Screwtape on Physician Assisted Suicide

My dear Wormwood,

Our project is progressing nicely. The Michigan jury has spoken on physician-assisted suicide my dear nephew, and it is a particularly delicious stroke. I assure you your work is not unnoticed in low places. Yet there is much to be done, and no time for resting on laurels.

We must immediately raise objections to this new precedent of law; it is much too narrow for our purposes. While sterile, calculated deaths hold some pleasure, murders of passion and hate are much more satisfying, only bettered in our cause by random, senseless and remorseless mayhem. But I am ahead of the horse. Perhaps interest groups might object to physician exclusivity in the killing fields. While physicians are arguably most qualified to recognize death's glorious approach, there are but a few truly accomplished in the art. Many other professions are better qualified to bring about our purposes. Why exclude professional hunters? Assassins? Pyrotechnician-assisted suicide has a nice ring to it.

Raise the profit motive. Surely there is money in death, and human greed is legendary. Exploit it! Inspire entrepreneurs! I envision international corporations devoted to singularly spectacular exits. Fly them to the top of Everest or shoot the rich ones into what they perceive to be the heavens. The first human to Mars need not return. What about ultimate war games? The possibilities are boundless, so be creative.

Masterful is the only word to describe the way you have transformed a singularly odd, prematurely retired pathologist into a cultural icon. It serves to focus the vermin on death in the very act of avoiding its inevitable grip. To focus in any direction other than the moment of death is counterproductive. Dwelling on the time they have left might encourage them to treasure life, and this is to be avoided at all costs. They may even seek forgiveness one with another, and undo all our best work. Any focus beyond death is even more ominous, for too many have been snatched from our mouths even while the taste of them was on our tongues. Continue to encourage their skepticism about deathbed conversions and reconciliations. Bolster their revulsion for the act of death and anything smacking of less than glowingly vigorous health.

Wormwood, don't long allow them to hide the truth of their actions behind the guise of intractable physical pain (Is it not a sweet irony that while pain becomes more controllable ill-health is less tolerated?). Several of our good doctor's first "patients" were neither in much pain nor very near death, but suffered from psychological pain they simply would no longer bear. When they accept emotions as justification for suicide then we will have nearly all of them.
Allow physicians less control over the deathbed. There is far too much room for compassion and counseling for my tastes. Encourage them to capitulate all hard issues to the legislature and public opinion, arenas where we hold much sway. With proper laws in place we will make doctors feel more manipulated and controlled, and they will resent rather than revere their role at the deathbed. Perhaps they may even be coerced to resent the dying. Splendid!

My dear Wormwood, I see your career going only downward in glorious descent. Guard yourself from humility.

Your affectionate uncle,

Screwtape.
With apologies to C. S. Lewis