Holland to Allow “Baby Euthanasia”

(www.RemnantNewspaper.com) The UK Sunday Times of March 5, 2006 relates the story of a Dutch couple, Frank and Anita, whose daughter Chanou was born in 2000 with a rare, incurable metabolic disorder that had resulted in abnormal bone development. “She cried all the time,”  said Anita, a 37-year-old local government worker. “Every time I touched her it hurt.” Doctors gave little Chanou no more than 30 months to live.

Frank and Anita began to believe that their daughter would be better off dead: “We felt terrible watching her suffer. We felt we were letting her down. She kept throwing up milk that was fed through a tube in her nose. She seemed to be saying, ‘Mummy, I don’t want to live any more. Let me go’.” Eventually, doctors agreed to help the baby die at seven months. The feeding was stopped, and Chanou was given morphine. “We were with her at that last moment,” said Anita. “She was exhausted. She took a very deep last breath. It was so peaceful. It made me feel at peace inside to know that she wasn’t suffering any more.”

Even so, the parents felt that their daughter’s suffering had gone on too long. Child euthanasia is illegal in Holland and doctors were afraid of being prosecuted. “It was a long road to find the humane solution that we reluctantly decided we wanted,” said Frank, a bank worker.

Each year in Holland, at least 15 seriously ill babies, most of them with severe spina bifida or chromosomal abnormalities, are helped to die by doctors acting with the parents’ consent. But only a fraction of those cases are reported to the authorities because of the doctors’ fears of being charged with murder.

Things are about to change, however, making it much easier for parents and doctors to end the suffering of an infant. A committee set up to regulate the practice is set to begin operation, effectively making Holland, where adult euthanasia is legal, the first country in the world to allow “baby euthanasia” as well.

The development has angered opponents of euthanasia who warn of a “slippery slope” leading to abuses by doctors and parents, who will be making decisions for individuals incapable of expressing a will. Others welcome more openness about a practice that, according to doctors, goes on secretly anyway, regardless of the law. “It is a giant step forward and we are very happy about it,” said Eduard Verhagen, clinical director of pediatrics at the University Medical Center in Groningen, northern Holland. The hospital began reporting cases of euthanasia in newborns with spina bifida between 2002 and 2004. Verhagen authorized and sometimes witnessed the procedure without any criminal charges being brought against him.

“It is in some ways beautiful,” said Verhagen, describing the moment when severely pain-racked children relax for the first time since birth. “But it is also extremely emotional and very difficult,” he added. “No doctor likes to do this. You will always ask yourself, ‘Is there something I have not thought of?’ That is why it needs to be done under a spotlight: you can never, ever be wrong.”

In liberal Holland, criticism is more muted. But Bert Dorenbos, chairman of the Cry for Life organization, called tolerance of child euthanasia “very scary.” “It is a terrible thing,” he said. Under the new system “patients, particularly children, will need protection from euthanasia-minded doctors. It is very worrying indeed.”

Comment: It would be easy to paint someone like Eduard Verhagen as the euthanasia-happy counterpart of the average abortionist,  someone who can kill a child at the drop of hat without remorse. However, his willingness to sanction the practice of euthanasia dates to the time he treated a baby suffering from a severe form of Hallopeau-Siemens syndrome, which meant that her skin would detach itself from her body if anyone touched it. Even the membranes inside her mouth and esophagus fell away whenever they tried to feed her through a tube. Although her parents demanded an end to her suffering, Verhagen, fearing prosecution, sent the child home, where she died of pneumonia six months later. Since then, he has approved of ending a child’s life in cases of “untreatable disease and unbearable suffering,” which he describes as a form of “passive euthanasia.”

