10/18/2008

Why do we care more for animals suffering than we do humans ?

The tragic story of Daniel James, the intelligent young rugby player left a tetraplegic by a rugby accident tells us just how much a parent can love a child, but brings in to question why it is that we seem to care more about the suffering of "dumb animals" than we do intelligent human beings.

Daniel James was, it appears, bright, articulate, and a real love of life and had lots to look forward to. his life was centred around eventually having an engineering job after first making the most of his rugby career. So his paralysis clearly destroyed all his hopes, dreams and ambitions, and he no longer felt he could go on living what his mother called a second class life.

One does have to wonder why it is though that some busy body felt the need to report Daniel's parents to the police and what this interfering person thought could possibly achieved by bringing so much more publicity on to this tragic case.

Again, as Daniel's brave mother said

"Whilst we were away some 'well meaning' person involved with social services took it upon herself to call the police.

"This person had never met Dan before or after his accident and obviously gave no consideration for our younger daughters who had seen their big brother suffer so much, and the day before had to say goodbye to him.

"I hope that one day I will get the chance to speak to this lady and ask if she had a son, daughter, father, mother, who could not walk, had no hand function, was incontinent, and relied upon 24-hour care for every basic need and they had asked her for support, what would she have done?! "

I think Daniel's mother did well to speak about this person in so polite a way given the terrible ordeal Daniel's family had to go through. But again it highlights that we seem to think humans, who have the ability to comprehend the terrors they face whilst living such a debilitating life as Daniel faced, should have to endure but ignore the fact that we can also reason with ourselves that perhaps, in certain circumstances, life is more painful than death, indeed, living can, for some be a fate worse than death.

One would hope that the person who reported Daniel's family, probably some religious nutter, seeks forgiveness for what they have put his family though and ponders deeply on what Daniel's mother said.

P.S. It probably goes with out saying, but whilst the police were wasting time interviewing Daniel's family because of some busy body sticking their nose in, some victim of crime was proabably waiting for a police car that didn't turn up. Scarce resources for the polcie are not helped by people wating the police force's time in this way.

3 comments:

Andrew Allison said...

This is a very complex subject and the pain the family must be experiencing cannot be measured.

The person who has reported the family is worthy of our contempt.

Anonymous said...

It's an absolute tragedy and condolences to all those affected.

How did the anonymous lady who tipped of social services find out they'd gone to the clinic in Switzerland ?

StuartR said...

One does have to wonder why it is though that some busy body felt the need to report Daniel's parents to the police and what this interfering person thought could possibly achieved by bringing so much more publicity on to this tragic case.

I would suspect that this busy body doesn't really care about the effect that their actions with have on the family. They are so supremely confident in their self-appointed role of moral guardian, that little matters to them outside of their dogmatic, all-encompassing, belief system.

The certainty with which they can take absolute moral positions, without caring about, or having regard to, the individual circumstances is staggering.

I can only assume that they have never been in the position that Dan found himself. Having said that, even if they had (very doubtful) it doesn't qualify them to make a decision on Dan's behalf - a decision such as this is intensely personal and everyone's circumstances are different.

Clearly, in pursuing their absolute moral position on this, they wanted to ensure that Dan's family had to endure more grief They clearly also wanted to ensure that instead of being left alone to grieve the loss of their son, they would become the centre of a media storm.

And all this callousness from someone that presumably believes that they are on the side of rightousness. This level of hypocrisy must have religion at its core.

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