Albert Brooks Describes a World Where Life Must be Extended at All Costs

In the 2020s, the religious right grabbed control of the life-death question. Evangelicals filled the courts with lawsuits, and doctors became even more afraid to pull the plug. The same mind-set that created the need for a Walter Masters made the Cass family more money than they had ever imagined. Their Compassionate Care Facilities were unlike anything that came before, beautiful surroundings where people could go and dream, if that’s what they did, until their hearts stopped. Nate Cass invested in new equipment that was much smaller and designed in pleasing colors, so that when family members came to visit, everything looked normal. The old-fashioned heart and breathing monitors and pumps and drips were replaced with machines that were part of the bed frame, placed against the wall where visitors couldn’t even see them. All tubes were under the gowns, which were no longer hospital-like but fashioned and styled by real designers. Whenever the family came to visit, the patients wore makeup. They were presented as if they had just been outside taking a stroll, wearing nice outfits and with a glow in their cheeks, and the result was that comatose people seemed just fine, as if they were only taking a short nap.

Of course there were people who were against all of this. President Bernstein, for one. But legally, the courts wanted proof that the brain was dead. If there was any activity at all, a doctor could not euthanize without everyone, including the patient, signing off.

The evangelicals didn’t care what the brain was doing; they felt Jesus was in there no matter what. They went before juries and convinced them that even the slightest brain wave could produce a dream. One of their lawyers came up with a line that stuck: “These people could be enjoying a world that we will never know unless we are there. To end it is murder.” And as a result, the Cass family cashed in. Thousands of people slept in their centers, sometimes for a decade or more, at great cost to the government.

In a world where euthanasia is outlawed, hospice communities get vastly wealthy.