Should mercy killing or euthanasia be made legal?

As the other poster said, what is merciful about killing your fellow human being? what is merciful about taking your brother's life?

As A christian I disagree. some times it seems necessary but it is still not right. nobody has the right to end a life not even your own life. Only God has the final say so i will say leave the person to die at the right time. don't force the person to die because of pain.

After 10 hours, the patient is still alive without any treatment. People are arguing that “Is the patient really in condition that needs mercy killing?”, “Is her family and the court had a right decision?”, or “Is there mercy in mercy killing.”

In my opinion, people have a right to “die with dignity” and mercy killing could relieve patient’s and his/her family’s pain. Patient might have terrible pain from a disease or treatment. His/her family might also have a mental pain or financial problem to support the patient. For those people, mercy killing could be one possible way to relieve a pain. However, mercy killing is possible to turn it to evil account. Hospital could recommend mercy killing to poor family who might not have enough money for a treatment. A patient who is in the vegetable state could have unwanted mercy killing. A small mistake from medical examination could take one’s precious life away from one who has a curable disease. Therefore, I would say that if mercy killing is really necessary, strict and precise conditions and plans need to minimize a misuse of mercy killing.

No No and No. Why would you want to kill someone? do we have the right to commit suicide? do we have the right to take our own life? do we have the right to die? if we don't have the right to commit suicide then why should we kill people because the want to die?

Originally Posted by daydreamer

It is astonishing to find 'mercy' and 'killing' words together. but in certain cases they are.
When a person is gravely ill and in severe pain, and it is an incurable condition(most likely cancer), he might himself wish to die to be free from pain and disability. This is called mercy killing or euthanasia.

There is lot of debate whether it should be legal or not?
In many parts of world, this is made legal but in most parts its still not legal.

What is your take on it?

mercy killing and killing without mercy, what's the difference?
people kill people everywhere, they kill children and call it abortion.
They might say don't kill a president who legalizes abortion, and kills thousand of babies,
of whom one of them might have developed a cure for AIDS.

Mercy Killing? As the other person said what is mercy about killing someone? What is mercy about KILLING? I don't support this one bit because nobody has the right to decide another person's fate. All rest in the hands of God. Let time tell a the right time. Don't force time to tell at the unright time.

I support this idea. sometimes it is good to allow the suffering person and the immediate family members to decide for themselves whether the person should die or not. Being on a sick bed for 10 or 15 years without the ability to do anything for yourself isn't life and don't forget it is very costly and in situations where the family of the sick person can't afford, i think they should be given the right to decide.

So, why now are we considering legalizing euthanasia (a term I use here to include assisted suicide) when we have prohibited it for millennia?

Not one of the bottom-line conditions usually linked with calls for legalizing euthanasia – that a person is terminally ill, wants to die and we can kill them – is new. These factors have been part of the human condition for as long as humans have existed. And our capacity to relieve pain and suffering has improved remarkably. So, is some other cause the main one?

I suggest it’s profound changes in our post-modern, secular, Western, democratic societies, and their interactive and cumulative effects. To make wise decisions about whether or not to legalize euthanasia, we need to identify and understand these changes in relation to euthanasia.

Individualism: “Intense individualism” (sometimes called “selfish individualism”), which needs to be distinguished from “healthy individualism”, dominates our society. This entails giving pre-eminence to rights to personal autonomy and self-determination, which favour acceptance of euthanasia.

“Intense individualism” also tends to exclude developing any real sense of community, even in connection with death and bereavement, where that sense is an essential need and coping mechanism for most people. Almost all the justifications for legalising euthanasia focus primarily on the dying person who wants it. Its harmful impact on society and its values and institutions are ignored.

In our society, death is largely a medical event that takes place in a hospital or other institution and is perceived as occurring in great isolation. It’s been institutionalised, depersonalised, and dehumanized. Asking for euthanasia can be a response to the “intense pre-mortem loneliness” of the dying person that results.

Mass media: Today we create our collective story – the store of values, attitudes, beliefs, commitments, and myths – that informs our collective life and through that our individual lives and helps to give them meaning, through mass media and the internet.

Failure to take into account societal and cultural level issues related to euthanasia is connected with “mediatisation” of the debate. We consider only the issues presented by the mass media – and those only as presented by them. It makes dramatic, personally and emotionally gripping television to feature Sue Rodriguez, an articulate, courageous, 42-year-old, divorced woman, dying of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, begging to have euthanasia made available.

The arguments against euthanasia based on the harm that it would do to society, both present and future, are very much more difficult to present. Viewers do not personally identify with these arguments that come across as just abstractions. Society cannot be interviewed on television and become a familiar, empathy-evoking figure to the viewing public.

