“Complex, statistically improbable things are by their nature more difficult to explain than simple, statistically probable things.” -Richard Dawkins

I wrote before about the discussion of the good and bad deeds committed by Joe Paterno and how people seem to juxtapose these events in some sort of moralistic pros and cons list. I mentioned the article Sally Jenkins wrote for the Washington Post and her subsequent interview on Hang Up and Listen.

According to Mike McQueary, the graduate student who walked in on Jerry Sandusky having anal sex with a young boy in the Penn State locker room,he was “delicate” in his description of the event when he told Paterno. Jenkins asks Paterno if he would have taken more serious action if McQueary had been more explicit.

Paterno replies:

“I don’t know that it would have done any good, because I never heard of, of, rape and a man,”

Joe Paterno was born in 1926. He existed on planet Earth for 86 years. He lived through How To Catch A Predator, Jeffery Dahmer, The Kite Runner (the book and the movie), Michael Devlin, Mystic River, the child soldiers in the Congo, Steven Stayner, Sleepers, and the entire sex abuse scandal within the Catholic Church. There is a near zero probability that he had “never heard of” a man raping a boy.

Unless you’ve been living in a cave, with no TV and no internet and no neighborhood gossip, you can’t possibly be unaware that sometimes men sexually abuse young boys. You could, however, be willfully ignorant of the abuse going on in your own locker room.

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“By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth.” -George Carlin

Last weekend, I texted a friend to ask how his weekend was and he replied that it wasn’t going very well because a close friend of his parents was dying and “will have euthanasia soon.” This text message sparked a discussion about the term “euthanasia” and how it is used in speech.

Euthanasia has been legal in the Netherlands since 1995, and seems to be fairly accepted in practice. According to Wikipedia, there were 3,136 instances of euthanasia in 2010. In the US, it is only legal in Oregon, Washington, and Montana and there was only about 600 instances in 2010. As such, there is a lack of language to describe this event.

Which noun do you use? Is the act euthanasia? Suicide? Physician-assisted suicide? Assisted suicide? We’re so uncomfortable with the discussion, we use all these euphemisms for euthanasia among animals, such “put to sleep” or “put down.”

The terms “physician-assisted suicide” or just “assisted suicide” sound pejorative to me. Much like the term “date rape,” they imply that this suicide is different than other suicide. Date rape implies that this instance of rape is somehow less bad than plain old rape, whereas physician-assisted suicide and assisted suicide imply that these instances are less bad than those other suicides.

And, once you select a noun, which verb do you use? When we describe “regular” suicide, we say that someone “committed” suicide and that verb draws controversy. While some writing organizations advocate continued use of “committed,” a number of suicide prevention organizations advocate using “completed suicide” or “died by suicide.”

If you opt for the term “euthanasia,” then do you say “had” euthanasia? Received? Experienced? Got? Different verbs imply a different level of participation. If you plan to receive euthanasia, then it sounds as though something is being done to you. While true, it also seems to imply a lack of consent.

It’s a weird place to be in, when something changes culturally but the language has yet to catch up. Presuming that the use of euthanasia continues to increase, the language will have to develop around it. Personally, I prefer “chose euthanasia” as in “I’ve chosen to have euthanasia in November.”

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