The demographic time bomb and euthanasia

I have previously warned that unless something is done to reverse current demographic trends, economic necessity, together with the ‘culture of death’ ideology which is becoming more openly accepted, may well mean that the generation that killed its children will in turn be killed by its own children.

In other words legalised abortion will lead to legalised euthanasia as a cost-saving and population-control measure.

The Political blog ‘Turtle Bay and Beyond’ reported last week on an interview with CFAM’s Susan Yoshihara on the population crisis in China.

‘Demographic trends are poised to spoil Beijing’s plans for a Chinese century,’ said Yoshihara, co-editor (along with Douglas A. Sylvia) of the book, ‘Population Decline and the Remaking of Great Power Politics.’

‘The country is aging rapidly and it is facing a contraction in its workforce sooner than anticipated. More than a quarter of the Chinese population will be older than 65 by 2050, up from 8 percent today. And the very old — those over 80 — will increase more than five times. China will see absolute population decline by the end of the next decade.’

I have previously highlighted Sunday Times columnist Minette Marin’s proposed final solution(£) for Britain’s growing number of elderly people and another article in the same paper linking euthanasia with demographic trends.

Lois Rogers (£), reporting on a joint suicide of a British couple in Australia, wrote that ‘Assisted dying is becoming more commonplace with the rise in the number of elderly people. Projections by the government suggest 11m Britons alive today can expect to reach 100.’

In the West we have a growing elderly population supported by a smaller and smaller working population – fuelled by elderly people living longer and an epidemic of abortion, infertility and small families.

These demographic changes, together with economic pressure from growing public and personal debt, and increasing pressure for a change in the law to allow euthanasia, produce a toxic cocktail indeed.

Marin’s solution is euthanasia – ie. continue with our consumptive lifestyles and small families and kill off the elderly.

But there is an alternative.

Britain’s problem is debt. And we are in debt because as a nation and as individuals we have lived beyond our means. Our personal debt is £1,500 billion and our public debt will reach that figure by 2014 (yes its getting bigger in spite of the Coalition’s plan to ‘cut the deficit’. All we are doing is borrowing less each year than we did in the previous one)

So our total debt will be around £3,000 billion (£3 trillion) in just three years’ time.

Let’s put that figure in a global context.

The world’s poorest billion people earn less than £1 per day (£360 per year) and the next poorest two billion earn less than £2 (£720) so the total income for the poorest half of the world’s population is £1,800 billion per year – just over half our nation’s debt.

And yet ironically, it is rich people in the affluent West, rather than the poor in the Global South, who say they can’t afford to look after their dependents and are clamouring for euthanasia.

The real answer is not euthanasia. The real answer is in our grasp, but it requires a completely different mindset to that which has led us, in our reckless pursuit of affluence and personal peace to mortgage our present, bankrupt our futures, and see those who rely on us as a burden rather than a privileged responsibility.

We need instead, as a society, to stop killing our children, build up our families, live more simply, give more generously and focus our priorities on providing for our dependents, especially the older generation which fought for our freedom in two world wars, provided for our health, education and welfare, and left us the legacy of wealth, comfort, peace and security which we have squandered and taken for granted.

We are at a crossroads surveying two possible future societies.

In the first, the independence and autonomy of the individual rule absolute and the weak elderly take an ‘honorable exit’ so as not to burden the young and virile.

The other, by contrast, is an inter-dependent world, where each person, regardless of their level of infirmity or disability is loved, cherished, valued and given the very best level of care that money can buy; one where the strong make sacrifices for the weak, where resources are spent on those who most need them, where what I have is yours if you need it, and vice versa.

Which society would you prefer to live in?

The demographic time-bomb is a challenge but it does not lead me to despair.

Rather it makes me want to live more simply, give more, save more, serve more, love more, value those who are dependent, both old and young, more deeply and work harder to provide good care for all.

The solution is easily within our grasp, but we must have the will to embrace it.

Huge increase in assisted suicide cases in Oregon and Switzerland sounds strong warning to Britain

There has been a massive increase in cases of assisted suicide in both Oregon and Switzerland over recent years according to the latest figures.

