Correspondence
Correspondence CULTURE CRITICS I DEEPLY APPRECIATE THE WEEKLY STANDARD'S giving such prominence to Gilbert Meilaender's review of my book Culture of Death: The Assault on Medical Ethics in America...
...A pair of recent books get it right...
...One of the primary objectives I have for the book is to stimulate a wider discussion of bioethics among the general public, particularly since it is they who will suffer the consequences of the changes the bioethics movement is making in medicine and health care public policy...
...Every week I meet college graduates who complain of their difficulty in reading big words...
...Instead, Meilaender chose to defend his friends and himself—for he, too, holds a university ethics chair—by quibbling and niggling about the innocence of those who claim credit for the new ethics...
...Of course they can't spell, and grammar is not taught at all...
...My inclusion of the quotation was proper and not at all misleading—about either the issue of dehydration or Callahan...
...First, the quotation is entirely accurate and speaks rather eloquently for itself...
...Given the increasingly large pool of superannuated, chronically ill, physically marginalized elderly it could well become the nontreatment of choice...
...As Smith so clearly demonstrated, quibbling at the edges of life and death issues is the very technique bioethicists use to erode the basis of American freedom outlined in our Declaration of Independence, a belief that all people are created equal...
...I do agree wholeheartedly with Meilaender that a healthy bioethics requires a richer version of "what is human than the language of choice can provide...
...Meilaender, however, missed an opportunity to emphasize how this must-read book sounds the alarm on such outrages as "futility theory," making it impossible for many patients to receive the care they need and want, animal rights activists using arcane bioethical principles to define away the humanity and rights of disabled people, and the state of Oregon denying payment for needed care on its rationed health plan while funding assisted suicide for the poor...
...Human Dignity," Feb.12...
...We don't need them to quibble away our rights and our lives...
...While I don't entirely agree with all of Meilaender's comments, I appreciate his thoughtful critique...
...We need ethicists to take a stand for clarity and compassion and life...
...BARBARA WALLRAFF Boston, MA...
...Correspondence CULTURE CRITICS I DEEPLY APPRECIATE THE WEEKLY STANDARD'S giving such prominence to Gilbert Meilaender's review of my book Culture of Death: The Assault on Medical Ethics in America ("Bioethics vs...
...N. GREGORY HAMILTON Portland, OR WRITING BACK RIGHT THE EXPLANATION for our "scant, lumpish vocabulary" described by Tracy Lee Simmons in "Writing Right" (Feb...
...This is a matter of great urgency and I look forward to joining with him and others to help create such a robust equality of life ethic...
...Finally, in a telephone conversation I had with Callahan before writing that part of the book, he told me he no longer has significant reservations about dehydrating patients diagnosed with permanent unconsciousness...
...Second, I did not recite the quotation in my book in order to criticize Callahan personally...
...Meilaender claims that in citing that passage, I was not "fair," and left a false impression because Callahan stated in the essay from which it was taken that he did not want dehydration of marginalized patients to become routine...
...It is not so clear where Meilaender is taking his stand...
...Rather, I included it because the precise circumstances that he predicted have come to pass, e.g...
...The review itself praised the books—as its author assures me he intended to do...
...12) is that children are not taught to read by phonics, so they are unable to read big words...
...It's not just the disadvantaged who suffer from this lack of teaching...
...Thus, many of the concerns Callahan expressed nearly 20 years ago in the essay from which I quoted are no longer operative...
...Louis, MO ASOMEONE WHO POSSESSES 20/20 hindsight, I'd like to suggest that the title and underline on the review of my book Word Court and Bill Walsh's Lapsing into a Comma should not have been "Writing Right: A pair of recent books get it wrong" but rather "Writing Wrongs...
...PHYLLIS SCHLAFLY St...
...WESLEY J. SMITH Oakland, CA GILBERT MEILAENDER DID WELL to praise Wesley Smith's Culture of Death, a compelling expose of how elite bioethicists are undermining "the core value of Western civilization: that all human beings possess equal moral worth...
...If a child is not taught to sound out the syllables of the English language and put them together like building blocks, he will never be able to read the thousands of big words that make English such a rich and beautiful language that can speak to us with eloquence and precision...
...Look at the children's books in any bookstore and you will find them filled with one-syllable words, especially words that can be illustrated...
...Meilaender spoke well when he admitted Smith is "on the side of the angels...
...intentional dehydration of helpless patients is now "the nontreatment of choice" in medicine...
...However, I must directly respond to Meilaender's criticism of me for quoting bioethics pioneer Daniel Callahan as writing in the early 1980s that "a denial of nutrition may in the long run become the only effective way to make certain patients actually die...
...Indeed, as Meilaender acknowledges in another part of his review, conscious and unconscious cogni-tively disabled people are made to die by intentional withholding of tube-supplied food and water almost as a matter of routine...
Vol. 6 • February 2001 • No. 23
