767. euthanasia

Quote of the day: Who should decide whether you live or die?

Group project discussion are never fun when everyone is extremely tired and sleepy. The brain simply not running lor. On auto shut down mode...

But I'm glad things moved on with something.

Euthanasia (安乐死) has always been a hot topic since I was in secondary school. Who can decide whether should you move on to another phase of life? The family members? Doctor? Yourself?

Ask yourself this -- if you are terminally ill and death is just around the corner, do you want to:
1) Continue living till your heartbeat halt? In this, you incur heavier financial, emotional and physical burden to those around you. Also, continue with all the pain and sufferings.
2) Opt to end your life? With this, lighten the financial and physical burden. Emotional wise, time will wash the pain away. Also, stop all the pain and sufferings once and for all.

Tough choice? I might prolly choose (2). I had seen too many pain on those who are terminally ill and there is practically no second option.

But there are too many things to consider. As we all know, Singapore has yet to allow euthanasia to be practise legally. What I can think of are the following factors that had caused the gahmen to put the plan on hold for sooooooooo long:

1) Ethical issues
Does euthanasia equates to committing suicide or allowing murder? Logically, a live is lost isn't it? Allowing euthanasia could means the society now accepts peeps to commit or attempt suicide and there could be no excuse to it. Technically, when a person attempt suicide is when this person wishes to stop any the pains and sufferings (physically and/or mentally).

Also, with euthanasia, it could means life now is so cheap and has no longer any meanings to it. Life might be taken lightly from than on since anyone can end it legally.

On another point, such euthanasia should be administered by a doctor. We are all brought up in the ideological society where doctor saves lives. So, if they are allowed to perform euthanasia on their willing patients, aren't they directly/indirectly killing someone?

2) Religious issues
Most religion deem ending a living life a sin. There will be circulation of objections by religious groups. How can we kill ourselves? It is the same as killing a living thing. To the Christian, "thou shall not kill" stops others from killing. Think there is something similar to the Muslims and the Buddhist and I believe, most religion practices something like that.

3) Social issues
When the society allows such euthanasia, will the social culture mutate? Seeing your friends and family all opt for euthanasia, you will sort of be influenced to take up euthanasia too right? It's the "you do it so I also wanna do it" kinda mentality. Isn't it scary?

If you "kill" yourself, who will be there for your family? If you are married, your better half will be widowed. Your kids will lose a father/mother. The family will be "unnaturally" broken. Emotionally, the kids might have adverse effects and yet, they are still in the growing stage. This might lead to mental issues in the future.

So, do you support euthanasia?