Almost a month ago, I wrote about the effect on a person's psyche of being raised in a home which places no value on a human life. Now imagine for a moment the effect of being raised in a society which doesn't value human life. How would that person behaved when faced with a life or death decision about another human being? Would he save them, or measure the value and convenience of that life first? Sadly, we have our answer.
Two EMT's in England answered it for us when they responded to the call of a disabled man who was having a heart attack. When they saw Mr Baker sprawled on the floor and his crutches lying nearby, they did not rush to save him. Instead, they stood nearby and debated the quality of his life and whether, considering the drain he was on the national health care system, he and the country would be better off if Mr Baker were simply allowed to die.
It would seem that in secular England, these two public servants decided that because Mr Baker's hips were bad (he'd had surgery for them) enough to require the use of crutches and his house was dirty, they would just tell the dispatcher that he was already dead when they arrived. His life was probably miserable and he wasn't worth the effort of resuscitation. Unfortunately for the ambulancemen, they didn't realize that the 999 (the equivalent of our 911) computer was still taping since Mr Baker hadn't hung up the phone when he collapsed. Every word of their debate was saved.
What kind of society breeds people who stand over a dying man and decide that his life is too pathetic for him to want to live it? A society who does not value the worth of the individual as being on par or more important than the collective good. This is the path that our country is headed down if we do not realize the psychological impact that our actions have upon our children and take drastic moves to change them.
Let this tragic tale be a lesson to us all. When people are raised in a society which teaches and believes that only the convenient are worthy of life, then one day the inconvenient could be any of us. There is none of us so special that the EMT's wouldn't fell free to debate the relative merits of our lives before deciding if we are worth the effort.
8 comments:
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Can we kill folks who are supposed to save life, who instead destroy it?
Please?
It is essential that the human rights court make an example of these 2 guys so that this cannot happen again. They should be prosecuted to the maximum extent under law.
I hope that as you write this blog you are also writing to your MP and MPP to under take legal action against these 2.
Smiley,
I wish I could, but I'm just a good ol' girl in the middle of the United States and I don't think Parliament would care too much about my opinion. Unfortunately.
Two things will happen here. Prosecution under common law, if the evidence is good enough. Then (even if there is an acquittal) the Fitness to Practice committee will hold an investigation. This will probably result in their being struck off the Professional Register of Paramedics; that decision is routinely circulated to every member of the profession and is made public. They will lose their jobs and their livelihood. So there will be consequences but sadly too late for Mr Baker.
i seriously think jail time is what they deserve. If i was a lawyer i would work pro bono for these guys to get the largest amount of jail time ever short of a life sentence.
I agree that they deserve jail time, and would like to see them get it. Sadly it doesn't look like they will. One of the articles spoke of them being brought up on civil charges? or something to that effect. That sounds similar to our misdemeanor charges, and would be a slap on the wrist.
You see, the courts will decide he wasn't that important either. We had a 72 year old man killed here a few years back when a woman hit him as she ran a red light. She only got a ticket for running the red light. No matter how his family protested, the driver was never prosecuted for his death. The people in town knew that it was because the prosecutor and police felt it was a mercy that he had died. His life was judged to have gone on beyond usefulness, and so his untimely death was not a crime.
Just a thought, when people are killed like this do they become martyrs?
I believe they'd only be martyrs if their faith was involved.
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