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Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: And welcome back George Norry along with Wesley Smith as

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Speaker 2: we are talking about the humankind and his websites are

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Speaker 2: linked up at Coast tocoastam dot com. Wesley I had

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Speaker 2: mentioned that the twelve jurisdictions have legalized assistant suicide. No

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Speaker 2: states have legalized youth in Asia. What's the difference between

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Speaker 2: the two? Can you tell us?

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Speaker 3: Yeah, morally, I don't think there is a difference, But

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Speaker 3: in terms of the discussion, assistant suicide is when somebody

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Speaker 3: assists in the case you're talking about generally a doctor,

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Speaker 3: but it's no longer necessarily. A doctor can also be

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Speaker 3: a nurse practitioner in some states by prescribing poison and

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Speaker 3: overdose and intentional overdose of drugs for somebody to kill themselves.

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Speaker 3: They like to call it medical aid and dying made.

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Speaker 3: That's a euphemism to try to get away from what's

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Speaker 3: really going on, that a doctor is actually assisting a

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Speaker 3: patient kill themselves. Euthanasia is when the doctor, again using

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Speaker 3: the general parlance, does the killing, so it's a homicide.

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Speaker 3: It's not murder because it's legal in the states. I

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Speaker 3: mean in the countries such as Canada, the Netherlands, Belgium,

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Speaker 3: and so forth. But it is a homicide where the

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Speaker 3: doctor is killing as a medical treatment. And that gets

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Speaker 3: back to the idea of d harm medicine, because when

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Speaker 3: doctors become killers, it changes the entire way the culture

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Speaker 3: looks at medicine and also looks at weak and vulnerable people,

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Speaker 3: ill people and people with disabilities. And it becomes a

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Speaker 3: different society because it changes your whole mindset, since you

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Speaker 3: decided as a society once you legalize these things, that

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Speaker 3: life itself is not an inherent good.

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Speaker 2: Now, Jackovorkian was a practitioner of euthanasia, Wasn't.

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Speaker 3: He both assisted suicide and euthanasia. People might not remember,

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Speaker 3: but back in the nineties, Jack of Orcian, that's when

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Speaker 3: I cut my teeth on these issues. He was a

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Speaker 3: retired pathologist. He'd never actually treated patients outside of medical school,

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Speaker 3: and after he retired he started He wrote a book

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Speaker 3: called Prescription Meticide, in which he pushed assisted suicide not

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Speaker 3: as a means primarily of alleviating suffering, but so that

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Speaker 3: he could engage in what he called obitiatry that was

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Speaker 3: in other words human vivisection. He wanted to experiment on

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Speaker 3: people he was euthanizing, and that was the role, the

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Speaker 3: goal of his assisted suicide campaign. The media didn't like

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Speaker 3: to talk about that because the media became in the tank,

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Speaker 3: in my opinion, for assisted suicide, so they were always

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Speaker 3: talking about him trying to alleviate suffering. But he said

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Speaker 3: in his own book that wasn't his primary purpose. Jack

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Speaker 3: of Orkian, people were flying to Michigan to be assisted

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Speaker 3: in suicide, most of them were disabled, somewhere terminally ill,

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Speaker 3: and he would kill them with carbon monoxide in his

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Speaker 3: rusty van. And yet that was deemed compassion the time

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Speaker 3: that he moved from assisted suicide, where people would you know,

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Speaker 3: trigger the carbon monoxide themselves. He euthanized a man named

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Speaker 3: Thomas Yoke who had Louke Garretts as he's als, and

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Speaker 3: he filmed himself doing it. And he then took the

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Speaker 3: film because Jack of Orkin was really about Jack of Orkian,

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Speaker 3: he took the film to sixty minutes and Mike Wallace,

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Speaker 3: the late Mike Wallace, was a euthanasia proponent. They put

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Speaker 3: it on sixty minutes and I'll never forget Mike Wallace

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Speaker 3: saying to Kivorkian, is he dead yet? Is he dead yet?

