Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel speaks onstage at the Klick Health Ideas Exchange on June 15, 2015 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Neilson Barnard/Getty Images for Klick Health)
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Opinion

WALSH: Joe Biden’s Coronavirus Adviser Has Argued That Nobody Should Live Past 75

DailyWire.com

Ezekiel Emanuel, an oncologist and so-called bioethicist, recently joined a handful of other alleged experts on Joe Biden’s COVID-19 Advisory Board. Together they will help shape Biden’s pandemic response, if he does in fact end up becoming president. The selection is highly concerning — though not surprising, coming from the anti-life party — as Emmanuel went on the record in the Atlantic a few years ago declaring that life is not worth living after 75.

In the article titled, “Why I Hope to Die at 75,” Emmanuel lays out his argument that “society and families — and you — will be better off if nature takes its course swiftly and promptly.” The good doctor has drawn his line in the sand. Nobody should exist past the age he has determined. Some of us might say that God is the one who determines that age, but a culture that rejects God often tries to take his place in this way.

Here’s Emmanuel making his case:

…A simple truth that many of us seem to resist: living too long is also a loss. It renders many of us, if not disabled, then faltering and declining, a state that may not be worse than death but is nonetheless deprived. It robs us of our creativity and ability to contribute to work, society, the world. It transforms how people experience us, relate to us, and, most important, remember us. We are no longer remembered as vibrant and engaged but as feeble, ineffectual, even pathetic…By the time I reach 75, I will have lived a complete life. I will have loved and been loved. My children will be grown and in the midst of their own rich lives. I will have seen my grandchildren born and beginning their lives. I will have pursued my life’s projects and made whatever contributions, important or not, I am going to make. And hopefully, I will not have too many mental and physical limitations. Dying at 75 will not be a tragedy.

If you aren’t sufficiently horrified yet, Emmanuel then goes into detail about what sorts of medical care he thinks we should and should not accept after the age of 75:

What about simple stuff? Flu shots are out. Certainly if there were to be a flu pandemic, a younger person who has yet to live a complete life ought to get the vaccine or any antiviral drugs. A big challenge is antibiotics for pneumonia or skin and urinary infections. Antibiotics are cheap and largely effective in curing infections. It is really hard for us to say no. Indeed, even people who are sure they don’t want life-extending treatments find it hard to refuse antibiotics. But, as Osler reminds us, unlike the decays associated with chronic conditions, death from these infections is quick and relatively painless. So, no to antibiotics.

To review: Joe Biden’s coronavirus adviser does not think life is worth living at 75, does not see the death of someone 75 or over to be tragic, and does not think that people that age should be accepting flu shots or even antibiotics.

This is concerning, to say the least, because the virus has especially decimated the 75+ age demographic. You might argue that there’s a serious conflict of interest in a man advising the president on how to deal with a disease that mostly kills the elderly, while personally believing that the elderly should just die anyway and it’s no great tragedy when they do. The conflict is all the more troublesome when you remember that Joe Biden himself is over the age of 75. It is an awkward thing to be advised by someone who thinks it’s probably better if you were dead.

None of this is a surprise coming from a bioethicist. Professional ethicists of all types these days are often hamstrung by their own inability to see the inherent value and dignity of human life.

The whole point of ethics is to develop a moral system or code to govern our behavior and interactions with each other. But the most fundamental principle which ought to govern our behavior toward others is our recognition of their inherent value and human dignity. If a person has no such recognition, their ethics will be perverse, and often they will arrive at ethical conclusions that are exactly the opposite of correct. Following the advice of a nihilist ethicist seems about as safe as taking a class with a suicidal sky diving instructor.

This is also what we should expect to get from the Democrat Party, which has diligently earned the “Party of Death” moniker by facilitating, supporting, and cheering the mass slaughter of 60 million human children through abortion. These are not people who see the destruction of innocent life as universally wrong or immoral or even undesirable. Now we are threatened with the possibility that they might take over our national pandemic response. It’s clear what direction that might go.

More from Matt Walsh: Now That Biden Thinks He’s Won, He Wants Us To ‘Unite.’ Sorry, I’ll Pass. 

The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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