Quote:
Originally Posted by Eggs in a Bottle
People are sticking metal hearts inside their bodies to keep on living with their families for a couple of years, and this girl could go on for 30 years... Maybe longer wtih new treatments.
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The people sticking "metal hearts inside their bodies"
want to live. It seems to me that you think that the desire to commit suicide or stop living is a simple matter of choice or "giving up." In some cases it is, but for the mentally ill it's more complicated. For some people, there is simply nothing that they could buy, do, or think that would make them happy or feel motivated, excited, or inspired. It isn't because they're dull people, it's because they are clinically depressed. Clinical depression isn't a matter of saying "I've been sad for the past week" - that's the sort of "I'm depressed" that people toss around lightly. Clinical depression is due to chemical imbalances in the brain.
If you don't buy the whole idea that for some people depression is uncontrollable and not curable by simply buying things, then consider another condition: bipolar disorder. In this disorder a person goes between being depressed and being manic - they're extremely happy and energetic during their bouts of mania, but then without warning they'll be depressed (and then without warning they'll become manic again). I think we all experience times of sadness and times of extreme happiness, but it isn't quite as random or extreme as it is in bipolar disorder. While I'd be surprised if external stimuli and internal thoughts didn't potentially have some impact on the disorder, they alone do not cause or control it any more than, say, in someone who suffers epileptic seizures. It's a malfunction of the brain, of signal and biochemical pathways being activated when they shouldn't or not being activated when they should.
All that aside, it would be standard procedure to examine the girl's mental health before giving her the choice of choosing death. People who are diagnosed with depression or other such disorders are not given the choice of euthanasia or going off of medications. Would buying her things and friends make her feel better? Maybe, but given her background I think that's too simple. If you've been on the verge of death for as long as you can remember I think your wants and desires would be quite different from someone who was told just yesterday that they have a very bad condition. Putting myself in her shoes, I think that unless someone could tell me "here's something we can do that, if it works, will cure you entirely for the rest of your life" then life wouldn't be much more than a painful nightmare that I'd want to get out of. (On the other hand, if you told me today that I had a high chance of dying unless I subjected myself to some painful treatments and/or operations, I'd take them - because I didn't grow up constantly in pain or wondering if I'd make it to see tomorrow, and as a result I know how enjoyable life can be.)