The UK is currently in one of its periodic outbreaks of assisted suicide advocacy. It just turned into euthanasia advocacy as a completely paralyzed man is asking for permission to be murdered without legal consequence to the murderer. From the AP story:
Former rugby player Tony Nicklinson had a high-flying job as a corporate manager in Dubai, where he went skydiving and bridge-climbing in his free time. Seven years ago, he suffered a paralyzing stroke. Today he can only move his head, cannot speak and needs constant care. And he wants to die. To try to ensure that whoever ends his life won’t be jailed, the 57-year-old Nicklinson recently asked Britain’s High Court to declare that any doctor who gives him a lethal injection with his consent won’t be charged with murder. This week, the court will hold its first hearing on the case.
He should move to Belgium where doctors would not only kill him with a smile their faces, and then harvest his organs for the benefit of society—as has already been done to a locked in syndrome patient, MS patients, and a despairing mentally ill patient.
Hello, I know you are out there, I can hear you breathing! Disabled people killed and harvested. Hello! Does anyone care that this is the world we are in danger of becoming? (Sorry, I can’t believe the muted response those facts generate.)
Or, we could bring out our inner better angels and gently but firmly say no, and then help this despairing disabled man reach the place that the similarly situated author of The Butterfly and the Diving Bell, Jean-Dominique Bauby reached, e.g., finding great joy in life.
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