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Joe Biden’s Health Advisor: The Lives of the Elderly Have Less Utility

Barry Arrington
April 22, 2020
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Joe Biden has just tapped Ezekiel Emanuel, the chief architect of Obamacare (and brother of “never waste a crisis” Rahm Emanuel) as an advisor on healthcare issues. Ezekiel is most famous for insisting that healthcare must be rationed, and the elderly must perforce get the short end of the rationing stick. The reason: he has a strictly utilitarian view of life, which takes no account of the inherent value of human life as such. He is also Jewish. Does anyone else find it tragically ironic that a Jew of all people would advance policy prescriptions that are in all but name based on the Lebensunwertes Leben principle? To be sure, Ezekiel has not advocated for outright euthanasia as the progenitors of that principle did. He is not a monster. But his policy prescriptions, if implemented, would have the same practical effect if the elderly were cut off from life-prolonging medical procedures on the basis of utilitarian calculations about the value of their lives relative to the lives of younger people.

UPDATE: Commenter Jerry states:

Will Emanuel, if Biden is elected and then appointed, advise Biden that he seek no medical treatment while president since he will be 78+. If true, I can see the race for Vice President being extremely cut throat. I mean that rhetorically and not actually.

To which Homer would probably reply “Doh!” (I mean Homer Simpson, not, well, Homer. I am BA, not KF after all.)

Comments
Maybe there should be an age limit for Presidential candidates, say, no one older than 65?Seversky
April 22, 2020
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Wow Jerry. Interesting point.Barry Arrington
April 22, 2020
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Will Emanuel, if Biden is elected and then appointed, advise Biden that he seek no medical treatment while president since he will be 78+. If true, I can see the race for Vice President being extremely cut throat. I mean that rhetorically and not literally.jerry
April 22, 2020
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To UD Editor: I'm not antisemitic. I love orthodox Jews.FourFaces
April 22, 2020
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UD Editor: Comment deleted. Comments that come to our attention that veer too closely to "global Jewish conspiracy," which in our view is a form of antisemitism, will be deleted. The question in the OP is not antisemitic. It raises the legitimate question of how a Jewish person -- who by all reason should be hypersensitive about viewing life in utilitarian terms -- would advance the policies discussed.FourFaces
April 22, 2020
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Indeed, Emanuel has said he doesn’t want to live beyond the age of 75:
Here is a simple truth that many of us seem to resist: living too long is also a loss. It renders many of us, if not disabled, then faltering and declining, a state that may not be worse than death but is nonetheless deprived. It robs us of our creativity and ability to contribute to work, society, the world. It transforms how people experience us, relate to us, and, most important, remember us. We are no longer remembered as vibrant and engaged but as feeble, ineffectual, even pathetic.
Though he wrote this back in October of 2014 he was thinking of how we should respond to pandemics like we’re in the midst of now
What about simple stuff? Flu shots are out. Certainly if there were to be a flu pandemic, a younger person who has yet to live a complete life ought to get the vaccine or any antiviral drugs. A big challenge is antibiotics for pneumonia or skin and urinary infections. Antibiotics are cheap and largely effective in curing infections. It is really hard for us to say no. Indeed, even people who are sure they don’t want life-extending treatments find it hard to refuse antibiotics. But, as Osler reminds us, unlike the decays associated with chronic conditions, death from these infections is quick and relatively painless. So, no to antibiotics.
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/joe-biden-coronavirus-adviser-ezekiel-emanuel-wants-to-die-at-75/ Sounds a lot like eugenics, doesn’t it? Eugenics in the early 20th was justified as way of just helping natural selection along. Charles Darwin in The Descent of Man argued that one of the downsides of civilization is that it inhibited the effects of natural selection making us all less fit and weaker. Indeed, the fact is that eugenics never went away. It just got relabeled with euphemisms-- something the secular progressive left is good at doing. For example, abortion is achieving most of the goals of the early eugenicists. Margaret Sanger, who abortionists still celebrate, was a eugenicist.john_a_designer
April 22, 2020
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