Something called the French Medical Ethics Council has recommended allowing euthanasia in “extraordinary” cases. What folly.  France borders on Belgium and Switzerland–and is in easy driving distance from the Netherlands–all of which demonstrate that the culture of death, once unleashed, cannot permanently be controlled. From the AFP story:

France’s medical ethics council said Thursday that assisted suicide should be allowed in exceptional cases when suffering patients make “persistent and lucid requests” in a step forward to legalising euthanasia. Invoking a “duty to humanity,” the body said that this should be permitted upon the “persistent, lucid and repeated requests from someone suffering from an ailment for which the treatment has become ineffective”. But it said the condition should be verified “not by a sole doctor but a medical team”.

Talk about a death panel!

I wonder if the French bioethicists took a close look at the wild euthanasia/assisted suicide occurring with regularity in France’s neighboring countries–each example on the list below is well documented–and if so, how they could seriously think that allowing doctors to kill patients or assist in their suicides will long remain limited:

• Infanticide;
• Euthanasia of the mentally ill;
• “Termination without request or consent;”
• Euthanasia of elderly “tired of life;”
• Euthanasia of anorexic women;
• Euthanasia of the physically disabled;
• Joint euthanasia deaths of elderly couples who don’t want to live without each other;
• Joint euthanasia couple of disabled identical twins in Belgium.
• Euthanasia of the chronically ill;
• Euthanasia of the chronically grieving;
• Doctors teaching suicidal patients how to kill themselves;
• Coupling euthanasia with organ harvesting.

The French ethicists can fool themselves by thinking that the same thing won’t happen in France if it travels Euthanasia Road. Or they might not care what happens, but know that the promise of limitations is needed for public acceptance. Or, they might just be doing the political bidding of the Socialist Party, currently in power, that favors assisted suicide. But France’s neighbors show that the term “limited euthanasia” is an oxymoron.