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Speaker 3: And Cavorkian would say, no, he's just sedated. It was

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Speaker 3: really a horrible thing, but that pushed the endble a

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Speaker 3: little bit too far, and he was convicted of I

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Speaker 3: think it was second degree murder and he did about

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Speaker 3: ten years in jail. And the really to me shameful

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Speaker 3: thing is that when he got out of prison, he

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Speaker 3: was getting fifty thousand dollars a speech. Before he became

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Speaker 3: ill and passed away. Naturally, he said he wouldn't do that,

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Speaker 3: but he did.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, he died at the age of eighty three. Did

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Speaker 2: he enjoyed doing what he was doing.

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Speaker 3: I never met him, but I think he did, and

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Speaker 3: I think he really enjoyed the notoriety he received. Ralph

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Speaker 3: Nader once said to me that it was a great shame.

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Speaker 3: And Ralph Nader and I have co authored some books

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Speaker 3: together and were friends, and he said to me, it

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Speaker 3: was what a great shame that Jack of Orkian for

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Speaker 3: a period of time had become the most famous doctor

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Speaker 3: in the world because he was helping to kill people

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Speaker 3: with carbon monoxide. And I think Ralph was absolutely correct

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Speaker 3: about that.

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Speaker 2: Tell Ralph high for us. He loves our show by the.

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Speaker 3: Way, I love Ralph.

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Speaker 2: Canada has legalized youth and nation asn't it Yes?

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Speaker 3: And this I think Canada is a real warning sign

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Speaker 3: for the United States because they are our closest cultural cousins.

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Speaker 3: Canada legalized lethal injection euthanasia. I think it was twenty fifteen,

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Speaker 3: and since then they've gone from allowing doctors to kill

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Speaker 3: the terminally ill who asked for it, to the chronically

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Speaker 3: ill who asked for it, to people with disabilities who

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Speaker 3: ask for it, to the frail elderly who ask for it,

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Speaker 3: and starting in twenty twenty seven, doctors will be allowed

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Speaker 3: to kill the mentally ill who ask for it. And Canada,

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Speaker 3: as well as in Netherlands, in Belgium and some other places,

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Speaker 3: they've conjoined euthanasia with organ harvesting. In fact, in Ontario,

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Speaker 3: the Province of Ontario, if a patient goes to a

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Speaker 3: doctor and says I want to be killed, and many

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Speaker 3: many patients now qualify for that. In fact, the last

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Speaker 3: year that there was a record fifteen thousand people. More

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Speaker 3: than fifteen thousand people in Canada were euthanized and it

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Speaker 3: became the fifth leading cause of death. But in Ontario,

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Speaker 3: if you go to a doctor and say I want

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Speaker 3: to be euthanized, and the doctor determines you're qualified, the

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Speaker 3: doctor will then call the organ procurement organization and tell them, well,

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Speaker 3: you know, Charlie is going to be dead on Tuesday

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Speaker 3: the fifteenth, and the organization will then call Charlie and say,

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Speaker 3: can we have your liver? Can we have your kidney?

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Speaker 3: It's really turns in some regards. It turns euthanasia turns

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Speaker 3: people into objects, because once you become killable, you cease

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Speaker 3: to be necessarily a subject. And let me give you

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Speaker 3: an example of this. In the Netherlands, there was a

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Speaker 3: tragic case of a sixteen year old girl who was

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Speaker 3: diagnosed with terminal brain cancer and before she was going

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Speaker 3: into the the later stages of her condition, she asked

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Speaker 3: to be euthanized. And she asked to be euthanized, not

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Speaker 3: because she was suffering at that time, but because she thought,

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Speaker 3: if I am euthanized, I can become an organ donor

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Speaker 3: and I can help other people. Well, as soon as

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Speaker 3: the doctor said yes, they put her into a thirty

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Speaker 3: six hour coma. Now the coma wasn't for her benefit.

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Speaker 3: She ceased to in a sense, be the point. Her

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Speaker 3: organs became the point. So she was in the coma.

