Surviving young and healthy
Death panels, Sarah Palin said, and the sky almost fell down.
Well, even if she wasn’t exactly right, she had a point. Maybe more of a point than you would like to know.
A few years ago, my first wife’s grandfather, who happened to be the last elected mayor of Stockholm, took ill. One day when his grandson, a doctor, came to work, his colleagues told him:
“Well, last night your old man was dying. If he hadn’t been your grandfather, we would have let him go.”
For the sake of my then brother-in-law the old man was not left to die, but that is only part of the story. The fact is that he recuperated, left the hospital and lived for several more years, smoking cigars, drinking gin and (believe it or not) even having a love affair.
So, to let him go would have been—dare I use the word?—MURDER.
Well, not legally, of course. To kill people by withdrawing treatment is quite legal in Sweden. I have no certain idea of how frequently oldsters are left to die, but I am sure it is very frequently, since in Sweden there is a kind of contempt for old people.
We (I am 76) are looked upon as a kind of parasite. After all, we have paid pensions ... in other words, salaries without work. And we eat, take up seats on the bus (without going to work!) and block hospital beds from younger persons who need them more—they are productive, are they not? They contribute to society, whereas we old-timers only consume. Indeed, there are Swedes who think that life should end at 65 (retirement age) even if they don’t dare to say so (except after a couple of shots among friends).
There used to be a time, I remember it well, when children took care of their elderly parents: visited with them, bought them things, clearly demonstrating love and affection. Today there is very little of that. The old ones are left to fend for themselves, quite often in so-called “homes” that are rather a kind of slop house. The terrible disease called Loneliness and Hopelessness is abroad in the land, more so than in any country that I have knowledge of. Indeed there are times when I find my fatherland quite inhuman: too much stress on efficiency (that hardly exists) and too little on humane behavior.
Come to think of it, we treat our children much the same way. Since the tax laws were “reformed” in 1971 (Palme!) it has been more or less necessary for both parties of a marriage to work outside the home. Which means that the children must be taken care of collectively. In other words, Swedish children are in a sense, wards of the state. They sleep at home but have very limited contact with their biological parents. It is perhaps saying too much that Sweden has abolished family as we used to know it—too much, but not much too much.
The fact is, to return to the beginning of the column, that there have been “death panels” for a long time and in all countries. There comes a time when doctors and relatives have to decide whether it is a good thing to prolong a life that will end soon anyway. In two U.S. states, as in Switzerland, Belgium, Holland and Luxemburg, even active “death help” is allowed—usually the needle. To break off treatment is allowed, as far as I know, everywhere.
So, in a sense, Palin was quite right, only she thought she described the future when it was, in fact, the present ….
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World Reporter
Ulf Nilson, World reporter since his first assignments to Hungary in 1956. Correspondent and Sweden’s man in America for 20 years, Ulf Nilson is still a regular columnist in Sweden’s daily Expressen, and regular contributor in Nordstjernan. He has authored or co-authored over fifty books. He lives in southern France or at his beloved Värmdö, just 30 minutes north of Stockholm. He
• covered the US, including Vietnam during the war years
• marched in the civil rights marches
• interviewed Martin Luther King
• met presidents Johnson, Nixon, Reagan and George H. W. Bush
• and, as one of Sweden’s most well-known journalists, also met with every politician, industry leader or cultural personality—all the movers and shakers of Sweden through five decades of a proliferate professional life.
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