Hello Bob,

 LL>> Brittany Maynard was terminally ill, given only a few
 LL>> short months to live, and was in much pain and suffering.
 LL>> She ended her life in Oregon, one of five states in the
 LL>> US that allows doctors to help assist the terminally
 LL>> ill of sound mind to do so.

 LL>> Our society chooses to condem people who decide to end
 LL>> their own lives, and forbids doctors and other health care
 LL>> workers to help them do it.  Even though five states have

 LL>> When it becomes an impossibility, or undue hardship, to
 LL>> maintain a quality of life worth living, then an individual
 LL>> should have an absolute right to end his/her own life.

 BK> This argument has been going on a very long time. Long ago I
 BK> read a report on it, and it said there is no such thing as pain
 BK> that can't be controlled. They gave England as an example, where
 BK> the question didn't even come up.

Do fish feel pain?  PETA argued that fish do in fact
feel pain, and gave a tutorial on how fishermen should
go about catching and storing their fish.  PETA has
also argued that Cajuns are cruel because we boil our
crawfish alive.  On that, Cajuns found allies from
lobster fishermen in Maine ...

Each individual has his/her own tolerance for pain.
Different thresholds, or levels, of pain.  In some cases
it is only a state of mind, rather than anything physical.
In other cases, what would be excruciating pain can be
mentally blocked out by some people.  All without the
use of drugs.

In most cases, when a person is in a significant amount
of pain, he/she needs medication in order to continue
functioning in a normal way.  And in some cases, simply
to continue to exist.

A cancer patient, in his/her last stages of life, might be
totally dependent on morphine - just to get through the
day.  He/she may or may not even be aware of his/her own
surroundings.  But without the morphine, that individual
would be in so much pain and suffering that it would be
absolute torture to endure.

 BK> You see, in England they can give heroin to patients in extreme
 BK> pain. That is a big difference.

We give morphine to those we deem in need.  And we justify
it on the same grounds as do those in England who give heroin
to patients.

 BK> I don't know if it's true that there is no such thing as pain
 BK> that can't be alleviated, but I do know there is pain that can
 BK> be alleviated, but the drugs that do it are either illegal, or
 BK> so controlled you can't give them enough.

A few decades ago we had a problem in America with heroin
addicts.  Nobody cared about them, as they were junkies who
lived in our ghettoes.  The nation's poor.  The trash of
society.

Flash forward to a few short years ago.  Painkillers, such
as oxy-contin, were prescribed by doctors nationwide, patients
being told those drugs were not addictive.  Less than one percent
of those who took those drugs would get hooked on them, is what
people were told by doctors.  And what happened?  Three to six
months later, those patients were asking their doctors where
they could get some more of those pills.  Well, the doctor
had done his job, and the prescription had run out, so folks
had to find another source.  So who did they turn do?

The Pusher Man.

And now today's addicts are the middle class.  The boy
next door.  The man across the street.  The secretary at
your office.  All once hooked on painkillers prescribed
by their doctors, now hooked on heroin.  Only today's
heroin is far more deadly than yesterday's stash.

 BK> Then there's the fear of making terminal patients drug addicts.

It is not just terminal patients who are drug addicts.
Rush Limbaugh was addicted to painkillers he got legally.
How he got so many of them is beyond me.  But then, maybe
he was in a great deal of pain and being as big as he is
well he probably needed them.

 BK> The other fear is, the drugs will shorten the patient's life.

Yeah.  That's like saying pot will stunt your growth.
Nobody on painkillers/heroin is going to believe that.

 BK> Chose, 6 weeks of extreme pain, or 4 weeks free from pain. Not hard by my
 BK> thinking.

Hit me, man!  Hit me!  I wanna feel good hoo ha!

 LL>> What about a baby born without a brain?  Would it be okay
 LL>> for a doctor or a nurse to off the baby?  I mean, the baby

 BK> An anacelephic baby doesn't live long and doesn't suffer.

Scientists have successfully cloned frogs without a brain.
In theory, the same could be done with humans.  Would cloning
humans for body parts be ethical?  I doubt it.  Which is why
we should clone neandertals instead.

--Lee

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