The desire to alleviate the pain of another human being is the hallmark of the true physician. But, while one has to wonder just how much raw suffering a man – or grieving parents – can endure before they will turn to the “final solution,” euthanasia remains a “violation of the divine law, an offense against the dignity of the human person, a crime against life, and an attack on humanity.” (Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Declaration on Euthanasia, May 5, 1980)

These words are borne out by the fact that the euthanasia mentality goes increasingly hand-in-hand with the abortion mentality. After the death of little Chanou, her mother, Anita became pregnant again, but a test at 11 weeks showed her child to be suffering from the same metabolic disorder as Chanou. Anita had an abortion. Afterwards, she gave birth to a healthy son. Is this not another step into the “infant-as-commodity” world, where unhealthy “fetuses” are plucked off the assembly line (via abortion), while healthy ones are allowed to go through? This used to be called “playing God.”

The parents of Chanou planted a lime tree for her in a park in southern Holland and go there often to remember their “brave little fighter,” who is “playing in heaven now.” Without minimizing the parent’s own sufferings, this seems an odd statement. Usually, whenever we refer to someone who is a “fighter” (such as Terri Schiavo), we laud their inner strength and sheer will to live. To recognize these attributes, yet still prevent the “fighter” from persevering by ending her existence, is a contradiction, however much solace (if any) this contradiction provides.

Catholic-Jewish Commission Issues Statement On Respect For Human Life

Zenit reports (March 2, 2006) that the Sixth Bilateral Commission Meeting of the Delegation of the Holy See's Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews and the Chief Rabbinate of Israel's Delegation for Relations with the Catholic Church was held in Rome from February 26-28, 2006. The Commission has issued a final statement on “the relationship between human life and technology – conscious of the far reaching advances in medical science and the challenges as well as opportunities that these present.”

The statement rejects the idea of human ownership of life and the practice of euthanasia by affirming “the principles of our respective Traditions that God is the Creator and Lord of all life and that human life is sacred precisely because, as the Bible teaches, the human person is created in the Divine Image.” In addition, the statement recognizes that the remarkable achievements made in the fields of science, medicine and technology “bring with them greater responsibilities, profound ethical challenges and potential dangers,” and it calls for “limits to the application of science and technology in recognition of the fact that not everything which is technically feasible is ethical.”

The statement urges medical practitioners and scientists “to engage with and be guided by the wisdom of religion in all matters of life and death.” It addition, it says:

We strongly condemn any kind of bloodshed to promote any ideology – especially if this is done in the name of Religion. Such action is nothing less than a desecration of the Divine Name. At the same time such abuses and the current tensions between civilizations demand of us to reach out beyond our own bilateral dialogue which has its unique compelling character. Thus we believe that it is our duty to engage and involve the Muslim world and its leaders in respectful dialogue and cooperation. Furthermore we appeal to world leaders to appreciate the essential potential of the religious dimension to help resolve conflicts and strife and call on them to support interreligious dialogue to this end.

The Bilateral Commission’s final statement was signed in Rome on February 28, 2006 (Shevat 30, 5766) by Chief Rabbi Shear Yashuv Cohen, Chairman of the Jewish Delegation and Cardinal Jorge Mejía, Chairman of the Catholic Delegation, among others.

Comment: Of course, it sounds good. Bring “religion” into the sphere of science and medicine. Place controls on rampant technological absurdities. But, how on earth can a Catholic speak about respect for human life without basing his arguments on the Humanity of Jesus Christ, or simply ignore the fact that the Humanity of the Second Divine Person is the very matrix of human nature and the foundation stone for any dignity or value that a human being might possess? How do we talk about “the principles of our respective Traditions” and “the Divine image” when the Jewish and Catholic members of this commission are speaking two entirely different theological languages? The very fact that the statement was also dated using a Jewish system, which ignores the historical turning point of the Incarnation, is merely further proof of the existence of a theological “babel” in the interreligious movement.

The human nature of Adam, one day to be assumed by Jesus in the womb of the Virgin Mary, is so pivotal to the history of Creation that its rejection by a prideful Lucifer laid the groundwork for the Fall – and the subsequent glorious restoration of mankind by the death and Resurrection of the Incarnate Word. In his On the Resurrection, Romanos the Melodist (died c.560), a Father of the Church and convert from Judaism, placed these observations on human nature in Lucifer’s mouth:

At that time I fled, since I did not wish this;

I was not willing to kneel before a created being,

And I did not know, wretched me, that

He would save the mortal,

He who has destroyed the weapons of Belial,

The victory of Hades, and the sting of Death.

