The last medically-approved dehumanizing slur
November 14, 2012 2 Comments
Vegetative patient Scott Routley says ‘I’m not in pain’
Can we drop the offensive, dehumanizing, unscientific dumb-ass 1940s label ‘vegetative’ once and for all now? It’s the medical equivalent of calling someone a ‘coon’ or a ‘gook’ or a ‘kike’. Actually, I suggest it’s worse than those things, at least outside of Nazi-era Germany, because even today if you successfully pin the label ‘vegetative’ on someone, then most people are basically ok with that person being exterminated. You know, because “SCIENCE”!
Yet doctors still use this idiotic term and the term is perfectly acceptable to use in news headlines. History is one thing – people didn’t know better – but anyone still using this term seriously today has no excuse and ought to be deeply ashamed of themselves.
UPDATE: It occurs to me this is one of the few issues where I advocate going full-Godwin. Slapping a dehumanizing term on a person, and then using the connotations/imagery of that term as justification that they aren’t fully human and can be killed conscience-free: that is precisely what is going on. And so, the shoe fits.
So what are we supposed to call the vegetative? Slabs of meat?
People. If people have brain damage and whatever symptoms, come up with a sciencey acronym full of Latin to describe those symptoms. What the FUCK does ‘vegetative’ contribute.
‘Vegetative’ is a stupid-ass, unscientific, and ignorant term to describe people in any state, if you really think about it. Apparently, few do.