The Oregon ‘Death with Dignity Act’ allows terminally-ill Oregonians ‘to end their lives through the voluntary self-administration of lethal medications, expressly prescribed by a physician for that purpose’.

It also requires the Oregon Health Authority to collect information about the patients and physicians who participate in the Act, and publish an annual statistical report.

The latest figures show that cases of assisted suicide have gone from 16 in 1998 to 71 in 2011, an increase of 450% (see chart).

The US state of Oregon legalised assisted suicide in 1997 following a referendum. Thus far over 100 attempts to get other US state parliaments to change their laws have failed and only the state of Washington has followed suit, again on the basis of a referendum.

Switzerland has seen a 700% increase in assisted suicides over the same period. Swiss authorities have recorded a steady rise of assisted suicides in recent years, from 43 in 1998 to 297 in 2009. Earlier figures are not available, even though assisted suicide has been legal in Switzerland since 1942.

These figures include only Swiss nationals and not the growing number of people from abroad who are making use of facilities like Dignitas.

The experience of both countries demonstrates that when assisted suicide is legalised there will inevitably be incremental extension.

A major factor fuelling this increase is suicide contagion - the so-called Werther effect. This is particularly dangerous when assisted suicides are backed by celebrities as they are here and given high media profile as they are frequently by the BBC.

The Oregon and Swiss numbers may not seem large to some but we need to remember that Oregon and Switzerland have small populations relative to the UK.

Back in 2006 the House of Lords calculated that with an Oregon-type law we would have about 650 cases of assisted suicide a year in Britain. But given the increase of numbers in Oregon the UK equivalent would now be well over 1,000. Currently assisted suicide is illegal here and we see only 15-20 Britons going to Dignitas in Switzerland to die each year.

However, later this year we will see renewed attempts to change the law in this country.

Margo Macdonald is planning to present a bill based on the Oregon model to the Scottish Parliament and the pressure group Dignity in Dying (formerly the Voluntary Euthanasia) is planning a mass lobby of the Westminster Parliament on 4 July in support of a new bill they plan to introduce by means of their parliamentary wing, the All Party Group on ‘Choice at the End of Life’.

We should learn from the Oregon and Swiss experience and be resisting these moves.

Any change in the law to allow assisted suicide (a form of euthanasia) would inevitably place pressure on vulnerable people to end their lives so as not to be a burden on others and these pressures would be particularly acutely felt at a time of economic recession when many families are struggling to make ends meet and health budgets are being slashed.

And once legalised there will inevitably be incremental extension as we have seen in Oregon and Switzerland. Legalisation leads to normalisation.

Let’s not go there.

How British society marginalises Christian health professionals

Earlier this year Christians in Parliament, an official All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG), chaired by Gary Streeter MP, launched an inquiry called ‘Clearing the Ground’, which was tasked with considering the question: ‘Are Christians marginalised in the UK?’

The inquiry was facilitated by the Evangelical Alliance and the report was published in February 2012. (You can read the executive summary here)

The inquiry’s main conclusion was that ‘Christians in the UK face problems in living out their faith and these problems have been mostly caused and exacerbated by social, cultural and legal changes over the past decade.’

I gave both written and oral evidence to the inquiry and part of my oral evidence is quoted in the report. Unfortunately my written evidence was not acknowledged or included, I suspect due to an administrative error but it is available on the CMF website.

I have pasted below the answers I gave to two key questions in the report.

What key issues face Christians in public life today?

With the rise of the secular humanism and, in particular, the new atheism, there is in British society generally a loss of historically held belief in the existence of a transcendent communicating God incarnate in Jesus Christ, in biblical authority and in biblical ethics, which is combined with an active agenda to impose an alternative secular world view through our laws, institutions and media. This is leading to an erosion of laws that were based on a biblical worldview and to some loss of Christian freedoms.

For Christian doctors the major impact has been felt in the areas of sharing Christian faith (evangelism), expressing beliefs about Christian doctrine or ethics or manifesting Christian behaviour especially in the areas of prayer and/or sexual and life ethics.

