Category: Ethics

Voluntary Euthanasia

I believe that I have a right to a humane end to my life when I am ready for it. I would expect a doctor to be involved to make sure it is successful and painless and I think I will have to accept that there should be a third party to referee and make sure it is truly what I want and that my doctor is giving me wise advice. But why on earth would I want someone else, particularly a person confused by a christian upbringing telling me what I am allowed to do, when it cannot affect them or anyone else?

At present I am very happy and would like to live forever but I know I won’t. I will steadily deteriorate until I am a burden to myself, my family and society. When that happens I may want to ask to go. If I do, after a brief consultation I would expect to be killed. Why would I or anyone else want anything different? I might be in excruciating pain and begging to go. I might not know who I am or where I am and be in constant fear. Please, if I have asked to be euthanased when I reach that sort of despair – let me go.

The counter arguments seem to be:
1. We are religiously bound to live as long as we can. No, we are African apes. Once life has no value to us we are of less value than an a worm. Let us go.
2. We will put doctors under too much pressure or they may kill people unnecessarily. No, we trust doctors with our lives already – we have nothing better and there is no reason to believe our doctors will become incompetent or serial murderers because of euthanasia laws. there are already checks on medical practitioners.
3. There may be pressure from third parties/family to end a life prematurely. No, only people who request euthanasia while they are fit to ask (I do now) will be euthanased and there will be some sort of referee to make the final decision (usually this will be a trivially obvious).

4. Non-rectifiable mistakes will be made. Of course they will, they always are but it is not very hard to judge that someone who has accepted euthanasia is now in a state where life is not worthwhile. The mistakes will be insignificant compared to the premature suicides, horrible suffering and fear engendered by the lack of euthanasia law.

Please, lets have a sensible humane euthanasia law before I have to consider putting an early period to my life to escape a horrible slow lingering death.

Car-Phobe Rant

The typical household spends over a quarter of its budget on transport. For this it gets a troublesome car. Constant noise and congestion, ugly environments and a badly compromised public transport system.
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In New Zealand we also get 300 deaths a year, thousands of injuries, and tens of thousands of distressing moments and scares. We are at war. Before our kids can go out we indoctrinate them with our fears of what will happen if they are careless on the road. We probably discourage them from using a healthy cheap bicycle because they are likely to be maimed or killed on it. If there were terrorists sniping at our children as they tried to get to school we would say we were are war and losing, yet because the cause of this distress is all of us and our love of cars, we call it normal.

Most of our population lives in cities and towns with centres and suburbs. We all go to the same places. When we leave our cars at home we can have public transport every ten minutes or less throughout the day and night. If the distances are great we can have trains going many times faster than we can ever make our cars go. No more interminable driving the kids to school to make sure they live through the event. No more getting up in the night to bring the teenagers safely home. No more domestic disputes over who can have the family transport. No more domestic distress over the cost of the family car.

It could be done. Quick cheap friendly transport everywhere with just essential services having personalised transport. But we love our cars even at the cost of thousands of deaths and maimings every year and even when we know it only solves a small part of our transport problems and the rest are all made far worse.