In the news

I wonder how those who defended OJ Simpson feel about his acquittal. They were just doing their job, I know, and of course it's right that everyone should get good representation, but you have to wonder how they feel about his new book about how he did it.

It's a monument to how sordid our age is, I suppose, that the boasting of a man who escaped natural justice because of the workings of justice should be sold as an entertainment.

Simpson is an interesting specimen. He must be consumed with guilt to have such a need to confess. When approached with the idea for this book (I'm guessing it wasn't his idea), did he, I wonder, think of the families of his victims? Did he think that this would be another route to continuing fame, chatshows, his face in the paper?

One of the problems I have with writing fiction is that I just do not have the experience to invent stories that I feel are fascinating enough to capture the reader. Look at what I have to compete with! It would make a tremendous novel, wouldn't it?

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Watching the US election coverage the other day, I was horrified to hear it suggested that the Dems would bring about a change in strategy in Iraq: send in more troops to "win" it. Surely not, I was thinking, there can't be anyone dumb enough still to think the war is "winnable".

But of course there is.

This is the point at which the Dems have to say no. This is not the time to be cowed into believing that "bipartisanship" will garner the middle-ground votes they need to win in 2008. Fuck that. Say no, no more troops have to go and die, we want the ones there brought home and now. At least they need to say they oppose the input of further resources without a timetable for withdrawal.


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Some decisions seem to me almost too hard for a person to make. If you have a 21-week-old baby and it stops breathing (as they often do, if they have even begun), should you allow it to die or have it resuscitated? Currently, hospitals more or less always try to resuscitate them but new guidance suggests that they stop doing it.

Of course, some have taken umbrage at this suggestion. But they are not thinking, just reacting. The babies in question will suffer distress and pain if resuscitated, and will, in all but the rarest case, die anyway.

The new guidance goes on to suggest that babies at 22 and 23 weeks should not usually receive intensive care unless its parents request it and doctors agree.

I cannot imagine being in that position. It seems to me the extreme of heartbreak: to have begun to love a child in the womb, to have anticipated its birth, to have planned for it, to have started to care for it, and then to have to decide to let it go.

Letting go is not easy. As a society, we do not let go of life lightly. Very few Western nations permit people who are suffering to be helped to die, and many of us do not want support the extinction of foetuses, which are arguably alive and arguably not. I am strongly pro-choice but when in that spot myself, I found it disturbing.

Yet when confronted with a doomed life, that of my stepgrandfather, a man I loved as much as I would have if he were my blood relative, if given the choice I would have killed him myself.

posted by Dr Zen @ 1:42 pm