ABSTRACT
Speaking at the International Conference on Euthanasia and the Future of Medicine in October 1988,1 U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop was worried. He had been disappointed with the outcome of the Baby Doe cases, but his worries went far beyond. Pointing to a much-cited article written in the 1920s,2 influential in shaping the tragedy of Nazi Germany, he saw a “euthanasian ethic” beginning to infuse the culture. “We’ve had ‘Baby Doe,’” Dr. Koop noted, “and, as sure as I’m standing here tonight, we’re going to have ‘Granny Doe,’ too.” The danger resided in the rhetoric being used to frame the debate. The surgeon general saw modern society replacing “its fundamental human values with a counter-framework outfitted with a new and fuzzy vocabulary that permits the healer to become killer.” “We’re snared,” Koop continued,“in a marshland of new euphemisms and circumlocutions.”What particularly confounded and angered him was the phrase “quality of life.” He had no idea “what anyone else’s ‘quality of life’ was, is, or will be. No idea at all.” Nor, in his opinion, did anyone else.