Moreover, the vast exposure to death that we are subjected to in both current-affairs and entertainment programs might have overwhelmed our sensitivity to the awesomeness of death and, likewise, of inflicting it.

Denial and control of death, and “death talk”: Ours is a death-denying, death-obsessed society. Those who no longer adhere to the practice of institutionalised religion have lost their main forum for engaging in “death talk” – whether church, synagogue, mosque or temple. We need to engage in that “talk” if we are to accommodate the inevitable reality of death into the living of our lives. And we must do that if we are to live fully and well.

Our extensive discussion of euthanasia in the mass media may be our contemporary “death talk.” So, instead of being confined to an identifiable location and an hour or so a week, “death talk” has spilled out into our lives in general. This makes maintaining the denial of death more difficult, because it makes the fear of death more present and “real.” One way to deal with this fear is to believe we have death under control. The availability of euthanasia could support that belief. Euthanasia moves us from chance to choice concerning death. Although we cannot make death optional, we can create an illusion that it is, by making its timing and the conditions and ways in which it occurs a matter of choice.

Fear: We can be frightened not only as individuals, but also as a society. For instance, collectively, we express the fear of crime in our streets. But that fear, though factually based, might also be a manifestation of a powerful and free-floating fear of death, in general. Calling for the legalisation of euthanasia could be a way of symbolically taming and civilising death, thus reducing our fear of its random infliction through crime, that is, it functions as a “terror reduction” mechanism or “terror management” device.

Legalism: We tend to use law as a response to fear, often in the misguided belief that this will increase our control of that which frightens us and hence augment our safety. It is not surprising, therefore, that we have to varying degrees become a legalistic society. The reasons are complex and include the use of law as a means of ordering and governing a “society of strangers”, as compared with one of “intimates”.

Matters such as euthanasia, which would once have been the topic of moral or religious discourse, are now explored in courts and legislatures – especially through concepts of individual human rights, civil rights, and constitutional rights.

Man-made law (legal positivism), as compared with divinely ordained law or natural law, has a very dominant role in establishing the values and symbols of a secular society. In the euthanasia debate, it does so through the judgements and legislation that result from the “death talk” that takes place in “secular cathedrals” – legislatures and courts.

Materialism and consumerism: Another factor favouring euthanasia is that our society is highly materialistic and consumerist. It has lost any sense of the sacred, even just of the “secular sacred”. That favours a pro-euthanasia position, because a loss of the sacred fosters the idea that worn-out people may be equated with worn-out products; both can then be seen primarily as “disposal” problems. As one Australian politician put it: “When you are past your best-before or use-by date, you should be disposed of as quickly, cheaply and efficiently as possible”. Euthanasia implements that approach.

Mystery: We are frightened of mystery, because we don’t feel we have control when faced with mysteries. We convert mysteries into problems in order “to deal” with them and reduce our anxiety in doing so. If we convert the mystery of death into the problem of death, euthanasia (or, even more basically, a lethal injection) can be seen as a solution to that problem.

A sense of mystery might be required also to “preserve room for hope.” Hopelessness – nothing to look forward to – is strongly associated with a desire for euthanasia.

Rejection of any sense of mystery often correlates with a belief that reason (logical, cognitive, rational mentation) is the only valid way of human knowing, and a rejection of other ways, such as intuition, especially moral intuition, examined emotions, experiential knowledge and so on. Such an approach favours euthanasia – it can make logical sense, even though humans have a deep moral intuition against killing each other and we have thousands of years of history (human memory as a way of knowing) in all kinds of societies that it is wrong to do so, except where it is unavoidable to save human life.

What it means to be human: At the heart of many of the current debates on ethics, including in relation to euthanasia, is the issue of whether humans deserve “special respect” as compared with animals or robots, which links to whether we have absolute obligations to protect and preserve the essence of out humanness.

I believe we deserve “special respect” simply because we are human. But some people don’t agree that there’s anything intrinsically special about being human. For instance, Princeton “animal rights” philosopher Peter Singer, would not differentiate animals from humans in the kind of respect they are owed. So, if we see it as acceptable to euthanase our suffering dog or cat, likewise, we should be able to offer euthanasia to humans.

Impact of scientific advances: Among the most important causes of our loss of a sense of the sacred, in general, and regarding human life, in particular, is our extraordinary scientific progress and the mistaken view that science and religion are antithetical. New genetic discoveries and new reproductive technologies have given us a sense that we understand the origin and nature of human life and that, because we can, we may manipulate – or even “create” – life. Transferring these sentiments to the other end of life would support the view that euthanasia is acceptable.