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Speaker 3: They did the testing necessary and the tissue typing and

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Speaker 3: so forth to find recipients, and once they found the recipients,

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Speaker 3: then she was killed and her organs taken. This is

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Speaker 3: the kind of thing that can happen in euthanasia. Here's

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Speaker 3: another story from Canada during the COVID crisis. A elderly woman,

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Speaker 3: as happened to too many elderly people, including my late

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Speaker 3: mother in law, woman was isolated because of the COVID restrictions.

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Speaker 3: The isolation was lifted, and then there was going to

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Speaker 3: be a second time where people weren't going to be

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Speaker 3: able to see her. Her family wasn't going to be

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Speaker 3: able to visit her, so she asked to be euthanized.

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Speaker 3: And the deep irony, George, was that while they wouldn't

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Speaker 3: allow her to be with her so she could live,

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Speaker 3: they allowed them to be with her when she was killed.

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Speaker 3: So this is the kind of thing you see repeatedly,

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Speaker 3: and in Canada, you see people being euthanized because they

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Speaker 3: can't obtain proper medical care. Oncologists, for example, there have

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Speaker 3: been a couple of cancer patients that have been reported

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Speaker 3: in the news that were euthanized, not because they wanted

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Speaker 3: to be, but because it would take nine months to

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Speaker 3: get an oncologist. And euthanasia, when it becomes widely accepted

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Speaker 3: and normalized, can become a substitute for caring for people,

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Speaker 3: let's say, expensive conditions or extreme conditions. So these things

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Speaker 3: are very dangerous. Now. Many people in the United States

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Speaker 3: will say, well, we haven't gone that far, and that's true,

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Speaker 3: we haven't gone that far yet. But there is a

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Speaker 3: road that you start down, and it's a logical progression.

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Speaker 3: Once you decide that killing is an acceptable answer to

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Speaker 3: human suffering, and once you do that, the kind of

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Speaker 3: suffering that justifies the killing eventually expands. And the strict

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Speaker 3: guidelines that we often hear about to protect against abuse,

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Speaker 3: as soon as the law is passed and it becomes

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Speaker 3: legal and it starts to become normalized, the guidelines that

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Speaker 3: were deemed protections are now called obstacles and barriers to

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Speaker 3: a good death. And so you see the progression. Even

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Speaker 3: in the United States, you begin to see now loosening

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Speaker 3: of restrictions, doing away with residency requirements, assisted suicide in

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Speaker 3: some states by telemedicine and this kind of thing. So

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Speaker 3: it's a very dangerous road we are on in the

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Speaker 3: West with regard to this issue, and I think people

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Speaker 3: get very caught up in the idea, well, I don't

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Speaker 3: want to suffer. Well, of course nobody does. People aren't

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Speaker 3: being killed, according to the statistics in Canada, in Oregon,

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Speaker 3: in the Netherlands, because of pain very few. Most of

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Speaker 3: the people who are asking for these conditions or these

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Speaker 3: terminations do so because of existential issues, and they're very important,

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Speaker 3: but they can be handled like fear of being a burden,

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Speaker 3: fear of losing dignity, fear of being unable to enjoy

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Speaker 3: certain activities and so forth, and those are important. And

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Speaker 3: I would also hasten to add that in a society

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Speaker 3: that's supposed to be anti suicide, people who ask for

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Speaker 3: assisted suicide or euthanasia, depending on where one lives, don't

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Speaker 3: receive suicide prevention services. And yet studies have shown that

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Speaker 3: even terminally ill people, if they receive proper care, often

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Speaker 3: might become suicidal and then are very happy they changed

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Speaker 3: their minds. In fact, when hospice was first started, Dame

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Speaker 3: Cecily Saunder's a great medical humanitarian who started the modern

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Speaker 3: hospice movement. One of the key points in hospice at

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Speaker 3: the time was suicide prevention if someone was suicidal. But

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Speaker 3: the assisted suicide movement has compromised many hospices, not all,

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Speaker 3: and some participate in assisted suicide, which is a complete

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Speaker 3: rejection of Dame Cecily's philosophy.

