Quote:
Originally Posted by Anh_Minh
If failure there has been, it's unfortunate, but accept it and move on. Try to sell life a little harder next time. That doesn't justify stealing people's choice on how they want to conduct their lives.
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I am all for choice (as anyone who has entered the Abortion thread can attest to), but only choice backed by sufficient understanding of the situation. I do believe that her constant pain could have driven Hannah a little crazy, or at least impair her basic decision making abilities, thus making her decision not based on an understanding of the situation, so much as a physical reaction to make the pain disappear (I was accidentally shot in the foot once many years ago, and for a few brief moments I felt such great pain that I wished for Death to come to relieve me of the pain, thankfully it was a momentary reaction
). (This is not to say that I in anyway can understand the pain that young Hannah faces every moment of her life.) If this is true, then she cannot adequately make an informed decision of her current or future prognosis, and consequently cannot go against her parents desires for a heart transplant. If after the transplant she gets worse, then a proper discussion of the uselessness of medicine in her situation can be started and if there is no possible answer for her betterment, then she can be aided in her desire to not be cared for (to let the inevitable come).
Quote:
Originally Posted by Anh_Minh
Anyway, for the sake of on-topicness: do you guys think there's a moral difference between unplugging someone and giving him or her poison? Or cutting their throat? I don't. Killing is killing, regardless of the means employed. However, if the person itself is sincerely asking for it, there is no "victim". I just can't understand why some would make that distinction. Treating one as a right of the patient, and the other as some horrible crime.
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How do you classify a situation like
Terri Schiavo, a comatose patient with severe brain damage that was allowed to die? Such a person cannot make a conscious choice (unless they were smart enough to write a living will), so the choice has to made for them. Are the parents/loved ones/doctors then killers if they let the comatose patient die? Or does a such a patient stop being "human" and consequently loses their rights?
In other words, to conclude both my comment, if a personal decision is the most relevant means of determining an outcome for a situation, then what happens when a personal decision cannot be made or the individual attmepting to make the decision is too impared to properly understand the situation? When does an outsiders choice matter more than an individual choice?