The biscuits most coveted to be eaten were the green ones--soylent green, that is. At story's end it is revealed that the tasty morsels everyone can't get enough of are made out of people! My son barely blinked at that concept, but in a flash of dreadful inspiration, I could picture multitudes of Baby Boomers being "harvested" to feed the hungry, to keep government programs in the black, to cut back on "old people wasting" resources--medication, fuel, energy, food--that could be utilized by younger people who would be actively contributing to society.
It sounds pretty far-fetched, doesn't it? But then, at one time, Flash Gordon and his world did too. At one time, global warming was just so much hot air passed around at scientific conferences. Whoever really thought that hair spray would put a hole in the ozone layer? How did a government that has as one of its most basic beliefs that "all men are created equal" ever condone slavery or the interment of innocent Asian Americans during WWII?
Do you think euthanasia of older people is an idea that will never be considered? Well, no one has to call it that. Let's just start with insurance companies and government programs not providing certain procedures/medications/therapies for, hmmmm, let's say folks over seventy-five. Let's say in the future, someone will decide that unless you can pay cash for it, no one over seventy can have an organ transplant or receive blood transfusions.
Suppose nursing homes become extinct in the future...they cost the government lots and lots of money, after all...and home care is provided on a limited basis. Only those with lots of money or lots of family to care for them would be taken care of...the rest would be left to fend for themselves, to linger, then die.
No, it wouldn't be called euthanasia if they did it like that, because it would not be "mercy" killing at all, but killing nonetheless.
Let's see where the government and insurance companies go with the study results that came out a month or so ago about the elderly and flu shots. The data said something like "no fewer elderly died from influenza after receiving the vaccine." Little alarms went off in my mind when I read that, because it seemed to me the beginning of trying to justify that health care should no longer pay for the vaccines to Medicare recipients. What the study can't tell us, and we will never know for sure, is just how many more elderly people would have died had they NOT received the vaccine.
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