Ethicist Dr. Jonathan Groner of Ohio State has spoken up in response to remarks by the baroness that Alzheimer's patients have a duty to die to minimize their burden on society and family.
First, there were the moral implications of the comments that 84-year-old Baroness Mary Helen Warnock shared with the Church of Scotland's Life and Work magazine last week, in which she stated, "If you're demented, you're wasting people's lives -- your family's lives -- and you're wasting the resources of the National Health Service."
Such a policy could put society on a slippery slope, he said. And he noted many of the potential moral pitfalls accompanying the suggestion that those suffering from dementia should make a decision to end their own lives.
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Groner is not alone in his opinion. Ethicists and Alzheimer's advocacy groups alike are expressing outrage over Warnock's comments last week, which echoed the opinion she put forth in an article she authored for a Norwegian periodical, titled "A Duty to Die?"
"The suggestion made by Baroness Mary Warnock is ignorant, insensitive and cruel, and denies the humanity of people with Alzheimer's and dementia," the Alzheimer's Association said in a statement issued Wednesday.
And Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, said he was "shocked" by the comments when he read them.
"No one has a duty to die," he said. "The notion that society should 'expect' someone to end their lives because they fear being a burden upon others is simply ethically repugnant. via abcnews.com
It is a fallacy to say that the lives of Alzheimer's patients lack quality, Dr. Groner says, whose own father lived with Alzheimer's before passing away in January.
And legal scholars note that placing those with Alzheimer's and dementia in this situation "amounts to murder".
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