Today is Palm Sunday, the first day of Holy Week. It is a week of great drama, but not of tragedy. A few days after his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, Christ will be crucified. On Easter, the first day of a new week, he will rise from the dead to live eternally. Belief in this resurrection is the core of Christian faith, and on Easter day Christians proclaim, “Oh death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?”
These words of hope and faith were written by Saint Paul in his first epistle to the Corinthians. Strangely, in 2018, they could also be a rallying cry for transhumanists and life-extenders, atheists in their vast majority. For them, death is the great enemy because “Death is wrong.” This is the title of a 2014 transhumanist children’s book by Gennady Stolyarov II, whose young character angrily tells his mother that “people should not die.”
In this disturbing overlapping of messages, both Christians and transhumanists seek victory over a common enemy, death, and place their hope in immortality. Yet, while Christians have faith in eternal life after death, transhumanists want it here and now, on Earth.
Take, for instance, transhumanist journalist, writer and political activist Zoltan Istvan, who, as a Libertarian candidate, is planning a run for governor of California in 2018. His 2013 science fiction novel The Transhumanist Wager sums up his philosophy: “If a reasoning human being loves and values life, they will want to live as long as possible—the desire to be immortal. Nevertheless, it's impossible to know if they're going to be immortal once they die. To do nothing doesn't help the odds of attaining immortality—since it seems evident that everyone will die someday and possibly cease to exist. To try to do something scientifically constructive towards ensuring immortality beforehand is the most logical conclusion.” (http://www.zoltanistvan.com/TranshumanistWager.html)
In a few strokes of the pen, or rather, fingers to the keys, Istvan does away with faith. It is simply impossible to know what happens after death. And why believe, when, in a not-so-distant future, science may “constructively” place immortality within easy reach.
Today, in the Silicon Valley and elsewhere, transhumanist movers and shakers anticipate “curing death.” They also want to implant human life on Mars, where space travelers can aim for lifespans far beyond the record 122 years, thanks to life-extension technology and drugs.
In France, in a contrary yet related movement, the big issue is not fighting against death, but for it: the right to choose when to die and how, in conditions corresponding to a personal definition of “dignity.”
In 2018, euthanasia and assisted suicide have been much in the news. Last January, a bill was introduced to legalize both, going one step further than a bill of October 2017, calling for “active medical assistance” for those in the final phase of a terminal illness.
This is not part of the program of President Macron’s ambitious reforms, but newly elected deputies, members of his movement, “la République en marche,” (loosely translated, the Republic on the move), have taken hold of power and gone off on a tangent of their own.
Many of these new deputies are young, have little or no political experience and no strong party allegiance. Macron has been counting on them to help him reform French institutions: health care, justice, education, labor law, transportation. Instead, their cause has become a citizen’s right to die.
In an open letter published in the French national daily Le Monde last March 1st, Jean-Louis Touraine, a doctor, deputy and member of Macron’s party, calls for putting an end to the hypocrisy that deprives the terminally or very ill of the help they need to die. It is urgent, according to the deputy-doctor and the 155 members of Parliament who also signed the letter, to vote a new law replacing end-of-life legislation now in place.
France presently has two 21st century laws that regulate end-of-life care. The 2005 Leonetti Law comes out against euthanasia, according patients the right to decide when to put an end to aggressive treatment, replacing it with palliative care. The law was revised in 2016 as Claeys-Leonetti Law; it guarantees nationwide access to palliative care and legalizes stopping treatment whose sole purpose is to maintain life artificially.
As with the 2005 law, Claeys-Leonetti protects the patient’s right to refuse unreasonable treatment and avoid all undue suffering. The 2016 law also accords the terminally ill the right to request deep and continuous sedation until death, for those who are about to die, but not for those who wish to die.
For Deputy Jean-Louis Touraine and the 155 other signers of his open letter, these laws do not go far enough. For them, anyone suffering from a grave and incurable illness that causes unbearable physical or psychological suffering or places the person in a state of dependency incompatible with their sense of personal dignity should have the right to die. This means to decide the time of death and request the lethal act to end life.
On March 13, in another letter to Le Monde, 85 other members of Parliament replied to protest Touraine’s proposals. For these deputies from all political horizons, the legalization of euthanasia opens the door to something more than patients’ rights:
In a society where fear and rejection of death is on the rise and mercy and kindness in short supply, the legalization of euthanasia could lead to the encouragement of the act as a means to put an end to “useless” lives. With medical costs rising rapidly, legalized euthanasia might eventually turn into a form of eugenics, where lethal sedation of the terminally ill or the “useless” elderly could contribute to reducing health costs and maintaining a healthy, productive society.
Indefinite life extension is the transhumanist goal, and transhumanists believe in it, not as a possibility, but as a reality not too far down the road. In France, those supporting euthanasia hope to legislate the right to die, the ultimate frontier of human rights.
Mounting the road to Jerusalem, Jesus meets a woman who seeks his blessing for her sons. He asks them, “Are you able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of?”
So what shall it be? A cocktail of life-extension drugs, a lethal brew, or life as it has been given to us, with its joys and pain?
