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an elderly person in a nursing home, who can barely understand a breakfast menu, is asked to sign a form consenting to be killed. Is this voluntary or involuntary? Will they be protected by the law? How? Right now the overall prohibition on killing stands in the way. Once one signature can sign away a person's life, what can be as strong a protection as the current absolute prohibition on direct killing? Answer: nothing." ("Euthanasia")

If an elderly person (or any person) is unable to understand a breakfast menu, then that person is unable to have a productive, enjoyable life. It seems deplorable that the people who use this example to justify keeping people alive long enough to die in pain, confusion and indignity are largely the same people who want to medicate clinically insane prisoners long enough to try them for murder and have them executed ("Fight For Life On Death Row"). Is there any person who is in his or her correct state of mind that would choose to live if he or she became broken to the extent that a breakfast menu was beyond comprehension?
The second example of this argument is: "[sic] a woman is suffering from depresssion and asks to be helped to commit suicide. One doctor sets up a practice to "help" such people. She and anyone who wants to die knows he will approve any such request. He does thousands a year for $200 each. How does the law protect people from him? Does it specify that a doctor can only approve 50 requests a year? 100? 150? If you don't think there are such doctors, just look at recent stories of doctors and nurses who are charged with murder for killing dozens or hundreds of patients." ("Euthanasia")
This argument, while intriguing on the surface, simply redirects the public's attention away from the main points of euthanasia, which are the patient's right to refuse treatment and the citizen's right to decide the fate of his or her own life. It is commonly thought that depression, along with all other forms of mental illness, are rare occurrences and, therefore, anyone suffering from them are incapable of deciding what is best for him or her self. However, if the abnormal becomes common enough it eventually becomes the norm. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, more than a quarter of the population has a diagnosable mental disorder. Either one in every four people is mentally ill and unable to make choices in his or her own life or the legal definition of mental illness has expanded beyond a practical usefulness.

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