Euthanasia

[MagnetMan]

Terminal illness creates severe wear and tear on the spirits of more than just one infected body. The family, extended family and professional care givers are all part of the process of trying to save one life and share to some extent in the suffering.

Though no one can deny that every effort must be made to do battle with death and appreciate the valuable lessons learned from that grim engagement, there has to come a time when the helpless one has come to terms with causes and effects of their own life and is ready to accept his or her own fate.

Before total inability is arrived at a massive over-dose of morphine should be placed within the patient's reach. There can be no more enlightening and peaceful way to exit this life.

If personal resolution is not reached and the patient is comatose, then the nearest loved- one should administer the dose.

Any religious who claim that putting a merciful end to pain and suffering would displease God, must worship a strange God indeed.

[fay]

Apr 25, 2008 11:00:29 GMT -5 MagnetMan said:

Terminal illness creates severe wear and tear on the spirits of more than just one infected body. The family, extended family and professional care givers are all part of the process of trying to save one life and share to some extent in the suffering.

Though no one can deny that every effort must be made to do battle with death and appreciate the valuable lessons learned from that grim engagement, there has to come a time when the helpless one has come to terms with causes and effects of their own life and is ready to accept his or her own fate.

Before total inability is arrived at, a massive over-dose of morphine should be placed within the patient's reach. There can be no more enlightening and peaceful way to exit this life.

If personal resolution is not reached and the patient is comatose, then the nearest loved- one should administer the dose.

Any religious who claim that putting a merciful end to pain and suffering would displease God, must worship a strange God indeed.

what i think.
i would like to end my life with a OD of morphine if i can no longer be useful and become a burden.
i think no good can come from me if i can not do something useful. so no point staying on if i would cause unhappiness for anyone.

[fay]

i had a friend. he had cancer. and he used to say that he would disappear when the time of his death came near. i guess he did not want many people around him, when he was in his last days. i loved him so much. but he did not know that a lot of people loved him. i dont think people should be alone in their final days.

[fay]

Apr 25, 2008 11:00:29 GMT -5 MagnetMan said:

Any religious who claim that putting a merciful end to pain and suffering would displease God, must worship a strange God indeed.

i often think to myself
what if i am in a situation where i have a loved one who is in pain and can not be cured. what would i do? would i let him suffer? would i let him be depressed? the answer is awlays is , no. but how would i do it? then i imagine myself in a situation like that and i always want to end mylife.
then the question arises of what would God say when i see Him. and then i think ,He would probably know i dont want to live a meaningless life without a purpose.

[MagnetMan]

Donna made a final few off-camera comments to me before she self-administered the massive overdoses of morphine that put a final end to a seven-year battle with breast cancer and the extreme pain of the last few weeks when her immune system, destroyed by endless rounds of chemo-therapy, failed to deal with a bout of stomach flu and the resultant violent vomiting spells which shook her body every time she took a tiny bite to eat.

Her last observations summed up the premature and ghastly end to her being-ness.
“Shoot me.” She whispered this painfully a day or two before she came up with the morphine plan. Years earlier she had seen me ruthlessly shoot a pet dog that I deemed too dangerous to be around children and knew that I had the executioner instinct.
“Can’t do that, my dear.” The fact that I would hang for murder was left unspoken. But the request certainly put me in a spot.
Then the day before the end, after staring intently at me in silence for some minutes: “Life is pointless.”
Taken out of context that statement would seem to refute everything she lived for. No one that I know of ever tried harder to live a truer or more honest life, or did everything humanly possible into putting some reason for being into it. But I knew what she meant. Objectively, from an intellectual viewpoint, life is pointless. Biologically we are simply eating, shitting, breeding, survival machines. All our social hopes, desires, ambitions, plans and machinations add up to nothing in the final analysis – especially when death comes prematurely.
“The point to the pointlessness is in trying to make a point out of it.” That was all I could say. She nodded at that.
Her final comment, made as she was helped to rise from her bed and relieve her bladder on the porta-pot two feet away, was:
“This is so undignified.”
She took a lethal dose of the drug that night and stopped breathing at 10.00 am. the next morning. Thankfully I did not have to intervene and make sure her suicide wish was final.

That was it. After almost thirty years of unbroken partnership, we never spoke again in this life.

Our family resides on a research station in a remote desert location in Nevada. Years of pruning the wind-breaks had left a huge pile of dried brushwood. Personally, I wanted to build a funeral bier amidst the deadwood and burn Donna’s body in a Viking funeral that the warrior she was deserved. But her kids, boy scouts to the end, following her instructions, insisted that we obey government regulations. The local sheriff was duly informed and drove over to the ranch to confirm her death. The mortician in Hawthorn, two hundred miles away, came in his station wagon. Donna’s dead body, dangling from arms and legs, with head lolling, was hauled out of her bed and dumped unceremoniously on a gurney and her carcass driven away for cremation. In the process of this perfunctory operation, the mortician, together with the gas and electric companies made their profit out of a service that, morally, should benefit nobody over and above the basic cost. As it is it cost us a few thousand that we could ill-afford.

I am definitely not taking that ignominious official route when I check out. If I do not die alone while in retirement up in the mountains, just like old Chinese sages prefer, I intend having that Viking pyre and my ashes going into the compost heap. In order to avoid the perfunctory prosecution charges and penalties for braking the rules, when the authorities finally get around to noticing I am missing the kids will say that I took my last hike somewhere out into the desert, clutching the remaining half of the bottle of morphine that Donna never finished, with strict orders not to be followed, and left my dying body for the buzzards and coyotes to feed on. Whether the police believe that or not, with no physical evidence or reason to prosecute otherwise, that should be the end of it, dignity in death will be served, no profit pocketed, and the government be damned.

Is euthanasia and suicide moral?
That is a matter of free will and personal spiritual opinion.
Like so many other things of a personal nature in life, it has nothing what-so-ever to do with either scripted religious dogma or government decree.

Taking the dignity out of death and making a profit out of it to boot?
Now that is immoral..

And the morality of the lie the kids would have to bear in order to comply with my death wish?
That is for them to decide.

[lavender1]

i couldn't agree more with all you have said on this subject.

i live in europe where the public is already in an on- (and off- ;D)going discussion about the reasonability of active euthanasia (netherlands has legislated it); the ageing society cannot sustain their old and infirm while the health industry cannot seem to make enough profits.

indeed, just before reading this thread, i was thinking to myself that most of mankind got absolutely no reason to be optimistic about any future.