Euthanasia

[fonso]

Is physician assisted mercy-killing acceptable in your opinion?

For me, I would have to say yes. I would knowingly take the life of a friend or relative if it would ease them of immense suffering.

[tcay584]

I would have to argue against PAS. God's plan is much better than any one we can conceive of. He gives life, and He alone calls us to Him from this life. Most times, we don't understand why suffering (genuine, real, heartbreaking suffering) is part of God's plan. But we cannot know how our lives may influence another life. Maybe someone can see us suffering through a horrible illness, see our faith, and come to realize that our earthly pains are inconsequential in the light of heavenly rewards. Maybe this would help a mom to sacrifice for her children, or a husband for his wife, or a friend for a friend. Maybe people would stop thinking only of themselves. This is such a common argument....why do I need to suffer when I can just have a doctor inject me with a little morphine.....and drift away. I think it helps us all to see that our will is not the ultimate, and sometimes our desires need to be subservient to the well being of another's. Most people are more afraid of death than anything else...if they can see us not take the easy, cheesy way out....maybe they can gain the strength they need to weather thair own trials. Asking a doctor, who had takenthe Hippocratic Oath, to help end a life is selfish in two ways...our own weakness and lack of faith, and the request that another person deny an oath he or she has taken for own own selfish desires.

[Vianne]

My point was that we did not give ourselves existence, God did. He gave us a soul, we did not create our soul. So, naturally, we do not have the right to take it away.

But isn't a gift, by definition, something you place under the stewardship of another person, for their benefit and enjoyment, without strings attached, and leave it as theirs to do with as they see fit?

You wouldn't give someone a car and then dictate where they drive it, how they maintain it, what bumper stickers to put on it or when to trade it in for a new one, would you? Is God an Indian giver (no offense to anyone of Native American descent)?

Vianne

[Amadeus]

Think of it this way....we do not own our bodies. God gave us stweardship of them while we are on earth. He wants us to use it wisely, thinking of His will FIRST. When we suffer, God may be using that to speak to us or to someone around us. If he wants you home, He will take you.

[potwalloper.]

Amadeus wrote

Think of it this way....we do not own our bodies. God gave us stweardship of them while we are on earth. He wants us to use it wisely, thinking of His will FIRST. When we suffer, God may be using that to speak to us or to someone around us. If he wants you home, He will take you.

You are, of course, entitled to your point of view. My view is that my body is my own to do with as I wish. If I was going to fall into the pit of despair that is Alzheimer's and feel my substance and sentience was to be drained away to leave me as nothing but a shell I would rather die while I still had the choice.

If my body was infested with a cancer that was beyond cure and nothing lay before me but months of agony before a certain death I would rather die.

If my physical abilities were to be progressivly removed such that I became incapable of looking after myself and was to be left to wallow in my own urine waiting for a carer to wipe up after me I would rather be dead.

My life - my choice.

Sorry - even if we were to accept that God gave us life that doesn't give her the right to control what I do with it. When I give my daughter a present for Christmas I do not expect it back twenty years later!

[bernee51]

My life - my choice.

So true...an example from my past...

When working as a nurse I was looking after an elderly gentleman (in all senses of the word) who was dying slowly and painfully of pituitary cancer, which had spread to his spine and was totally intractable. He and his wife were devoted to each other and she was having great difficulty in accepting her husband's situation. He was quite weak and in considerable pain but resisting any potent pain relief because he was concerned it would at least comatose him if not kill him before he and his wife could accept together his ultimate death.

One afternoon his wife came to me with a question, rhetorical. "Bill is going to die, isn't he?". I replied the her husband was gravely ill and in some pain and suggested she should talk with him about pain relief and what it may mean. They talked and called me in - they had both obviously been in tears but were both calm and seemingly quite happy. Bill then said that the pain was getting intolerable and asked for some pain relief. Within 24 hours he had died peacefully with his wife at his side.

I have no doubt that my actions - in talking with he and his wife and administering large doses of morphine - perhaps hastened this wonderful man's demise. It was a humbling and deeply moving few days.

[Piper Plexed]

Think of it this way....we do not own our bodies. God gave us stewardship of them while we are on earth. He wants us to use it wisely, thinking of His will FIRST. When we suffer, God may be using that to speak to us or to someone around us. If he wants you home, He will take you.

Why would stewardship automatically exclude dying with dignity? Why is that considered unwise. We readily accept human intervention when it comes to maintaining life, we will have surgery, take man made drugs, engage in therapy. When all else fails and the patient suffers needlessly, when it is his/her will to dye with dignity, all of a sudden we must turn our backs on the compassion and science that God has graced us with. It really doesn't make sense to me. I really believe it should be up to the patient and if he/she is comfortable with this choice, the patients will should take precedence.

[Corvus]

What's fascinating is the manner in which the idea of God having ownership over the time of our deaths can be distorted. This same idea was the basis for trial by combat in the middle ages, where two men had at each other as a means of settling a dispute, and the person who did not surrender, become disabled or die, was believed to have won by the intervention of God, and so justice was served.

[Amadeus]

Piper Plexed:
I don't see how suicide is dying with dignity. It is the COWARD'S way out.

[Piper Plexed]

Piper Plexed:
I don't see how suicide is dying with dignity. It is the COWARD'S way out.

And I don't see hastening an impending death as suicide. As painful as it is we do it for our pets all of the time, and we do it out of compassion and love for them. If someone is in the last stages of their illness they are not really living. Committing suicide is what a living person does, the dying proceed to die. If there is something magical about the day hour and minute that one dies then in it would seem just as much an abomination to prolong life which we do on a daily basis through medicine.

[Amadeus]

We are ALL heading toward our own deaths. Some of us have a very painful way of getting there, too. Some of those people choose suicide.
It is all the same philosophy.

Euthenasia=suicide.

PS, I haven't ever been comfortable with killing my animals, either.