AmericanPapist Comments
In fairness to the psychologists, they're technically correct; universal moral principles aren't actually within the proper domain of psychology. Technical expertise in psychology doesn't make you more moral, and lacking such expertise doesn't make you less so. That's more the professional domain of moral theologians, or at least philosophers; of course, it's the practical domain of every last one of us.
The problem here is that this statement isn't about humbly acknowledging the limits of their discipline. Once a consensus emerges among psychologists by non-professional means (political or otherwise), they'll take a position as a discipline in the drop of a hat. I'd very much like to be proven wrong on that, but--speaking as an academic myself--it's awfully rare to see a bunch of folks with advanced degrees choose not to speak out on something just because they actually lack expertise on it. (Nor am I immune to that temptation, which may go some way to explain why I comment on as many blogs as I do … :-()
Peace,
--Peter
It's quite simple really. All they need to do is read Humane Vitae and then rethink their straw theories
"Excess deaths" is kind of an interesting phrase, no?
How could there be an "excess death?"
Do some folks get more than one?
Seriously, the point is that these vulnerable patients are probably pretty close to death already. If you cause the person to die a day, a week, or even a month before he or she would die naturally, that's probably not terribly easy to measure as a statistic. So it would be relatively easy to construct a study that would lead to the false conclusion that assisted suicide would not make much of a statistical difference.
As a moral matter, however, it's just as wrong if you hasten the death by an hour as it is if you hasten it by a week, month, or year.
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