“But God doesn’t change.’
‘Men do, though.’
‘What difference does that make?’
‘All the difference in the world.”
-Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
Somehow, as dark as “Black Mirror” writers get — indeed, they appear to compete with themselves to up the dystopian ante season after season — reality has a way of consistently matching, if not outstripping, the bleakness of their imaginations in this, Our Brave New World.
Now that one in twenty deaths in Canada is the result of government-assisted suicide, euphemistically referred to by the acronym MAiD, doctors have gotten busy putting on conferences for themselves to share notes and promote their business.
Via The Atlantic (emphasis added):
“The euthanasia conference was held at a Sheraton. Some 300 Canadian professionals, most of them clinicians, had arrived for the annual event. There were lunch buffets and complimentary tote bags; attendees could look forward to a Friday-night social outing, with a DJ, at an event space above Par-Tee Putt in downtown Vancouver. “The most important thing,” one doctor told me, “is the networking.”
Which is to say that it might have been any other convention in Canada. Over the past decade, practitioners of euthanasia have become as familiar as orthodontists or plastic surgeons are with the mundane rituals of lanyards and drink tickets and It’s been so long s outside the ballroom of a four-star hotel. The difference is that, 10 years ago, what many of the attendees here do for work would have been considered homicide.”
Doctors in state psych wards now reportedly casually suggest MAiD when suicidal patients end up in their custody, who presumably might expect some sort of help in a time of crisis, so as to allow them to “explore all available care options.”