My view on monsters, mammoths and the endless debate on assisted dying – Peter Rhodes
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We can't resist something for nothing. We're prepared to believe we've won a competition we don't remember entering. Hence the success of a new internet scam designed to extract your personal details. It begins with an email proclaiming: “You have won an AA car emergency kit.” No you haven't. Just bin it.
Here we go again. A fuzzy sonar image is hailed as evidence that the Loch Ness Monster may be real. Well, maybe she is, But isn't it strange that, from the earliest days of box Brownies to today's age of pin-sharp lenses on billions of smartphones, not a single crisp, clear image of Nessie has ever been produced? From the first published photo 90 years ago to the present day, Nessie's reputation is based solidly on fuzz.
If I were a betting man, I might risk a small punt on two natural-history events in the future: a) DNA scientists creating the first woolly mammoth since the Ice Age, and b) the Loch Ness Monster being satisfactorily caught on camera. My money's on the mammoth.
As Parliament prepares to debate assisted dying for the first time since 2015, when the idea was heavily defeated, I repeat my warning from last year: “Whenever euthanasia is allowed, it comes with the promise that it will apply only in cases of terminal and unbearable pain. And then the rules are relaxed until the yardstick “unbearable pain” becomes “looking a bit peaky.”
It will be fascinating to see how the changing culture of Britain affects the MPs' vote. Islam traditionally takes the view that life is a sacred gift from God and it is He, not we, who decides how long it should last. Hinduism and Buddhism also take a dim view of hastening death, as do traditional Christians. How many of the NHS's 10,000 Muslim doctors or their colleagues of other religions would even contemplate assisted dying? Has anyone asked them?
I may be a hard-boiled atheist but on this issue I find I have more in common with imams, gurus and priests than with the doubtless well-intentioned pro-euthanasia lobby who like to call themselves progressive. Progressing to what . . ?