Honestly, I don't have any sort of problem with the nurses who gave terminally ill patients (very terminally ill patients - people who needed medication to survive at all, people on respirators who were mostly dead, that sort of thing) overdoses . . . one interview I read talked about one patient who faced either suffocating slowly on a 19 hour bus trip or being given an overdose . . . it seems to me that there is only one humane choice . . .
I KNOW all the arguments about a slipperly slope and everything - I taught a class on the ethical issues presented by modern technology and death and dying - but I, personally, think that is a choice people should have when they are terminally ill . . . I know, I, myself, would take matters into my own hands should I end up with a terminal disease - not immediately, of course, but when it got bad enough . . .
I've heard enough horror stories about how people I know have watched friends and family die from HIV that I think others would like that choice too . . .
16 Sep 2005, 11:43 pm
