(October 7, 2010 at 3:19 am)The Omnissiunt One Wrote:(October 6, 2010 at 7:17 pm)Dotard Wrote: Who gets to decide what qualifies as 'quality life'? What of severely mentally retarded people? Brain damaged folks? The bed-ridden? The mentally ill?
Me thinks their would be way too many disagreements on what would qualify someone to be 'put down'.
Family makes the call? What if I have no family? What if family got together and said, "Hey look, Rich-ass old uncle Joe is limping! Put him down quick!"
Valid concerns for human euthanasia. MY criteria seems to make the most sense to me. I'm sure it won't to you nor yours to me.
Who draws the lines?
Involuntary euthanasia does present a lot of difficulties, as opposed to euthanasia with consent. Although, I think there are certain cases where the quality of life is clearly so minimal as not to be worth living (bed-ridden, brain-dead, etc.), and most of us would recognise this. At the very least, if we didn't legalise euthanasia, courts could be lenient in cases where it was clearly done as an act of kindness.
Involuntary euthanasia is not euthanasia, it's murder...