When he introduced a coronavirus plan that is merely a pale simulacrum of President Trump's robust plans, Joe Biden announced that he would "lead by science."  That was obviously a jab at President Trump, one that ignored that Trump and Vice President Pence have surrounded themselves with America's top medical and scientific researchers.  When it comes to Biden's advisers, though, something disturbing is going on: at least one of the scientists advising Biden thinks old people ought to die.

The worrisome adviser is Ezekiel Emanuel, Rahm Emanuel's brother.  He got a lot of attention in 2009 and 2010, because he was "a chief architect of that health care overhaul, and he was there when former President Barack Obama signed it into law in March 2010."

In 2009, as Emanuel was putting his imprimatur on the law that would become Obamacare, Betsy McCaughey argued that Emanuel believed in government health care not for all, but only for some:

Savings, he writes, will require changing how doctors think about their patients: Doctors take the Hippocratic Oath too seriously, "as an imperative to do everything for the patient regardless of the cost or effects on others" (Journal of the American Medical Association, June 18, 2008).

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Emanuel . . . believes that "communitarianism" should guide decisions on who gets care. He says medical care should be reserved for the non-disabled, not given to those "who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens . . . An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia" (Hastings Center Report, Nov.-Dec. '96).

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He explicitly defends discrimination against older patients: "Unlike allocation by sex or race, allocation by age is not invidious discrimination; every person lives through different life stages rather than being a single age. Even if 25-year-olds receive priority over 65-year-olds, everyone who is 65 years now was previously 25 years" (Lancet, Jan. 31).

Not only does Emanuel support rationing, but he believes that old people, to help save the system, should no longer even try to protect themselves against influenza and should refuse other life-saving treatments.  Tyler O'Neil explains:

Biden's coronavirus advisor actively encourages the elderly to "think of an alternative to succumbing to that slow constriction of activities and aspirations imperceptibly imposed by aging."

What about simple stuff? Flu shots are out. Certainly if there were to be a flu pandemic, a younger person who has yet to live a complete life ought to get the vaccine or any antiviral drugs.

Yes, Biden's coronavirus advisor encouraged people over 75 to avoid flu shots. Joe Biden himself is 77. Yet Emanuel's advocacy against basic health treatments extends further.

A big challenge is antibiotics for pneumonia or skin and urinary infections. Antibiotics are cheap and largely effective in curing infections. It is really hard for us to say no. Indeed, even people who are sure they don't want life-extending treatments find it hard to refuse antibiotics. But, as Osler reminds us, unlike the decays associated with chronic conditions, death from these infections is quick and relatively painless. So, no to antibiotics.

Emanuel, who is now 62, insists that he does not want to live after he reaches 75:

But here is a simple truth that many of us seem to resist: living too long is also a loss. It renders many of us, if not disabled, then faltering and declining, a state that may not be worse than death but is nonetheless deprived. It robs us of our creativity and ability to contribute to work, society, the world. It transforms how people experience us, relate to us, and, most important, remember us. We are no longer remembered as vibrant and engaged but as feeble, ineffectual, even pathetic.

One can only wonder whether 77-year-old Joe Biden, struggling with mental impairment, as well as being "feeble, ineffectual, [and] even pathetic," realizes that one of his chief medical advisers ("lead by science!") thinks Biden ought to have been dead two years ago and is currently an embarrassing waste of space.

Americans should be horrified that the man who wants to be our president and control American healthcare has standing at his elbow a person whispering, "You should be dead, and you, and you, and you," pointing to anyone elderly or enfeebled.  Imagine the terrible loss to the world if Emanuel and his "science" were in charge.