Doghead's Cosmic Bar

Euthanasia is anothering that has been legalized in Holland lately. It's still really dificult if the person in question isn't able to state the wish to die himself. This autumn there was the first celeb-authanasia case, btw.

What's scary about authanasia is for a lot op people connected with religion. If you take your own, or someone elses life, this might result in e.g. eternity in hell. Some people also think that the soul is not yet ready to leave the body, and that the person will be forever trapped in his dead body.

It's called a "living will" although since I'm not old I don't really know much about it. Personally, if the situation ever comes up, I'd prefer not to hang on with life support if it's determined that I have a very small chance of surviving with my brainpower intact. I don't want to be a vegetable, and I don't want to make huge medical expenses that my family can't afford, just so they can have a very slim hope of me surviving mentally intact.

Exactly. One of my greatest fears is mental problems - I would much rather die than be a vegetable. Although, of course, I can understand the religious point of view and accept that some may feel it is only God's right to give and take life.
I know that the Eskimos have a tradition that, when their people become too old to be of any use to the tribe (ie they cannot hunt or help with anything), they float them away on an iceberg to die peacefully of hypothermia. I'm told it's not a bad way to go - you gradually fall asleep and just don't wake up.

I'd much rather live out the rest of my life physically injured than mentally incapacitated. Of course that's easy to say now...I don't know what it's like to live with missing arms or legs and yet still be able to think clearly and understand how bad it sucks.

Yes, it must be incredibly frustrating to be mentally alert but unable to do anything for yourself. Think Stephen Hawking, for a start. But then he adds a whole new angle to our argument - yes, he is physically incapacitated but few people would agree he should be 'put to sleep' as it were. So where do we draw the line?

I guess everyone has different levels of torture they'd be willing to endure in order to keep living. To a sports figure, being paralyzed might break his heart, whereas I probably wouldn't care too much since I never do anything requiring much physical effort anyway. The worst part for me would be having to have someone bathe me and help me in the bathroom, or wearing Depends or something.

It should definitely be a personal choice. There's no way to make a blanket law that'll be acceptable to everyone in every situation. (Look at religious ppl who believe medical treatment is wrong, and all the hooplah when they refuse to immunize their kids or their kids die from a treatable disease. This is the perfect example of trying to treat everyone the same and only ending up causing lots of misunderstanding and hatred and sensational news coverage.)

If Hawking would be in constant pain and would want to die, he should have the right to. Killing people because they have disabilities is something Hitler did during the war. The most important capacity of a human is the mental one.

Imagine being absolutely incapable of moving or even blinking your eyes. I think living like that, laying on a hospital bed, would be hell. You couldn't even express your wishes to the outside world, and the people surrounding you would maybe have no idea that you're actually 100% aware of everything that's happening. Too me that would be a living hell.

I agree. I've always been a strong supporter of situation ethics because there are very few moral codes which apply to everyone in every situation. For every moral statement you make, you can almost always come up with a situation that contradicts it.

There's also what happens when a person is born with a major disability. If I'd been born into a culture that kills babies who have bad vision, I wouldn't be alive now.

I went to high school with a girl whose bottom half never developed past baby stage. She used a wheelchair most of the time, and you couldn't even see her bottom half because her shirt covered it. Sometimes she'd walk around on her hands, and seeing those little tiny feet with their socks falling off looked so sad to me. Strangely enough, I never heard anyone make fun of her...she had plenty of friends and seemed to enjoy her life more than I enjoyed mine at the time.

As for situational ethics...I think they're less applicable in some situations than others. For instance, intentionally killing someone. Yeah, maybe you killed him out of revenge, but that doesn't make you any better of a person. Maybe he asked you to put him out of his misery, but you still have to live with that the rest of your life. Self-defence or defending someone else I'd agree with, but that definitely depends on the situation. I think there ARE absolutes in some situations, but there's also a lot of gray areas.

FYI: It's chimpanzees, not monkeys, that share 99.8% of their DNA with humans.

In the late 90's there was a big poll held in Denmark about when someone would abort their pregnancy. 19% said they would abort if they knew for sure that their kid would need glasses!

My child would have to be so disformed that it could never possibly enjoy life before I'd want to abort it. When it comes do authism and dawns, I honestly don't know.

A friend of mine has six kids, most of whom needed speech therapy for a while. Two of them have autistic spectrum disorders: Asperger's Syndrome, which is sort of like autism but milder, and Pervasive Development Disorder, which means she freaks out over weird stuff. For instance, pretty much everything she owns has to be red, and everything is in a precise place in her room and can't be moved out of that position. However, the same one with PDD is also highly intelligent--she's in the gifted program.

They wouldn't have survived any type of genetic purge (bah, the very thought!), but they are great kids.