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Should every person have the right to die with dignity?
Results so far:
| Yes | 88% | 284 votes | Total: 321 votes | |
| No | 12% | 37 votes |
Yes
by Ted Sherman
Created on: March 26, 2010
I've pondered the question about dying with dignity since shortly before my 20th birthday. It was quite a shock, because we all know teenagers consider themselves immortal, and death is just an abstraction. I truly believed it was what happened to feeble old grandparents and artists and authors I was forced to write essays about in high school. Additionally, when watching movies that involved violent death, it was just entertainment, and I knew that when the cameras stopped rolling, the on-screen dead actors would clean off the ketchup and get up.
However, in February, 1945, I was a teenage crewman on a Navy troopship that happened to be disembarking Marines over the side and into our Higgins boats. They then headed toward an ugly little rock in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It was called Iwo Jima, and within the next few days, thousands of Marines and Japanese troops on the island would be dead. In the same few days, a thousand sailors, including some on my ship, would be dead because of suicide attacks by Japanese kamikaze airplanes.
Did any of those soldiers or sailors die with dignity? Of course not. As in any battle then and in all other wars before and since, they died in the most indignant ways, violently and in terrible pain. Most of them were very young men and teenagers who wanted to go home and live out their lives with the real dignity of raising families and seeing their children grow up.
I'm now 84, and am thankful that I survived the horrors of that war, and five years later, when recalled to serve again during the Korean War. Not many of us are left among the ten million who were in uniform during World War II, and I've had the sad duty of attending the funerals of many comrades who served with me. Thankfully, most them did survive the wars to enjoy full lives, and were granted the ultimate honor of dignified military funerals.
Of course, the question of having the right to die with dignity is most often considered in medical terms, rather than with military nostalgia. The expression, as it applies to the terminally ill, always troubles the family of a dying loved one: When ... or if ... is it ever morally right to pull the plug? I can now speak to it with the authority of one who may soon face that choice myself, or will expect a member of my family to make the decision.
Despite religious constraints and other traditions, there's just one simple answer. A hopelessly injured or very elderly patient has the right to die with dignity when there is no longer any quality of life, nor any hope of ever recovering from that terminal state.
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No
by Joseph Malek
Created on: July 27, 2008
Like it or not, each of us is an animal who does good and/or bad things to other animals. Those of us who do bad things to those other animals should die a most painful death at the hands of those other animals who seek to preserve all that is good within the society in which those good animals created. Such was the reasoning employed by the people of Medieval times. So too, that is the same kind of reasoning employed by the current leaders of some of the Countries of our World.
Clearly, a captured serial killer who is convicted of the charges of murder, torture, rape, kidnapping or some such horrific crime should also die in the most horrible of ways. You see, that animal showed no mercy or respect for its victims and there is really nothing dignified about the taking of a Human life or ending the life of any other living creature.
As a matter of fact, the execution process is one that leads the soon to die criminal to its death in the most efficient and timely way possible. Because of that ceremonial method of execution there is no doubt in my mind that many innocent people were unjustly killed for a crime that they didn't commit.
As a result, maybe the members of the jury and the judge should take part in the physical execution of said criminal? After all, the convicted criminal must be taken to the death chamber and someone must strap the criminal onto the execution devise and yet another person can activate the devise that does kill the criminal.
So too, maybe the loved ones of the victim or victims of that criminal can activate that killing devise? From my point of view, a picture of the soon to die criminal should be taken along with an attached sign on that criminal that can easily be read by all who see that criminal's picture. The sign should contain the names of its known victims and what that animal truly did to those victims.
After which, the dead body of that criminal should be sold to a medical school, in hope that a medical student will learn something worthwhile from the body that he or she dissects. To me, that's more than enough dignity for any animal that chooses to end the life of any other animal for no other reason than to fulfill its own twisted desires.
Otherwise, and like any other animal who is about to be killed for food and/or sport, a Priest should first administer the last rights to the soon to die animal. So too, when a member of the Clergy does give the last rights to all of those food animals before the workers within those slaughter houses kill those living things, that's the day when I'll approve of a dignified death for a known killer of Humanity.
Learn more about this author, Joseph Malek.
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