Competing world views: Though immensely important in itself, the debate over euthanasia might be a surrogate for yet another, even deeper, one. Which of two irreconcilable world views will form the basis of our societal and cultural paradigm?

According to one world view, we are highly complex, biological machines, whose most valuable features are our rational, logical, cognitive functions. This world view is in itself a mechanistic approach to human life. Its proponents support euthanasia, as being, in appropriate circumstances, a logical and rational response to problems at the end of life.

The other world view (which for some people is expressed through religion, but can be, and possibly is for most people, held independently of religion, at least in a traditional or institutional sense) is that human life consists of more than its biological component, wondrous as that is. It involves a mystery – at least the “mystery of the unknown” – of which we have a sense through intuitions, especially moral ones. It sees death as part of the mystery of life, which means that to respect life, we must respect death. Although we might be under no obligation to prolong the lives of dying people, we do have an obligation not to shorten their lives deliberately.

The euthanasia debate is a momentous one. It involves issues that range from the nature and meaning of human life to the most fundamental principles on which societies are based. This debate involves our individual and collective past (the ethical, legal, and cultural norms that have been handed down to us as members of families, groups, and societies); the present (whether we will change those norms); and the future (the impact that this would have on those who come after us).

In debating euthanasia we need to ask many questions, but three of the most important are: Would legalization be most likely to help us or hinder us in our search for meaning in our individual and collective lives? How do we want our grandchildren and great grandchildren to die? And, in relation to human death, what memes (fundamental units of cultural information that are inherited by being passed from generation to generation) do we want to pass on?

[Evangelist]

Euthanasia is against the scriptures and it is sinful to commit mercy killing. Those who commit mercy killing aint "mercy murderers" but just "murderers" because human life is sacred and anyone who takes human life is a murderer.

I see no problem with euthanasia. if the person wishes to die in order to end his or her sorrows then what is wrong with that? Euthanasia is different from suicide. those saying no to euthanasia are those confusing Euthanasia for suicide. Euthanasia is a medical practice and it is applied when all hope is gone so what is wrong with that? If you kill a person without his or her concern then that is absolutely wrong. But in a situation where there sick patient and the family of the sick patient support the idea, I see nothing wrong with that.

[Obedience]

I think euthanasia is a criminal act before God and man. Nobody has the power to determine the faith of another man except God so why not allow the person to die a natural death? why not allow the person to die on his or her own? why kill another person all in the name of medical practice? I am very much against mercy killing. It is a criminal act

Originally Posted by Kofi

Allowing mercy killing is just like allowing people the right to take their own lives. Allowing mercy killing is just like allowing people to commit suicide. Most people commit suicide because they are in pain, they are frustrated, they are fed up and wish to die just like the person suffering on the sick bed. Having an incurable sickness doesn't necessarily mean death. Remember anything can happen and the doctors could be wrong. Doctors don't know everything because doctors do not make human beings. Doctors do not have the right to determine whether you live or die. Mercy killing is nothing but murder and those who perform mercy killing are nothing less than criminals in my opinion. Allow the person to die naturally.

every individual has the fundamental right to chose how the live there life and if they are lucky how they end it, each individual has there own beliefs and morals they have chosen to live by and o bide by and for some politician or religious group to come in at the end of ones life and say you are not aloud to chose how you end it is wrong and unjust. If someone is terminal and going to die they should be allowed to end their life happy and free with there family by there side and free of pain

I support Euthanasia. There is nothing wrong with euthanasia. People should have the right to make their final decisions in life. People should have the right to die peacefully. People should have the right to end their pain and suffering at the end of life. People dictates for us throughout life. Why don't you give the person a little chance to make his or her final decisions?

[odysseus]

Originally Posted by Kofi

Allowing mercy killing is just like allowing people the right to take their own lives. Allowing mercy killing is just like allowing people to commit suicide. Most people commit suicide because they are in pain, they are frustrated, they are fed up and wish to die just like the person suffering on the sick bed. Having an incurable sickness doesn't necessarily mean death. Remember anything can happen and the doctors could be wrong. Doctors don't know everything because doctors do not make human beings. Doctors do not have the right to determine whether you live or die. Mercy killing is nothing but murder and those who perform mercy killing are nothing less than criminals in my opinion. Allow the person to die naturally.

