Once in a while, certain important questions, some even transcendental ones, emerge from dealing with the government's administrative routine. Indignation in face of massacres as the one that just happened in Baixada Fluminense, in Rio, leads many good hearts to consider adopting death penalty or life in prison for those true animals who committed such horror.

The finding that this year we will be sending overseas US$ 93 billion to pay interests of our foreign and public debt, while the social and infra-structures sector will only receive US$ 3 billion for investments, makes us once again entertain the wish of following Argentina's example and decreeing a moratorium.

Not keeping campaign promises by a certain candidate leads the electorate to not vote for him again in countries where there is reelection.

Moribund Health

Another extremely important discussion has started after recent instructions by the Health Minister to the hospital departments under his jurisdiction. Minister Humberto Costa recommended that ITU directors in public hospitals give preference to patients who have a chance to get better, forgetting those in terminal state or without hope.

I will not condemn the Minister for officializing euthanasia, but in practice, this is not what will happen because this is what is already happening.

Some time ago a doctor from one of these ill-equipped emergency hospitals suffered a nervous breakdown and poured out his feelings to the press: "I'm not God! I have no power to determine who is going to die and who is going to live, but this is what I do every day, when I get three patients, all gravely ill, and I can only care for one. Who do I choose?"

There is no doubt that things are like that in a country where public health is moribund. But the question does become crucial: should society let die those, who apparently or really, have minimum chances of survival?

And, if that's the way it is, won't this process get us to the latest consequences like, for example, in Nazi Germany, when physically imperfect newborns were sacrificed? And what about mentally retarded children?

Who knows, due to the increase in hunger and unemployment, we will have to condemn to death those citizens incapable of dealing with a computer or unable to speak a second language?

In practice, and I repeat myself, this is what is already happening without the violence of an abrupt execution of our fellow men. But to leave whole populations starving, without food or job, because they are not able to follow the advances of technology, isn't it a giant step towards euthanasia?

Connivers at Best

Just recently, another Indian child starved to death in the state of Mato Grosso. For lack of option, eight-, nine- and ten-year-old boys initiate a narcotraffic career with minimum chances of reaching adulthood without being murdered. If we don't do anything, we are at least connivers.

All these examples bring us the most fundamental question of our times: should we proceed with this economic policy that benefits only the well endowed, the well born and the rich, condemning the masses to poverty, misery and indigence? To death in life or to real death?

A recommendation like the one given by the Health Minister to public hospitals possibly cannot be avoided, but we would need for it to never be allowed.

Governments that do not commit enough money for public health should not continue being governments, especially if they are able to find much greater resources to pay abominable debts and interests.

It will come a time when humankind will be able to cross the chalk circle. It will break the shell of this snake egg to smash it in a single blow. Because the option is to institutionalize euthanasia, relive Nazism and condemn the planet to neoliberalism's sophisticated barbarism.

President Lula and ministers José Dirceu and Antônio Palocci should be thinking about these questions. The majority in Congress would do a much better job if they cared for these kinds of themes instead of being worried about strategies to win reelection.

Outside, hopes that won fear are being defeated by frustration, which is revolt's anteroom.

Inside, they continue breeding plans to benefit the elites and to keep themselves in power, ignoring that power can be used in favor of those condemned to the cruelest of euthanasias, the one that kills slowly, little by little.

The elites are not even worried about questions like those. They deceive themselves, because every single day they become an easier prey to the
Big Euthanasia, when it does arrive.

Carlos Chagas writes for the Rio's daily Tribuna da Imprensa and is a representative of the Brazilian Press Association, in Brasília. He welcomes your comments at carloschagas@hotmail.com.

Translated from the Portuguese by Arlindo Silva.

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