7 min reading time

You wrote more than 10,000 words last week about euthanizing willing patients facing a terminal illness.

Commenters were 75/25 in favor. Full conversation here.

Selected PRO arguments:
• Mia: If it’s ‘humane’ to allow animals relief from suffering, why not humans?

• Svetlana: 23 years ago my mother suffered unbearable pain and asked me to kill her. A million times, yes!

• Tim: My sister sat vigil for weeks as Mom withered under a morphine-induced coma. Why are weeks of unconscious death the only option?

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Selected CON arguments:
• Ray: The Bible is very clear, and this is in the same category as abortions. We don’t own our lives, our Creator does.

• Fernando: Humans are not dogs. Life and death is a “God” thing.

• Sam: Comparing the death of a beloved pet to a human being seriously deprecates the value of human life.

• Alexander: Human euthanasia should be forever forbidden from civilized society if we wish to preserve the dignity of our humanity.

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Neutral comments:
• Robert: In my experience, we practice euthanasia already, in slow-motion, with hospice.

• Joris: In the Netherlands euthanasia is legal if the suffering is “unbearable.” But how to decide “unbearable?”

• John: I used to sell equipment to pathologists and one day received a “lead” from Dr. Jack Kevorkian, from prison. A friend advised me to take that once-in-a-lifetime sales call but “not on a day when you are real sad.”

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Maureen posed a provocative question: “Some say, ‘medicine makes the journey bearable to a natural end.’ But how ‘natural’ and ‘comfortable’ is a life made ‘bearable’ by morphine levels so high that the drugs themselves hasten a patient’s system to shut down?” Adding, “Are we fooling ourselves?”

Your comments welcome.

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Make it a great week.

Joe Hage
Medical Devices Group

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Joe Hage
🔥 Find me at MedicalDevicesGroup.net 🔥
Very interesting podcast from my alma mater, How Modern Medicine Changed the Way People Die – Knowledge@Wharton http://ow.ly/LJqy30iA039

Julie Omohundro
Principal Consultant at Class Three, LLC
I think it is useful to distinguish between euthanasia and suicide. Euthanasia is the taking of another life, human or not human, with or without their permission. Suicide is voluntarily ending one’s own life, with or without assistance.

Anthony Zelinko
CEO/Owner Bonte’ Medical Supplies, Inventor, Polymath, Visionary
Society has to come to grips what is existence and what is life. They are not the same. Living like a vegetable isn’t life.

Mace Horoff
I help life science sales teams to sell more & retain business without making costly mistakes. | Leader MDSL Forum Group
Your post was very thought-provoking, as were the replies. It’s important to understand the different perspectives. Thanks for starting an important dialogue.

Marc Timothy Smith
Confidential Business Systems and Standards Specialist
I have lived through quite a few friends and relatives who ended up in hospice over the years. What is “hospice”? It’s nothing more than “ramp up the morphine” and get it over with. Euthanasia is just allowing someone not to have to go that far – To be able to end their life a bit sooner, and with some dignity. I have a living will with very prominent Do Not Resuscitate under any circumstances.

Larry Sheppard
Director, Biomedical Services at UT Health East Texas
For those that believe that Hospice is a form of euthanasia, I believe you are wrong. It is a place for people that has ran out of options of treatment and will be allowed to spend their final days or hours in a serene environment on their own. For those of us that are DNR requestors, we are placing our trust in God and the hands and minds of caregivers to provide us with the best possible treatment and care until the options have concluded. To purposely take the life of an individual, even at their request, is not of God.

NEAL H. WRIGHT, Pharmaceutical GMP QA Specialist
Director, Owner, President CEO at AlphaBioSource STAT-CAPA NHW Consulting
For those that have made comments that pets are somehow inferior to humans and that Euthanasia is OK for pets but not humans your wrong.

Jan van der hoek
Happily retired
I am pro-euthanasia with strict conditions of consensus with the patient when possible, the family and a medical expert. I have instructed my family not to allow the use of a ventilator when the prognoses for a recovery is impossible.

NEAL H. WRIGHT, Pharmaceutical GMP QA Specialist
Director, Owner, President CEO at AlphaBioSource STAT-CAPA NHW Consulting
Any disease or illness may at any point in time suddenly become a curable condition rather than one of suffering an certain death.

NEAL H. WRIGHT, Pharmaceutical GMP QA Specialist
Director, Owner, President CEO at AlphaBioSource STAT-CAPA NHW Consulting
Some seek to control if when & how a person dies but only the person & perhaps God or Gods influence on them can do that.

NEAL H. WRIGHT, Pharmaceutical GMP QA Specialist
Director, Owner, President CEO at AlphaBioSource STAT-CAPA NHW Consulting
Hospice is not always a death without pain & suffering & can be a prolonged process.

NEAL H. WRIGHT, Pharmaceutical GMP QA Specialist
Director, Owner, President CEO at AlphaBioSource STAT-CAPA NHW Consulting
Recently I had a longtime pet a family member misdiagnosed with fatal condition Euthanasia suggested by Vet. It turned out totally wrong in error. Second opinion proved it & she is in great health now.