In your opinion what is your definition of a natural death, does that mean medical assistance which in some cases only prolongs a more agonizing illness, if any person is taking any type of meds or has had any type of surgery for health reason, technically thats not a natural death. Man has to the capability, this is more of a moral issue and with everything else there is no clear line, no black and white just a whole lot of gray. personally i would like to have the right to end an illness giving a few variables where taking into account.

[Kofi]

Originally Posted by odysseus

In your opinion what is your definition of a natural death, does that mean medical assistance which in some cases only prolongs a more agonizing illness, if any person is taking any type of meds or has had any type of surgery for health reason, technically thats not a natural death. Man has to the capability, this is more of a moral issue and with everything else there is no clear line, no black and white just a whole lot of gray. personally i would like to have the right to end an illness giving a few variables where taking into account.

Sorry for the confusion. I grew up in Africa so at times i talk as if everybody is an African. In America and in other western countries, the majority of people die in hospitals. This is not the case in Africa. In Africa, people mostly die at home in their houses. If you commit suicide for example, it is not considered a natural death in Africa. If you die in a car accident, it is not considered a natural death in Africa. However, if you are sick and you die on your sickbed without anybody assisting you (as in the case of euthanasia), then you died a natural death. If you live past 70 and you die on your sick bed then you died a natural and a decent death.
I am a Christian so I also believe that if you die you go to heaven. However, in Africa (especially among the traditional worshipers), there is this believe that when you die you join the ancestors in the 'spiritual world'. However, only good people(people who died natural deaths) can join the spiritual world. In other words, if you are a bad person and you die, your ghost will continue to wander about on the surface of this world for thousands of years without the ability to join the spiritual world because the spiritual world accepts only good spirits or ghosts. If you die a natural death then you may get the chance to enter the spiritual world or the land of the ancestors. However, if you die through unnatural means (as in the case of euthanasia) then you may not be able to join the land of the spirits. The land of the spirit is somehow similar to the 'purgatory' in Catholicism and the 'Sheol' in Judaism but in the 'land of the spirits' the spirits think and act just like human beings but 'super human beings' without flesh. If you are very familiar with Native Americans (Native Indians) then you will have a very good idea of what I'm talking about. The Native Americans also believe in the land of the ancestors and that only good people who died natural deaths can join the land of the ancestors.

[odysseus]

Originally Posted by Kofi

Sorry for the confusion. I grew up in Africa so at times i talk as if everybody is an African.....only good people who died natural deaths can join the land of the ancestors.

Ah i understand now, so your opinion of euthanasia is based on your religious and spiritual beliefs which i think is ok. I was raised catholic and i consider myself catholic although i dnt practice going to mass every sunday, in the catholic religion killing and or suicide is a sin, which i believe also. I also believe there is no clear cut answer when it comes to religion and its practices, for instance the holy bible, to me its more of a tool a person can use to help direct there lifes and become a better person. I know i may contradict myself, but honestly theres a million situations that people can experience to justify euthanasia and not to justify euthanasia. I dont want to make this too long, But now you have me thinking that maybe a persons religion or lack of it should be taken into consideration beforehand when making euthanasia an option. I think an atheist doctor should have the option or right to euthanize there atheist patient.

mercy killing, although another name for suicide, is a way of finding a path free of pain and tension. people who wish to end their lives just to get rid of pain make wise decisions. but i may also add that many religions in the world do not allow such decisions to be made. what is better than life? death? yes it is, but only for those who suffer. a perfectly healthy man would never be in favour of euthanasia but if u ask a person who's suffering from a disease which is incurable, the best option for him/her would be euthanasia. atleast that would lessen his pain.
this topic is controversial and i believe decisions of euthanasia's legality should be made according to the situation and religion of a person.
Thanks

As a Christian and a follower of Christ, I say NO to euthanasia, NO to abortion, and NO to any activity or action that cause the death of another man. Only God has the right to decide. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and He shall deliver you.

Euthanasia should not be legal or allowed anywhere in the world. it devalues the life of a human being.

[stephen kay nortey]

this whole euthanasia phenomenon is a very delicate one and care should be taken when taking sides on it. it think inasmuch as an individual has the right to end his own life, we are human beings who live in the society and not an island of our own. therefore in making such decisions, we must not consider ourselves alone but other people around us......please i want to know, does any part of Ghana's constitution talk on euthanasia?

i agree to wt mos of the pepl above hav sed... bt i thnk dat if a persn is ment to die he'l die but if hes not he wont..bt til da momen he's ALIVE we shud try our level best 2 save him/her..... its worth da shot...
fo pepl whu dnt hav proper finance... mi advice is dat i bliv in God... u cn jus pray... he'l SURELY provide!...GOD BLES AL...