Conflicts arise when Christians are:

1. Prevented from sharing, expressing or manifesting their beliefs
2. Required to perform tasks or conform in ways which go against their beliefs
3. Excluded from consultation or decision-making or advisory roles because of their beliefs.
4. Prevented from meeting on public or institutional premises for worship/prayer/teaching/events.

These are the key issues in public life not because they are more important than other areas of Christian faith and practice but because they are the specific areas where recent laws, or regulations/guidelines based on those laws, have impacted.

The main laws implicated are:

1. Employment Equality regulations on religion and belief and sexual orientation (2003)
2. Equality Acts 2006 and 2010
3. Section 5 of the Public Order Act (less applicable to Christian doctors)
4. The Abortion Act 1967 and Mental Capacity Act 2005 also have some influence through interpretation by official bodies about the scope and application of their provision for conscientious objection.

Guidelines based on these laws by the Department of Health, NHS trusts and professional bodies like the GMC and BMA also have an impact on how legal policy is interpreted and implemented. Examples of such guidelines include:

1. Religion or belief: a practical guide for the NHS (Department of Health, January 2009)
2. Sexual orientation: a practical guide for the NHS (Department of Health, February 2009)
3. Personal beliefs and medical practice - guidance for doctors (GMC, March 2008)
4. The law and ethics of abortion (BMA, November 2007)
5. Treatment and care towards the end of life: good practice in decision making (GMC, July 2010)

Which specific aspects of law, or its interpretation, do you consider unfair?

1. The Employment Equality regulations on religion and belief and sexual orientation (2003) and the Equality Acts 2006 and 2010
A. The requirement for Christian organisations with a Christian ethos to employ people who either do not hold to Christian faith
B. The definition of harassment is too broad and too open for misinterpretation or perverse action: ‘unwanted conduct which takes place with the purpose or effect of violating the dignity of a person and of creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading or humiliating environment.’

2. The Department of Health practical guides on ‘religion and belief’ and ‘sexual orientation’ over-interpret the law with respect to evangelism and expression of Christian belief about sexuality and have created an environment where normal Christian behaviour is inappropriately open to censure or discipline. These documents were not made open to full consultation or review when implemented but are being used by NHS employers. Both these documents should be reviewed and opened to consultation.Examples of problematic clauses are given below.

3. The implementation of the Abortion Act 1967 and Mental Capacity Act 2005 conscientious objection clauses needs to be kept under regular review to ensure that Christians are not being unlawfully discriminated against.

Examples of problematic clauses in Department of Health documents which can be used to discriminate against Christians:

Members of some religions... are expected to preach and to try to convert other people. In a workplace environment this can cause many problems, as non-religious people and those from other religions or beliefs could feel harassed and intimidated by this behaviour… To avoid misunderstandings and complaints on this issue, it should be made clear to everyone from the first day of training and/or employment, and regularly restated, that such behaviour, notwithstanding religious beliefs, could be construed as harassment under the disciplinary and grievance procedures.(Department of Health, Religion and Belief)

Any NHS employer faced with an employee who by virtue of religion or belief refuses to work with or treat a lesbian, gay or bisexual person, or who makes homophobic comments or preaches against being lesbian, gay or bisexual, should refer to its anti-discrimination and bullying and harassment policies and procedures, which should already be in place… If the conduct has the purpose or effect of violating a person’s dignity, or creating an intimidating environment, and it is reasonable for the complainant to take offence, then it is harassment. (People) should not be subjected to discrimination or harassment on any grounds whatsoever. It should be made clear that such behaviour is unlawful and could result in legal proceedings being brought. (Department of Health, Sexual Orientation)

Changing views about sexual orientation - 'A more fluid approach'

Many people believe that homosexual and heterosexual are distinct biological categories like race – unchangeable, biologically fixed and genetically determined. It is on the basis of this view that the gay rights lobby and sections of the media argue that 'homophobia' is a form of discrimination akin to racism.

But this view is being increasingly challenged, not least by gay rights activists themselves. In a recent Huffington Post article that has generated a huge amount of attention, 'Future Sex: Beyond Gay and Straight', (1) Peter Tatchell affirms both the spectrum and also the fluidity of sexual attraction.

