fear of death , page-92

"i'm going to say something that sounds heartless, but it's not, i've witnessed my own mother go through 18 months of shear hell with breast cancer and i've witnessed my father trying pathetically to ask the doctors to kill him on numerous occasions before he died.

the need for legislation on voluntary euthanasia is a myth.

You don't need legislation to kill yourself, people do it all the time."

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Your two statements above seem contradictory to me. You say your mother went through 18 months of sheer hell with breast cancer and your father begged doctors to kill him (something of course they cannot do within the law.)

With respect to your late parents, and sympathy for your loss, if they both wanted to die and 'you don't need legislation to kill yourself', why did either of them not do that?

Most people have minimal understanding of how difficult it is to find a reasonably acceptable, definitive way of ending one's own life. You suggest starvation. This can take many weeks, obviously less time if no fluids are taken and everything I've ever read about it suggests it would be very unpleasant and uncomfortable.

What advocates for voluntary euthanasia want is - when there is no hope of normal life and the patient has a terminal illness - the right of that person to (a) choose when they die in order to prevent unnecessary suffering, and (b) to have that death made painless and easy by means of the appropriate drug.

What is your source for saying

"it's the people around them that want them gone that ask for the legislation "?

That is absolutely not my experience or the evidence I've found anywhere at all. Quite the contrary. It's usually the family who don't want to 'let go' of the dying person.

Time and time again we see children of very old people in nursing homes insisting pneumonia eg should be treated, food forced via feeding tube when the patient refuses food, and many of them will openly say things like "I can't imagine life without Mum" etc.

In the last year or two, several intensive care specialists have used the media to point out the huge costs involved in keeping dying people alive, just to perhaps prolong their lives by a few days, such interventions almost always resulting in considerable additional discomfort for the patient with the insertion of various tubes, monitoring equipment etc.