The Letter to the Hebrews tells us that, when God “bringeth in the first begotten into the world, He saith, and let all the angels of God adore Him. (1:6)” Ven. Maria of Agreda (d. 1665) tells us that Lucifer rejected the union of Divine and human natures in Jesus Christ and “opposed with horrible blasphemies the Divine decree which constituted [him] as inferior to the Mother of God.” No, the Sacred Humanity of Jesus, and Its consequences to a fallen world, is something that no Catholic can simply omit in any discussion of “respect for human life.”

Even barring the ultimate futility of both interreligious dialogue and “a respectful dialogue with Islam,” who can honestly believe that secularized doctors and scientists will begin consulting with priests, rabbis and imams before resorting to “extreme” measures?

Has the memory of Msgr. Thaddeus Malanowski being refused the right to administer Holy Communion to a dying Terri Schiavo, not to mention the willing compliance of both police and medical staff in Michael Schiavo’s brutalization of Terri and her family, faded already? It is a simple fact of life, borne out through the centuries – In the end, any grandiose plan for the benefit of humanity, however utopian, which omits the Social Kingship of Christ, is doomed to an ignominious failure.

The “Founder of Modern  Creationism” Dies At Age 87

Dr. Henry M. Morris, a hydraulics engineer widely regarded as the father of modern creationism, whose fusion of scientific and biblical knowledge rekindled the anti-evolution movement more than 40 years ago, died on Feb. 25, 2006 at the age of 87. The Los Angeles Times reports (March 3, 2006) that Morris died at Sharp Grossmont Hospital near San Diego after a series of strokes.

Born in Dallas in 1918, Henry Madison Morris, Jr. was barely in grade school when the creationists and Darwinian evolutionists famously wrangled during what came to be known as the “Scopes Monkey Trial.” After graduating from Rice University in 1939 with a bachelor's degree in civil engineering, Morris came to the realization that, while the theory of evolution held sway in both science and religion, there was no alternative voice defending the veracity of the Bible’s creation accounts.

The year 1961 saw the publication of The Genesis Flood, written by Dr. Morris and John C. Whitcomb. By treating the Bible as an error-free account of history, Morris tried to explain scientifically how the earth could be created in six 24-hour days.  The book is credited as being the first to take a scholarly approach to proving the Old Testament creation story, arguing that Noah's flood, rather than eons of erosion, sculpted the earth. Considered the handbook of creationism, The Genesis Flood is currently in its 44th printing, having sold 250,000 copies in English. "The grass-roots movement you see across America right now, with the school board battles, with the students questioning evolution in colleges, all of that is really in a big part due to the work of Dr. Henry Morris," said Ken Ham, president of Answers in Genesis, a group based in Kentucky. "All of us in the modern creationism movement today would say we stand on his shoulders."

In The Genesis Flood, Dr. Morris contended that the layers of fossils that geologists believe were deposited over billions of years could have been deposited within weeks or months of the flood as the least-fit creatures perished. Asserting that only Noah's family and the animals on the ark survived, he calculated the ark's cargo capacity at roughly 522 railroad cars that could hold about 35,000 animals capable of repopulating the Earth.

By the time he wrote The Genesis Flood, Morris was head of the civil engineering department at Virginia Polytechnic Institute in Blacksburg, Virginia. During his 13 years at the university, the civil engineering program had become one of the largest in the nation, and his 1963 textbook on applied hydraulics is still in use. He also earned a Ph.D. and M.S. from the University of Minnesota, served on the faculty at Rice University, University of Minnesota, University of Southwestern Louisiana and Southern Illinois University.

In 1970, Morris launched the Institute for Creation Research, a graduate school and research organization. Since 1981, the institute has awarded about 100 master's degrees. In 1989, the state Department of Education tried to suspend the institute's accreditation, claiming it taught religious theory, not science. A lawsuit was settled in the institute's favor, and accreditation was restored.