Regarding bisexuality he says: 'We already know, thanks to a host of sex surveys, that bisexuality is a fact of life and that even in narrow-minded, homophobic cultures, many people have a sexuality that is, to varying degrees, capable of both heterosexual and homosexual attraction.'

Then he challenges the traditional view that gay and straight are distinct categories:

'Research by Dr Alfred Kinsey in the USA during the 1940s was the first major statistical evidence that gay and straight are not watertight, irreconcilable and mutually exclusive sexual orientations. He found that human sexuality is, in fact, a continuum of desires and behaviours, ranging from exclusive heterosexuality to exclusive homosexuality. A substantial proportion of the population shares an amalgam of same-sex and opposite-sex feelings - even if they do not act on them.'

Tatchell, however, grossly inflates the true incidence of exclusive homosexuality. The best evidence (2) (3) (4) suggests that only a very small percentage of men (1-2%) and women (0.5-1.5%) experience exclusive same-sex attraction throughout their life course. But bisexuality appears to be more prevalent than exclusive homosexuality.

What is the relative ratio of bisexuality to exclusive homosexuality? For each man who is 'completely homosexual' (Kinsey score 6) there are three with varying shades of bisexuality; but for women the ratio is 1:16. (5)

Sexual attractions are therefore best understood as lying on a spectrum rather than in terms of a simple dichotomous binary categorisation, and mixed patterns of sexual desire, including attraction to both sexes at the same time, appear to be more common than exclusive same sex attraction, especially among women.

But the concept of a spectrum of sexuality–known for decades, but often ignored–also calls into question simplistic analogies between sexual orientation and race.

Conflating sexual orientation and race is not really comparing like with like. It is what is called a 'category error'.

References

1. Huffington Post; 10 January 2012
2. Dickson N, et al. Same-Sex Attraction in a Birth Cohort: Prevalence and Persistence in Early Adulthood. Soc-Sci and Med 2003; 56 (8):1607-15.
3. Savin-Williams RC, and Ream GL. Prevalence and Stability of Sexual Orientation Components During Adolescence and Young Adulthood. Arch Sex Behav 2007;36:385-94.
4. Laumann EO, et al. The Social Organization of Sexuality: Sexual Practices in the United States. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994.

From the Spring 2012 edition of Triple Helix

BBC and Guardian leap to defence of abortion industry

The abortion industry has been under a lot of pressure in recent weeks – first with revelations about illegal abortions for sex selection, then with a Care Quality Commission (CQC) report showing breaches of the law in 20% of 300 ‘clinics’ examined and more recently with peaceful prayer vigils run by ‘40 days for life’.

It is not surprising therefore that they have been attempting to fight back with the assistance of sympathetic journalists working for the BBC and the Guardian.

First we had the publication of a ‘secret’ letter from CQC chairman Dame Jo Williams complaining to the Department of Health that carrying out the inspections meant ‘a total of 580 inspections foregone and a total of 16 inspectors being utilised on a full year basis at an estimated cost of £1.0m’. Ann Furedi, Chief Executive of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service was given a free BBC platform on the Today Programme to tell us that it was ‘absolutely wrong for the government to order the CQC to abandon all of the other work, in order to prioritise inspections of 500 clinics’. (See Cristina Odone’s commentary)

The BBC, unsurprisingly, did not however report the Health Secretary’s response. One commentator described the incident as follows:

‘A newspaper uncovers widespread criminality in health clinics. The minister responsible requests an immediate investigation, which takes only three days and costs a mere £1 million — less than one ten-millionth of the Health Department’s £105 billion budget. The scandal is stamped out, the guilty face punishment . . . and instead of patting the Health Secretary on the back, the BBC swoops down on him like an avenging angel, flaming with wrath.’

Pre-signing batches of abortion forms to authorise abortions on women that have not even yet been assessed, as doctors at these ‘clinics’ allegedly did, is perjury and it is quite right that both the police and the General Medical Council are currently carrying out an investigation.

