More euthanasia rebuttal

Jack Havill’s latest attack on David Colquhoun (Letters, October 27) adds little to the debate on euthanasia. Attacking the messenger rather than his message is a common ploy, but Havill descends to depths of personal rudeness, often a sign that one is running out of ammunition.

This is not surprising, as Mr Havill’s End-of-Life Choice Society is already on a path that leads to ad hominems - their well-known but dishonest ploy to imply that religious people who speak out against euthanasia do so precisely because of their ‘‘nonmodern’’ religious views rather than sociological argument was the substance of attacks on John Fong by Mr Havill (October 8) and Dennis Pennefather (October 13).

This time Mr Havill manages a tone of frustrated but undisciplined superiority without any convincing rebuttal of the cases put forward by Mr Colquhoun.

A letters editor who permits Mr Havill to say that ‘‘Mr Colquhoun ...insists on putting his biased foolish reasoning in writing, thinking he really is contributing to the debate’’ is not worthy of his position, and adds to the suspicion that the letters office is not an unbiased moderator. Unless, of course, the editor wanted readers to enjoy the irony of the sentence, as, on the evidence of Havill’s letter, it is precisely what psychologists would call a projection of Havill’s own mind.

Tony Molloy, Morrinsville