Letters: Right-to-die word games to promote end-of-life choice

Is the End Of Life Choice Bill about the right to die with dignity or about being helped to kill yourself?

Jay Kuten's column purported to explain to us the "importance of accuracy", yet was a fascinating example of misleading and ideological statements to promote a single viewpoint.

Once Mr Kuten reached his main point, the further promotion of the "End of Life Choice Bill", he claimed that opponents of the bill deliberately "mischaracterise the bill and its purposes" by using the word "euthanasia".

Every definition I find of the term euthanasia fits the bill and its purposes quite clearly but, says Mr Kuten, the word is politically charged and carries connotations and should therefore be left out of these discussions about euthanasia.

Mr Kuten goes further, saying that it is wrong to speak of this bill being about legislating the "right to die" which, he says, is "the legislation of suicide". No, he tells us, this bill is about the right to die with dignity and medical assistance.

So, it is about the right to die but with the so-called dignity of being killed or of being helped to kill yourself. Most people have medical assistance through their lives and when they are dying; it is a redefining of medical assistance to claim that it is for the killing of patients.

Mr Kuten is playing word games in his promotion of this dangerous legislation, while supposedly telling us the importance of accuracy and our obligation to the facts.

K.A. BENFELL
Gonville

None so blind

Thanks to the well-read and rational Russ Hay (letters, November 12) for using his superior understanding of evolution to effortlessly demolish yet another misleading piece of "ignorant impertinence" from Mandy Donne-Lee.

Russ cites the howler monkey, the blind mole rat and a deep-sea "fossil fish" as examples of animals whose evolutionary paths led to loss of sight as their habitats changed and they retreated from daylight. I'll leave it to those more learned to explain the gift of sight that millions of years of evolution has given us modern day humans. However, I do wonder about the evolutionary optical backflip that strikes so many fundamentalist anti-evolutionary Homo sapiens like Ms Donne-Lee.

I can only guess that, like the howler monkey and the blind mole rat, the cause is their habitual reading and rereading of small-font texts based on preposterous claims that have failed to evolve over thousands of years.

I'm reminded of the still-current "There are none so blind as those who will not see. The most deluded people are those who choose to ignore what they already know." — quoted by Jonathan Swift in 1738.

And if the satirical Mr Swift isn't to Ms Donne-Lee's taste, there seem to be several possible biblical sources for this apt description of those wilfully blind to generally accepted scientific evidence. Perhaps she's familiar with this one: "Hear now this, oh foolish people, and without understanding; which have eyes, and see not ..." — Jeremiah 5:2.

CAROL WEBB
Whanganui

Reality of science

Russ Hay seems outraged that anyone could contradict the scholars he espouses. Well, this is the reality of science. Even within evolutionary circles there is controversy and contradiction. Scientific theories are continually raised, challenged and rejected.

The belief in positive gains through mutation has only remained because most scientists deplore the idea that a supernatual cause (God) is behind all of Creation. Evidence shows that almost all mutations are harmful and even if one per cent were beneficial (keep in mind there is no category for "beneficial" mutations, only "deleterious" and "functional"), this could not result in progress over time from simple life forms to complex ones (though even single-cell organisms are incredibly complex).

Blue-footed boobies on the Galapagos Islands, where diversity of wildlife partly inspired Charles' Darwin's theory of evolution. Photo / file

In July 2013, the President, Oxford University Emeritus Professor Denis Noble, announced that "all the central assumptions of the Modern Synthesis ... have been disproven". (Referring to Neo Darwinism).

The other problem evolutionists face is origins. Nowhere do we see life come from non-life, in fact this is one of the basic tenets of science.

Russ will no doubt continue to believe he is a product of random chance, because he does not want to admit the possibility we are answerable to our creator. That is his choice, but to vow and declare there is scientific proof of his belief is disingenuous at best.

I pray Russ may come to know the God who knows and loves him before he stands in front of him. (Abridged)

M DONNE-LEE
Aramoho

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