Next we had the Guardian running a story about a US ‘charity’ paying for UK medical students to have elective ‘experience’ in BPAS abortion centres, on grounds that the government is not providing enough training for doctors to do late abortions. 'Medical Students for Choice' plans to set up summer 'externships' with BPAS for UK and Irish students to groom a new crop of abortionists. Expect the BBC to pick up the story soon.

I have already argued on this blog that the main reason more doctors don’t do late abortions is that they find it profoundly distasteful to be killing and then dismembering what is so obviously a baby.

Abortion also runs contrary to the Hippocratic Oath and every existing historic code of medical ethics. It is therefore not surprising that so many doctors, of all faiths and none, do not want to be involved in a procedure which they believe should not be part of medical care.

Sadly, the inclusion of abortion as a routine component of Obstetrics and Gynaecology is in large part responsible for many new graduates choosing not to enter that specialty today.

In 1947 the British Medical Association called abortion ‘the greatest crime’.

The fact that the BMA now defends current practice of 200,000 abortions a year in Britain, mostly carried out by its own members, is a measure of how far we have fallen as a profession.

Egg donation mania – probing beneath the journalistic hype

There are two stories about egg donation in the papers this week.

First is the HFEA’s drive to recruit sperm and egg donors. Apparently it is bringing together a National Donation Strategy Group to look at how to ‘raise awareness’.

The BBC gives an advertorial gloss to the story but the Daily Mail tells us that the payment to women donating their eggs for use in IVF has tripled from £250 to £750 this week and that the extra money on offer is said to have led to a five-fold increase in women approaching clinics to donate their eggs to infertile couples.

Under the change, egg donors will be given free treatment to retrieve the eggs plus a payment of £750 per cycle, no matter how many eggs are collected. Tempting during a recession and the question has to be asked, ‘how many of these women would choose not to take the risk if it were not for the money?’

It is noteworthy that the infertility industry in the United States has now grown to a multi-billion dollar business, its main commodity being human eggs. Young women all over the world are solicited by ads—via college campus bulletin boards, social media, online classifieds—offering up to $100,000 for their ‘donated’ eggs, to ‘help make someone’s dream come true.’

Second is the news that scientists in Edinburgh are intending to seek permission from the HFEA to fertilise eggs grown in a laboratory from stem cells. The tests are understood to be aimed at eventually generating an unlimited supply of human eggs that could assist women to have babies later in life.

Stories like these of course make alluring headlines and journalists reproducing uncritical press releases from those with vested interests seldom ask questions about the deeper ethical issues around egg donation – such as the health dangers of egg harvesting, the huge numbers of human embryos destroyed in the process of refining new techniques and the problem of children with confused identities and parentage as a result.

Even less do they ask the ‘elephant in the room’ question of why there is such a huge demand for donated eggs in the first place, but it is precisely that which I want to shed some light on.

The primary problems driving egg donation are the rising incidence of infertility and the huge decrease in babies available for adoption.

Infertility is the most common reason for women aged 20–45 to see their GP, after pregnancy itself. It is estimated to affect around one in six or one in seven UK couples – approximately 3.5 million people – at some point.

Around 1.5% of all births and 1.8% of all babies born in the UK are the result of IVF and donor insemination and 45,264 women had IVF treatment in 2010. These women had 57,652 cycles of treatment, an increase of 5.9% on the previous year. There were 12,714 babies born in 2009 as a result of IVF treatment using women’s own fresh eggs.

There are of course many different treatments for infertility depending on the cause and only a small percentage of these use donated eggs but there were 1,506 treatment cycles with donated eggs in 2010 - and 593 children were born from donated eggs in 2009.

The latest figures (2009) show that 25.2% of IVF treatments using a woman's own fresh eggs resulted in a live birth but infertility in women is strongly linked to age.

The biggest decrease in fertility begins during the mid thirties. For women who are 35, 95% will get pregnant after three years of having regular unprotected sex. For women who are 38 the equivalent figure is 75%.

The following figures give the average success rate for IVF and ICSI treatment using a woman’s own fresh eggs in the UK in 2009.

