As the 21st century unfold itself, I sense we are marching towards a world whereby people want to redefine a lot of things, their bondaries and rights about many facets of life. Human right, I feel is a phrase many a times misuse to the extense that some laws are passed just to please these people hiding behind a mask, for other motives.

Euthanasia could be a topic originally on people who couldn’t suffer their pain and wouldn’t want to be a burden to others and choose to end their lives in a so-called “dignify” way, or actually, suicide. When this disucssion started in Singapore, yes, it is about dealing with patients suffering from terminal illness who couldn’t bear the pain. To be honest, I really empathise those in suffering and in pains.

However, my concern is, with this floodgate open, it would lead to something very scary, something people that had probably forgotten even history of just 50 years ago!

Euthanasia may start with people who are in the suffering asking to legalist to allow them to have that choice to end their lives. Yes, the key word here is “choice”. The very person in pain and suffering choose to end his/her life. The justifications of it, arise from debate are about: burden to the family, society, limited resources, costly to maintain blah blah blah.

I smell something that makes me uncomfortable that the value of human is measured most importantly is monetary. Everything seems to boil down to cost, $. We overlook the fact that to each his/her own that a life exist on this earth is purposeful and with respect to each of us, most of us, if not all, contribute to the country, society, the earth etc… big and small way.

It is such an irony that when asking for donation, we show our gratitude that big and small, we welcome your donations. But when come to a terminally ill patient, on the other side of the balance, is about the asscoiated medical cost/resources blah blah blah..

Yes, I empathise those in sufferings and in pains but when the argument to have the right to die with dignity is on monetary reason, that the whole situation will evolve and no one can stop that, lawmakers could pass law to ’solve’ an aging generation associated with problems on budget/resource constraints very conveniently. Hospitals, doctors would just default to the ‘convenience’ to recommend euthanasia for every single person who has diagnosed with terminal diesease. There is no cure, no purpose to treat them, they are burden to the society, resources should be put on to something worthy (and who is going to decide what is worthy?).

So, does that mean that it is therefore also eventually becomes meaningless to invest, to train, to educate and to innovate new treatment or to find cures for terminal dieseases?

21st century is also a century that science has broken many secrets about life i.e. genes. While there are scientists to work to understand how gene works and how a disease could be triggered due to a genetic weakness; others are started to look into playing God’s role in the direction of predicting how long a person would live, what would be the health problem that terminate a person’s life.

This, without regulation under the respect of human life, would one day giving the lawmakers the power for example: to decide who should be born and who shouldn’t be, envisaging that this person due to his/her inherited genes defect, would probably die after 10 years of living.

What about insurance company refusing your future insurance forseeing at 50, you would get heart disease? What about government employers turn you down on your job application because you are going to have cancer at age of 45?

The exertion of right for the present temporal convenience would only lead to opening the floodgate for mad people like H* during world war 2, experimenting the fastest and the cheapest way to wipe out an ethnic group of people. The justification? Oh sure he had. But who gave him the right to look at life in that manner? Was it just because of assuming political power that gave him the power (not really the right) to justify his right? It is no wonder that there are many groups out there trying to get their rights through political movements and influence and it can only be proven futile to the future generation/s, because of fighting the so-called right, defined by a particular group.

]]> http://stephmee.dintblog.com/2008/12/14/euthanasia-whos-right/feed/ 0 http://stephmee.dintblog.com/2008/11/12/%e5%ae%89%e4%b9%90%e6%ad%bb%e7%9a%84%e6%84%9f%e6%83%b3/ http://stephmee.dintblog.com/2008/11/12/%e5%ae%89%e4%b9%90%e6%ad%bb%e7%9a%84%e6%84%9f%e6%83%b3/#comments Wed, 12 Nov 2008 07:52:40 +0000 stephmee http://testrun.dintblog.com/?p=7 死对我们华人来说，应该是个忌讳，尤其是老一辈的人，你问他今年多大，他几乎就要跟你翻脸。我以前很纳闷，为什么老人家不肯说自己活了多少；我觉得，既然能活得这样老，应该是感到自豪的（尤其是身体、精神都很健康）。后来我才知道，原来老人家是害怕说了就会折寿。怕被不好的东西听到了，就来减寿。这当然是没有根据的。。嘿嘿

因此，人都是希望自己活到老，能够继续的活下去。尤其记得许多感人热泪的求生故事，我们都称赞这样的人，他们的那种生命力、那种不妥协、不放弃，正是我们今天社会需要的。

可是，却有人在倡议安乐死，原因是，因为有的人得了绝症，对家人、国家、医疗资源等，都是个浪费；有的人在绝望中，想要死的有尊严，因此，寻求安乐死。

在看过许多的讨论中，很多都是因为沉重的负担、觉得对不起家人、不堪绝症在治疗上延长生命的痛苦；因此认为自己应该有选择，可以安乐死。

这样的想法，其实跟想自杀的人差不多。想到要自杀的人，都认为自己是个负担、对不起家人、觉得自己没有任何的存在意义等等，所以想寻死。

这样的想法是很自我中心的。把自己的价值用物质的贡献来衡量，觉得自己无法贡献了，成了家里的经济负担，就没有资格生存下去。可是，那些在面对死亡威胁的人，却不是这样想。他们想到的是：我还想跟家人在一起；他们想到的是，如果自己一旦离开，其实对家人、朋友都会有造成损失或伤害：现在不是时候，我要活下去，这样的呐喊，成为他们的动力去求存。

人生本来就是会有生老病死，如果人寻求安乐死，对他的后人来说，无形中成为一个榜样：受不了的时候，生命没有意义继续下去。这，跟去跳楼自杀的有什么分别？又有何尊严可言呢？我们到底要传递什么信息给我们的下一代？这不只是个立法问题而已。。。。。