Our Right to Death

As of June 1, Doctor Jack Kevorkian, the controversial pathologist who believe in the right of the patient to die via assisted suicide, should they request such (over 130 having been assisted by him), has been released on parole from his imprisonment after being found to be in terminal condition and expected to live less than another year, due to his Hepatitis C, which he contracted while on duty in Vietnam. As of the writing of this, there are over 12 hundred articles on Google concerning this subject, so it is quite obviously a rather touchy issue.



Many call him a mass-murderer, and perhaps he is. Perhaps he simply uses the excuse of assisted suicide to get his kicks in knocking off patients, but even if that is so, I think that he has a good point. If one is in a mental condition in which they would be able to make proper decisions, and, due to a terminal, painful illness that they were inflicted with to which there was no cure, and possibly not even any way to numb the pain of, I would think that such a person would have every right to welcome a quick and painless death, rather than a long, torturous one. Hell, we're so dedicated to that concept in this country that we actually sterilize lethal injection needles, because, apparently, it is possible of the convict to die of some painful illness within the couple minutes it takes for the poisons to work. If people are worried about those who are convicted murderers, rapists, etc. dying with even a hint of pain during the short time between needle-prick and lethal injection, why don't they give the same options to those innocents who are on their deathbed, but kept alive by doctors, only to endure more agony (and toll up a larger bill for their relations once the monitor flat lines)?

I heard a quite good discussion on this subject by the hosts of the Susan Show today (I will put up a clip later, if I am able), and later chatted the point with a very close friend of mine. To paraphrase, the point is that those who are unable to escape pain or death should be given a chance to face it, rather than cower in the corner as it comes charging at them. For those who are simply depressed and want to die for stupid reasons, however, suicide is a coward's way out (specifically, on the show they said that those who admit that they want to commit suicide just want attention and don't really want to kill themselves anyway, so the best method of dealing with them is either to ignore them, or even go so far as to encourage them to do so, to make them prove to themselves that they really don't want it).

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