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Speaker 2: Are there any conditions that you would support assisted suicide

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Speaker 2: or euthanasia?

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Speaker 3: No, because you can't limit it to the most extreme conditions,

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Speaker 3: and no law in effect in the world today does.

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Speaker 3: They will for example, terminllness six months to live. Well,

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Speaker 3: recent studies showed that that's a very unreliable projection. Doctors

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Speaker 3: don't necessarily know who has six months to live, and

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Speaker 3: we've seen even in Oregon, in some of the states,

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Speaker 3: people have lived for more than two or three years

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Speaker 3: after receiving the lethal prescription. It's just not a door

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Speaker 3: you can open. What we need to do is provide

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Speaker 3: care for people. We need to have significant interventions, make

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Speaker 3: sure people are not isolated, and so forth. And I

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Speaker 3: don't think there is any way to pass a law

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Speaker 3: that can maybe help that one or two alleviate that

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Speaker 3: very rare condition. They can't. Where you can't alleviate suffering,

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Speaker 3: you can't do it. And in fact, there are palliative

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Speaker 3: methods to eliminate alleviate the worst suffering through what's called

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Speaker 3: palliative sedation. So somebody is really in an intractable circumstance,

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Speaker 3: they can be sedated, and that doesn't mean necessarily being

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Speaker 3: put in a coma. That can mean they ty trate

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Speaker 3: it and it's adjusted so people can have a better

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Speaker 3: quality of life. The point is to help people live

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Speaker 3: until they dying is not dead, Dying is living, and

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Speaker 3: the point has to be I think as a really

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Speaker 3: compassionate society, which means to suffer with to care for

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Speaker 3: people and not kill them.

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Speaker 2: What do you think of biotechnology, Wasley?

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Speaker 3: I think it is the most powerful scientific breakthrough since

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Speaker 3: the splitting of the atom. And like the splitting of

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Speaker 3: the atom, it's a double edged sword that some tremendous

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Speaker 3: good canon is already coming from biotechnology, but also the

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Speaker 3: potential for tremendous harm. Let's just talk about the biotech

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Speaker 3: genetic engineering or genetic editing, a technique called crisp er

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Speaker 3: CR s p R and crisper. You can scientists can

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Speaker 3: very easily now change any cell, change any organism, and

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Speaker 3: so that can lead to hopefully some great cures. Just

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Speaker 3: as an example, simple sickle cell anemia as a very

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Speaker 3: painful condition, and crisper a somatic crisper, meaning somebody who's

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Speaker 3: an adult has actually successfully alleviated a lot of the

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Speaker 3: pain of that condition through that genetic editing. But it

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Speaker 3: could also be used to take a bird flu and

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Speaker 3: turn it into a truly lethal pandemic. So these are

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Speaker 3: things that I think as the splitting of the atom

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Speaker 3: requires really strong regulations, and that's what we're not seeing.

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Speaker 3: What we did see with the splitting of the atom

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Speaker 3: was international cooperation trying to set very strong limits on

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Speaker 3: proliferation and so forth, and the differentiating between the peaceful

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Speaker 3: and wartime use of splitting of the atom. But in

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Speaker 3: terms of biotech, it's you know, it's the wild, wild West,

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Speaker 3: and I think that's very concerning Wesley.

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Speaker 2: Is there any morality to any of this that we've

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Speaker 2: been talking about.

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Speaker 3: Well, morality is the only thing that can actually make

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Speaker 3: any of this work, and I'm afraid that what we

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Speaker 3: often see in these discussions isn't a true ethical deliberation.

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Speaker 3: But the question of safety, but ethics goes far beyond safety.

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Speaker 3: Ethics goes to something right, Is this something even though

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Speaker 3: we can do it, is it something we should do?

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Speaker 3: And I don't think we do. We have enough of

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Speaker 3: that discussion, and frankly, we're at a point I think,

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Speaker 3: in becoming such an anything goes society that the only

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Speaker 3: hope we really have is self restraint, and that seems

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Speaker 3: to be in short supply.

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