Terry Pratchett and “Snuff”
Considering his public support for legalized euthanasia, it was probably not the best move for Terry Pratchett to name his new novel “Snuff”.
That said, I haven’t bought a new Pratchett book in a while. Pratchett is a superb writer, far better than most, but the euthanasia stuff is just too much for me. The US and the UK are both broke, and medical care is really expensive. Advocating for euthanasia in such an environment will probably have all sorts of nasty unintended consequences, and in 75 years people will look back and say “how could we have known it would go so wrong?”
-JM
Thanks for the link, it was a good review. I have never read any books by the author, and I don’t intend to, especially given the author’s views. Given their dishonesty, I’m rather tired of secularist polemics.
The downside is that most of his books are really, really good. “Night Watch”, “Guards! Guards!”, “Feet of Clay”, “Reaper Man”, “Interesting Times”, “Lords & Ladies”, “Carpe Jugulum”, and others are great books, both amusing and full of deep insight into the human condition.
No one really knows how they’ll handle the certainty of debilitating illness and death when it comes. But I suspect secular humanism is not terribly effective preparation for that day. And euthanasia is a bad response to that kind of news – it’s a short step from “I choose to die” to “we choose for you to die due to (cost savings/genetic impairment/ethnic cleansing/quality of life)”.
What’s worse is that he knows that medical cost-cutting will be involved; he can’t get publically funds drugs because it was too early onset, and he knows while he can pay for them, others can’t.
Yeah. The whole pro-euthanasia argument isn’t just opening Pandora’s Box, it’s taking a jackhammer to it.