Among Morris' chief critics was the late paleontologist and  evolutionist, Stephen Jay Gould, who claims that, “There is a mystery as to how evolution occurs, but there is not a whole lot of doubt as to whether it occurs." Another critic of Morris, Kenneth R. Miller, a biology professor at Brown University, debated Morris in 1981. So many people bought tickets that the event had to be held in the biggest building on campus — a hockey rink. While accusing Morris of being “profoundly wrong, profoundly misguided in his view of science and Christianity,” nevertheless Miller admitted that he found Morris to be “unfailingly polite, a real gentleman." Miller echoes the sentiments of another of Morris’ critics, Eugenie C. Scott, director of the National Center for Science Education, the leading defender of teaching evolution in public schools, who lauded Morris’ "cordial, gentlemanly" manner.

During his lifetime, Dr. Henry M. Morris wrote more than 60 books which attempted to establish an intellectual framework for a scientific explanation of the theory of divine creation. "Ideas can die because there is just no one to think about them," said Paul Nelson, a fellow with the Discovery Institute, a leading Seattle-based organization that promotes intelligent design. "I love the fact that Dr. Morris kept alive dissent from Darwinian evolution."

Comment: As a footnote to Dr. Morris’ obituary, it is interesting to note that opposition to the Darwinian hegemony of the educational systems of the world can be found in diverse places. Only three days after Morris’ death, MosNews reported that the parents of 15-year-old Maria Shreiber, a schoolgirl from St. Petersburg, Russia, “have filed a suit against the Education Ministry, demanding to ban Darwin’s theory of evolution from the school program.”

The parent’s reasoning? They claim that Darwin’s theory “infringes the children’s right to believe in the creation of man, depriving them of the right to have different world outlooks.” Spiritual Heritage, an organization that supports the suit, argues that Darwin’s theory is still a hypothesis that remains to be proven, claiming that there is no reason it should be taught at school as the only correct version of human genesis. It seems that, these days, more and more voices in the wilderness are challenging Lord Darwin and his contemporary disciples.

Hollywood’s Gladiators Off The Mark?

Hollywood's take on gladiatorial combat as a bloodbath in which no holds were barred is an insult to history, say scientists, who believe the fighters of ancient Rome played by a clear set of rules.

New Science reports (Feb. 23, 2006) that Austrian experts carried out a painstaking forensic analysis of 67 gladiators whose remains were found in a cemetery at Ephesus in Turkey, the Roman empire's hub of power in west Asia. The gladiators' cemetery, uncovered in 1993, is thought to date from the second century AD, when Roman power was at its zenith. The site was identified thanks to tomb reliefs of gladiators, denoting the fighters' special status in Roman culture.

To find out whether the ancient fighters actually stuck to the rules, Karl Großschmidt of the Medical University of Vienna in Austria and Fabian Kanz of the Austrian Archaeological Institute used modern forensic techniques, such as microscopic analysis of bone injuries and computed tomography – the "CAT" scan which provides a cross-sectional image of body tissues and bones – to try to determine cause of death, New Scientist reports. They found that the gladiators had a remarkable lack of multiple injuries and mutilation, which suggests the fighters were restricted to only one type of weapon per one-on-one bout and were barred from savaging their wounded opponent.

Even though most gladiators wore helmets, 10 of the 67 had died from a squarish, hammer-like injury to the side of the head – a blow that appears to have been inflicted by a back-stage executioner, suggesting that mortally wounded gladiators were still alive when taken from the arena before being put out of their agony by a massive blow to the skull.

Ridley Scott's film, Gladiator, depicts the gladiatorial arena as a place of savage violence and mutilation in which the defeated gladiator was slain after being condemned to death by a baying crowd. But Roman artwork and literature suggest that gladiators were well-matched in their capabilities and followed sets of rules enforced by two referees.

While the Roman arena may have played host to appalling brutality in the name of entertainment, at least the gladiators who fought there maintained certain standards, say Großschmidt and Kanz, who will present their research in a paper to be published in Forensic Science International.