Yes

by Destiny Song

Created on: November 05, 2010   Last Updated: November 06, 2010

Before we begin this debate proper, let us admit one single, simple truth; we all live for the good and improvement of our society. There’s no getting around it; no matter how narcissistic, self-centered or money-driven we claim to be, in the end, our entire lives are centered about the gigantic functionings of our society.

We lust after money and power, to gain a higher standing in society. We work hard, going through our mundane jobs every day, in hopes of a promotion because we know that those who contribute most to our companies (i.e. the economy – society) gets the most rewards. Heck, even our entire economy is based around a collective agreement in society. Money in itself is just paper, plain and worthless, but a collective agreement shared amongst the entire global society has given it value.

Yes, no matter how we try to get around it, we’re all inevitably pulled back to the machinations of modern day society; power, money and fame to increase our standing, religion to increase cohesiveness, familial ties to ensure our society and legacy endures.

So, when our entire lives are centered about the workings, and inevitable improvement, of our society, is it that hard to ask those death-row prisoners, who have done so much harm to our beloved society, to give back to it with their final breaths?

Thousands die around the world every single day, with millions besides suffering. All for lack of medical supplies, medical technology, medical research. Some are children, barely out of infancy, their lives a fickle light, a whole future ahead of them about to be snuffed out. Some are expectant mothers, complications arising from childbirth, the doctors gambling with not one life, but two. Yet others are people like you and me, able-bodied men and women who have done no wrong, and yet by some inexplicable misfortune stricken with a fatal disease.

These people lie on their death-beds, awaiting the reaper, simply because a select few, who have already done harm to society and are about to die anyway, selfishly refuse to give their lives to the greater good and improvement of society.

Is this right?

We have all seen martyrs die valiantly for their cause without so much as flinching. In fact, we honor and revere them (if they’re on our side), or at the very least grudgingly respect their sacrifice. If we, as humans, can logically accept than some people have died for the greater good and for the betterment and establishment of their cause, and we see no fault in this, why then, would a sacrifice on those death-row prisoners’ part be any wrong? They have already flouted the established rules we set in place to safeguard our society. They are already going to die. And yet, when they have their final chance to contribute back to society with their dying breaths (literally), they refuse?

There’re a lot of people out there who defend the so-called sanctity of life, saying all life is sacred and can never be used for any other purpose. And the very fact that these people still call death row prisoners ‘death row’ is an oxymoron in itself. If we truly believed life was never meant to be taken by human hands, why has the law established the death sentence? Justice is but a stone’s throw away from vengeance; and yet the very same people, who allow death as a revenge and doomed others to the grave, refuse to allow basic experimentation on those very people they doomed?

We are in desperate need of medical research. We are ailed by an aging populations and deadly diseases. Is it so much to ask for the death-row prisoners, who have taken so much from our society, to finally repay the kindness we have shown them?

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