A DANGEROUS SLIPPERY SLOPE.

Recently Mary Warnock, an influential person in the U.K, suggested that it may be a good idea for those with Alzheimer’s disease to be allowed to be able to terminate their lives in order to prevent them from becoming a burden to family and friends and possibly even to themselves.

This rang big alarm bells with me since I have three maxims which I hold to: “What you do you’ve always done”, “What you’ve done you’ll do again” and “It’s not where something starts but where it ends”. Of course in this case the first two maxims don’t apply since we all only die once but the third most definitely does. Living as I do, where I do, I know how distressing any of the dementias can be and have witnessed my dearest friends succumbing to this illness and it’s both frightening and harrowing for them and very distressing for their families and friends to watch but it’s the categorisation of people as burdens which worries me and the fact that they are not seen as productive members of society and should therefore be done away with which fills me with horror.

A person unaware of my capabilities could well, if in a position of power, one day decide that I too should be done away with on the grounds that I am not working in the traditional sense of the word. You only have to think of the word “invalid” used until recently to describe a worthless bus ticket or passport as I’ve said before to get my point. Also if a publisher ever stumbles across my work and I earn good money at it I most certainly will be financially contributing to the society I’ve “taken from” for so long and yet, if Warnock and her ilk had their way I may have been put to death long before I could have achieved this. Of course she’s not suggesting that blind people be exterminated – For this is what her wrong-headed proposal amounts to for those with Alzheimer’s disease but when a child puts a tray on the stairs and uses it as a slide he or she little thinks that a broken leg may well be the result of their innocent and well intentioned action for indeed completely unforeseen consequences will and do result from small beginnings and now with an over populated world and the credit crunch gripping the world there’ll be less room for sentiment than ever and many sinister actions could result from seemingly innocent actions and you can take it from me, not all families comprise sweet and loving members who wouldn’t like to get their hands on Gran’s fortune or the valuables in her jewel box and some would definitely not pass up a chance to do away with her first under the guise of relieving her suffering.

Of course there are genuinely caring people who care deeply for their family members and friends who they see falling prey to a cruel and terrifying disease and it’s easy for me as someone with all her marbles to talk like this and maybe I’d feel differently were I to be the sufferer from this disease and you may conclude that I’m talking nonsense. What I do know for sure, as a result of being blind, is that there are those who do not think it would be worth living thus but who have changed their minds once it happens to them; That they have found as I do, some joy in living and that it’s not up to some well educated woman with a plumb in her mouth to decide the fate of people who she decides to label as “burdens”. If we cheapen the concept of life in this way we will become ever more brutalised and like hardly civilised savages. Whether you’re religious or, like me, someone who no longer believes in a loving god but just about manages to swallow the concept of an indifferent creator, life is not ours to play with like this. We’re arrogant and greedy enough, thinking ourselves owners rather than caretakers of this planet and have no right to even consider doing away with certain groups of people on the grounds that they are burdensome and an inconvenience. If we do, remember that when it’s our turn to be trashed and eliminated in this way there’ll be nobody left to defend us. Don’t believe me? Well just think of the time when you first said your first swear word, probably while at school. Now think how mild and inoffensive that word sounds to you now and how in primary school playgrounds the F word is common parlance these days. You see it’s not where something starts but where it ends which should worry you, me and everyone with the power to think. No Mary Warnock! A thousand times know! If you want to do away with yourself then go right ahead, it’s your life but I do not want you deciding that other people’s lives are so expendable just because you are scared of becoming demented because you’re old now. If you do, disabled people in all categories will become a threatened species and I’m here to tell you that if that ever were to become so, the world would be a poorer and less civilised place for some of the gentlest people I’ve ever known have been found by me residing in the disabled community. I’m no sentimentalist for there too reside some of the rudest, feistiest, ignorant and objectionable people – Just like everyone else. This planet is for all of us from the moment we’re born to the moment we die having lived out our allotted life span, only to be ended by us should we want to but certainly not as a result of some well-to-do old duck from the House of Lords.