while the mentally disabled, the comatose, and infants cannot.
Asking the mentally disabled what they think is, of course, not necessary, according to this philosophy, because they, like infants and certain other “minimally cognizant people,” are “nonpersons” who have no moral claim to a place in the world.
Micky wanted to start a crusade to have bioethicists declared “minimally cognizant,” for it seemed clear that they were exhibiting no human characteristics and were more obviously nonpersons than the small, the weak, and the elderly whom they would kill.
Maddoc was a leader — but only one of several — in the movement who wanted to use “cutting-edge bioethics debate and scientific research” to establish a minimum IQ necessary to lead a quality life and to be useful to society. He thought that this threshold would be “well above a Down’s syndrome IQ,” but he was quick to assure the squeamish that the establishment of a minimum IQ wasn’t intended to suggest that society should be culled of the slow-witted currently alive. Rather, it was “an exercise in clarifying our understanding of what constitutes a quality life,” toward the day when scientific advances would allow IQ to be accurately predicted in infancy.
Yeah. Sure. And the extermination camps at Dachau and Auschwitz had never been constructed with the intention of using them, only to see if they could be built, if they were architecturally viable.
At first, as she wandered through the bioethics websites, Micky thought this culture of death wasn’t serious. It must be a game in which participants competed to see who could be the most outrageous, who could pretend to be the most inhumanly practical, the coldest of mind and heart. Surely this was nothing more than a playful exercise in make-believe evil.
When eventually she acknowledged that these people lived and acted on their philosophy, she felt certain that they were not taken seriously outside their lunatic tower at some far corner of academia. Instead, she soon realized they were at the center of the academic community. Most medical schools required bioethics instruction. More than thirty major universities offered degrees in bioethics. Numerous state and federal laws, crafted by bioethicists, had been enacted with the intention of making contemporary bioethics the moral and legal arbiter of whose life has value.
The disabled are so costly, don’t you agree? And the elderly. And the weak. And the dumb. Costly, but also often disturbing to sensitive people, frequently unsightly to look at, icky to interact with, not like us. These poor dear things would be so much happier if they shuffled off; indeed, if they’ve had the temerity to be born or the bad judgment to suffer a disfiguring accident, then dying is the least that they can do if they have a proper social conscience.
When had the world become a madhouse? :
Micky was beginning to understand her enemy.
Preston Maddoc had seemed half threatening and half a joke.
Not anymore. He was now pure threat. Formidable, frightening. Alien.
Nazi Germany tin addition to trying to eradicate the Jewish people, the Soviet Union, and Mao’s China had previously solved the “social problem” posed by the weak and the imperfect, but when utilitarian bioethicists were asked if they had the stomach for such final solutions, they dodged the question by making the astonishing claim that the Nazis and their ilk killed the weak and the infirm for, as Preston put it in one interview, “all the wrong reasons.”
Not that the killing itself was wrong, you see, but the thinking behind the Nazis’ and the Soviets’ actions was unfortunate. We wish to kill them now not out of hatred or prejudice, but because killing a disabled child makes a place for one who is whole, who will please his family more, who will be happier, who will be useful to society and increase “the total amount of happiness.” This is not the same, they say, as killing the child to make way for another who is more representative of his Volk, who is more blond, who is more likely to make his nation proud and please his Fuhrer.
“Give me a microscope,” Micky muttered, “and maybe in a few centuries, I’ll be able to tell the difference.”
These people were taken seriously because they operated in the name of compassion, of ecological responsibility, and even of animal rights. Who could argue with compassion for the afflicted, with a professed intention to use natural resources wisely, with the desire to treat all animals with dignity? If the world is our Fatherland, and if it is the only world we have, and if we believe this world is fragile, then the worth of each weak child or aged grandmother must be measured against the loss of the whole world. And dare you argue then for one crippled girl?
Maddoc and oilier famous American and British bioethicists — the two nations in which this madness seemed most deeply rooted— were welcomed as experts on television programs, received approving press, and counseled politicians on progressive legislation dealing with medical care. None of them could safely speak in Germany, however, where crowds jeered them and threatened them with violence. There was nothing like a holocaust to inoculate a society against such savagery.
Micky wondered grimly if a holocaust would be required here, too, before sanity could be restored. Minute by minute, exploring the world of bioethics in general and Preston Maddoc in particular, she became increasingly afraid for her country and for the future.
Worse awaited her discovery.
As she did her research, the library remained bathed in bright fluorescent glare, but she felt darkness steadily rising beneath the light.
Chapter 40
Avoiding the long lengths of open grassy aisles across which the ranks of vehicles face one another, the dog leads the boy between a motor home and a pickup with a camper shell, runs across an aisle, between two other motor homes, kicking up plumes of dust and bits of dead dry grass, thus in and around the wheel of campsites, through the area of brightly colored tents, eventually back among mechanized campers, dodging grownups and kids and a barbecue and a sunbathing woman in a lounger and a terrified Lhasa apso that squeals away from them. When Curtis at last glances back, he sees that their pursuers, if ever there were any, have given up, proving that he’s better at adventuring than he is at socializing.
He remains mortified and shaken.
For a while at least, he doesn’t want to leave the commotion and cover of the crowd at this contact vigil. Tonight or tomorrow, maybe he can hitch a ride with someone headed for a more populous area that will provide even better concealment, but right now this is as good as it gets, better than the lonely country road. As long as he avoids another encounter with Mr. Neary, he should be able to hang out in the meadow safely enough — assuming that Clara the smart cow doesn’t suddenly drop out of the sky and crush him to death.
Old Yeller whimpers, sits next to a huge Fleetwood motor home, and tilts her head up in the posture of a dog howling at the moon, although no moon rides the sky this afternoon. She’s not howling, either, but searching the heavens for a plummeting cow.
Curtis crouches beside her, scratches her ears, and explains as best he can that there’s no danger of a Holstein flattening them, whereupon she grins and leans her head into his ministering hands.
“Curtis?”
The boy looks up to discover that an astonishingly glamorous woman looms over him.
Her toenails are painted azure-blue, so it seems as though they are mirrored to reflect the sky. Indeed, she’s such a magical-looking person and the color on her toenails has such lustrous depth that Curtis can easily imagine he is looking at ten mystical entry points to the sky of another world. He is half convinced that if he drops a tiny pebble on one of her toenails, it will not bounce off, but will disappear into the blue, falling through into that other sky.
He can see her perfectly formed toes, for she wears minimalist white sandals. These have high heels made of clear acrylic, so she appears to be standing effortlessly on point, her feet as unsupported as those of a ballerina.
In tight white toreador pants, her legs look impossibly long. Curtis is sure that this must be an illusion fostered by the woman’s dramatic appearance and by the severe angle from which he gazes up at her. When he
