GESTIÓN EN SALUD PÚBLICA: BioEdge: Disability backlash to pro-euthanasia film

domingo, 5 de junio de 2016

BioEdge: Disability backlash to pro-euthanasia film

Disability backlash to pro-euthanasia film

by Xavier Symons | 4 Jun 2016 | 1 comment

A new film by English director Thea Sharrock, Me Before You, has been met with scathing criticism from disability rights activists.

The film tells the story of a young paraplegic, Will, and his new carer, Lou, with whom he develops an unlikely romantic relationship. The film has the typical trappings of a Hollywood rom-com – stunning actors, wealth, castles – yet with one not so subtle twist: Will wants to be euthanized.

For those who haven’t read the eponymous book, I apologise for the spoiler. But despite their burgeoning romance, Will and Lou don’t live happily ever after. Unlike the similar film The Intouchables, the tenor of this story is the Will’s paraplegia is not worth enduring. He choses to end his life, despite Lou’s objections.

Disability rights activists protested at the premier of the film in London earlier this week, unveiling a placard that read: “Me Before You is not a romance. It is a disability snuff movie, giving audiences the message that if you’re a disabled person you’re better off dead.”

Writing in The Guardian, disability rights activist Penny Penner attacked the film’s ‘anti-disability’ message:

“A piece of fairytale romance is what it purports to be, but what perhaps is a clever device for writer Jojo Moyes, to me underlines the view that you are better off dead than a living, disabled burden on your loved ones.”

- See more at: http://www.bioedge.org/bioethics/disability-backlash-to-pro-euthanasia-film/11904#sthash.0DCJhKp7.dpuf

Ali defeated Sonny Liston in 1964

The death of Muhammed Ali at the age of 74 is reminder of the uneasy ethical status of boxing. Only in boxing is the brain the target. Ali’s Parkinson’s disease was probably a result of punishing blows to the head over the course of his career. Gloves probably make the problem worse, as they increase the weight and the force of impact. Headgear may not protect boxers from rotational acceleration.

John Hardy, a neuroscientist at University College London, wrote a couple years ago: “nothing can be more killing of joy than personality changes, violence, substance abuse and dementia. I also think it is demeaning as a society for people to get pleasure out of watching others fight and that we should consign this public spectacle, as we have done public executions, to the dustbin of history.”

What do you think? Should professional boxing be banned? It seems hard to justify a sport which, in the words of Joe Frazier, who beat Ali in the brutal “fight of the century” in 1971, “boxing is the only sport you can get your brain shook, your money took and your name in the undertaker book.”