media to assure me that that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy announcing that the Network for Hope (an organ procurement non-profit serving Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio) having had their certification revoked on the basis of credible claims that many donors were not legally dead at the time their organs were harvested is completely unrelated.
On a slightly different track, back when Harris was running for president there was this "ridiculous claim" that the Left wanted to legalize Abortion up to the moment of crowning, but just this Monday, Massachusetts became the 10th state in the union to do just that.
As in my prior "Popping filter bubbles" posts I don't feel like any of these things really warrant a post on their own, but when taken together they illustrate a trend, and I find myself lacking the vocabulary to describe my growing sense of unease with where this one seems to be going.
I'm yet to see anyone try to reconcile "it is ghoulish to euthanise grandma" and "it is ghoulish to keep grandma on abysmal QALY life support that costs $100,000s for 2 more decades". Perhaps we should reintroduce death by exposure. If it's hunger and the elements killing grandma, then no one is staining their hands with sin, right?
I believe that both are very ghoulish. I am basically an atheist (with some agnostic longing to believe in my weakest moments) and maybe it's a remnant of my Christian childhood but I believe euthanizing grandma as an economic consideration is the most evil option of all. It's just hideous. If I were religious I would just insist that if God wanted to take the person out they'd take the person out otherwise society or the family or the infirm must foot the bill as it's God's will for them not to be dead. And why are no religious people on this board making this exact argument? It makes me question everyone's faith as I believe it's a perfectly good argument (though I don't think it would be very convincing of most irreligious rationalists and the like.) As I don't have the religious idea to lean on the best I can defend my position from is that it is arrogant for humans to make the decision to end the elderly's life for the convenience of the group and that we should only do this when utterly necessary and even then ought to be very careful about consequences and the philosophical implications (which people time and time again prove themselves incapable of doing.)
On the other hand I do suspect that throughout history in tribal or early societies that the elderly when they became a burden were killed or left to die by close relatives, which while I think is disturbing and should be only done when necessary for the group, is defendable if it is in a situation where it's necessary. I don't think a rich country like Canada needs to euthanize people so the poor can eat, no one is suffering there to that degree today.
More broadly I am maximally repulsed at euthanatia by the state or even by the medical system. If you don't have the motivation to end it without a bureaucratic process to assist you then you probably don't want to die badly enough. It has been over a decade since I was truly suicidal but the act of dying was always a last ditch grasping for agency and the thought of even giving up the agency for ultimate control on your life is baffling and disturbing to me. I just can't relate
Usually the religious argument I encounter is that grandma's body failing is God's will and expending copious effort to keep her alive through all the heart attacks, bedriddenness and dementia is going against it.
Again, is it just the active act of killing that irks you? Would leaving grandma in the hospital bed without the ventilator and IVs (other than painkiller) be fine?
That's a great point and not something I imagined as I was writing my other comment. I was imagining mainly situations where an elderly person would be living fine but with a poor quality of life without significant external medical treatment. In the event that the medical treatment is necessary for life then at that point I imagine it's just as bad to extend their life as it is to take it away early. I realize this is a difficult place to draw the line and I'm glad I am not involved in the medical industry at all, and I hope that when people are forced to make these decisions they're doing it with the benefits of their close relatives and loved ones in mind.
It is not "just the active act of killing" that irks me, it is the self righteousness that any person could have an insight greater than nature or god's will to dole out death, especially as an economic concern.
Which is to say that nature's idea of optimal human life is "nasty, brutish and short" and I do not care much about how hubristic it is for individuals to interfere unless they do worse on at least two out of three.
How I see it, nature's idea of optimal human life is what it is now. Nature wants humans to interfere, it wants "fit" species to survive (defined by their survival). But preserving elderly who waste resources and seem to be unaware and unhappy, it doesn't help us or seem to be helping them, and nature is leaving the decision to collective us.
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