•32.3% for women under 35
•27.2% for women aged 35-37
•19.2% for women aged 38-39
•12.7% for women aged 40-42
•5.1% for women aged 43-44
•1.5% for women aged 45+

Add to that the fact that women are delaying childbirth and having babies later and later and we see why there is such a high demand for IVF and donor eggs. In England and Wales, the average age at first birth was around 24 during the 1960s, compared with around 28 in 2009 (see graph of maternal age at birth in 2010).

Along with the increase in infertility there are fewer and fewer babies for adoption for two main reasons – abortion (which kills babies that might otherwise have been adopted) and state support for single parent families (which means that babies that would have previously been given up for adoption now are not).

There is currently only one baby adoption in the UK for every 2,235 abortions.

The new adoption tsar has tried so far unsuccessfully to promote adoption as an alternative to abortion but an in depth examination of UK adoption data reveals the following:

Total adoptions in England and Wales fell steadily from 22,502 in 1974 to 4,725 in 2009. Adoptions involving babies under one year fell from 5,172 in 1974 (23% of all adoptions) to just 91 in 2009 (2%). That is a huge reduction in baby adoption.

During the same period abortions on UK residents rose from 119,123 in 1974 to 203,444 in 2009.

The number of abortions on UK residents in 1968, the first full year after legalisation was 23,991. I can’t find an adoption number for that year but suspect it was considerably higher than 22,000.

There are also now three million children living in a single parent household (23% per cent of all dependent children).

Just over a quarter (26 per cent) of households with dependent children are single parent families, and there are 2 million single parents in Britain today. About half of these had their children outside marriage.

In 1971 just 8 per cent of families with children were single parent families but this had increased to 24 per cent by 1998 and 26 per cent by 2011.

So when you next read about egg donation, before jumping on the bandwagon and trumpeting it as a wonderful advance remember the deeper ethical issues (embryo destruction, health risks of harvesting, confused identities and commercial exploitation) and the societal changes (abortion, delayed childbirth and single parenthood) which have contributed to the demand.

Health Minister misleads public over fetal pain

The inimitable Cranmer has drawn attention to a letter from Health Minister Ann Milton which uncritically parrots the findings of a recent RCOG report claiming that foetuses cannot feel pain before 24 weeks, are unconscious in the womb and do not require pain relief when undergoing surgical procedures.

This is apparently the official line that the Department of Health now takes on this controversial issue and I suspect it partly explains the fact that prominent members of the Conservative front bench (Lansley, Osborne etc) do not support a lowering of the upper limit for abortion below 22 weeks.

I have previously highlighted on this blog a recent editorial in a leading medical journal (Ward Platt M. Arch Dis Child Fetal Neonatal Ed (2011)) which has called the RCOG report ‘an emperor with no clothes’.

Martin Ward Platt, of the Newcastle Neonatal Service, who actually supports the current abortion law, argues that the RCOG report is a political rather than a scientific document which aims to shore up the pre-existing position of the RCOG rather than taking a dispassionate view of the scientific evidence.

He argues, contrary to the RCOG, that over the last 20 or more years, researchers have accumulated good observational, experimental and pathophysiological reasons to consider that babies at gestations below 24 weeks do feel pain, that they benefit from analgesia, and that pain experiences in early life cast neurophysiological and behavioural shadows far down childhood (see my last report for more details).

It is most disturbing that a health minister has taken such a strong position on an issue bearing strongly on public policy, which is at best highly contestable and at worst lacking any evidence base.

I have previously argued that so few doctors are willing to perform abortions on babies above 20 weeks precisely because they are not willing to kill and then dismember what, for all intents and purposes, is quite obviously a baby.

I have also previously highlighted the cases of Jacob McMahon and Charlie Allen, who both survived after being born at 23 weeks gestation.

Ann Milton in her role as health minister should not be expressing such certainty about such important issues when the evidence does not justify it. That is seriously to mislead the public.

Perhaps she has just been wrongly advised and is simply not aware that the view she is expounding has been very severely criticised in the medical literature. If so we should not question her integrity.

But even so, she does now have some very serious explaining to do.