NEAL H. WRIGHT, Pharmaceutical GMP QA Specialist
Director, Owner, President CEO at AlphaBioSource STAT-CAPA NHW Consulting
Hospice & Palliative care = Death

NEAL H. WRIGHT, Pharmaceutical GMP QA Specialist
Director, Owner, President CEO at AlphaBioSource STAT-CAPA NHW Consulting
Life is terminal it ends individuals have the right to decide as long as they are of sound mind & this happens all the time.

NEAL H. WRIGHT, Pharmaceutical GMP QA Specialist
Director, Owner, President CEO at AlphaBioSource STAT-CAPA NHW Consulting
Ongoing Biomedical research may at any time result in a cure from suffering and a cure from certain death.

NEAL H. WRIGHT, Pharmaceutical GMP QA Specialist
Director, Owner, President CEO at AlphaBioSource STAT-CAPA NHW Consulting
If you believe in God you realize he gave us the ability to choose life or death ourselves. He have us minds to consider our death how we will die and the intelligence to find a way to cause our own death.

NEAL H. WRIGHT, Pharmaceutical GMP QA Specialist
Director, Owner, President CEO at AlphaBioSource STAT-CAPA NHW Consulting
If you believe in God you believe that God gave us brains and the ability to make our own choices in life.

NEAL H. WRIGHT, Pharmaceutical GMP QA Specialist
Director, Owner, President CEO at AlphaBioSource STAT-CAPA NHW Consulting
In some cases persons have refused treatments known effective on their own moral grounds resulting in their unnecessary death.

NEAL H. WRIGHT, Pharmaceutical GMP QA Specialist
Director, Owner, President CEO at AlphaBioSource STAT-CAPA NHW Consulting
Individuals often consciously make choices to end their own lives. They can intentionally fail to take medications, or take incompatible medications or take overdoses of saved up medications. Relatives & doctors may conclude it was accidental when it was intentional.

NEAL H. WRIGHT, Pharmaceutical GMP QA Specialist
Director, Owner, President CEO at AlphaBioSource STAT-CAPA NHW Consulting
Pets in many cases are part of a family or may be the only family a person has by choice, they are no less important than a human family member.

NEAL H. WRIGHT, Pharmaceutical GMP QA Specialist
Director, Owner, President CEO at AlphaBioSource STAT-CAPA NHW Consulting
Have friend who’s dad was killed by an putting on an unauthorized illegal do not resuscitate (DNR). He did not want to die nor did his family want to die, he did not need to die they could have saved him over 2 hours but did not…it’s a crime.

NEAL H. WRIGHT, Pharmaceutical GMP QA Specialist
Director, Owner, President CEO at AlphaBioSource STAT-CAPA NHW Consulting
Not sure why my comments that are important are not appearing????

John White
Talent Sourcing Manager at Legacy MedSearch
I’m pro-euthanasia in a vacuum. Someone who is suffering should be allowed the autonomy to end that suffering on their own terms. However, there are issues with allowing its use to become widespread and socially acceptable in the United States in particular, largely because of the nature of our healthcare system.

In a scenario where euthanasia is acceptable and widely available, I could foresee its use being commonplace among well-meaning terminal patients, seeking to spare their families financial ruin, to allow themselves to be euthanized .

In this far scarier scenario, there would be widespread social pressure placed on the elderly or terminally ill to “die quickly and quietly” by family members fearing the financial burden of healthcare costs. For that reason, I can’t really advocate for widespread euthanasia specifically in the United States, because of the potential for patients being pressured into it.

Terri Greulich
Marketing and Business Development Consultant at Terri Greulich Consulting
If we should let God decide, why do we have any healthcare at all? If God wants you to have cancer, why take cancer treatments to prolong life? I believe that God gave us the ability to make life, and death, better and that he intended us to use those God-given abilities.

Peggy Wiggins
RN Transplant Coordinator
Hospice—-anyone heard of it? allows for natural death without suffering, without pain, with great comfort.

Jon Gardner
Technology Consultant
In western systems, the illegality of both homicide & suicide, and the arguments against abortion and euthanasia, even the death penalty & cloning, are all based upon the same biblical moral foundation that each human life is owned and ordained by God, and He alone has the right to author the beginning and ending. The Bible also teaches that human beings have a unique ability to recognize divine purpose in pain, which can provide spiritual strength to patiently endure suffering. Even those who reject the biblical position would, I think, recognize that ability, and also reject the notion that a stranger should be given carte blanche authority over whether or not they receive life-saving medical treatment–i.e., if you don’t have a DNR, we’ll just grab the first person in the hallway and let them decide. If we’re not willing to allow a complete stranger (or the government, or…?) to determine our fate or the fate of our loved ones, then we should not make euthanasia legal.

Alex Deas
CEO, Open Safety Equipment Ltd, and Deep Life Group
This is a medical devices thread. A device for painless euthanasia, or suicide is simple: any diving rebreather with a full face mask and the oxygen supply turned off does the job too efficiently – we publish a long list of people these devices have killed exactly that way on http://www.deeplife.co.uk/or_accident.php. In a rebreather with the O2 off, the CO2 is removed by the scrubber, so the user passes out and dies from hypoxia without being aware of it. If it was sold as a euthanasia device, it would be illegal and unethical to offer it to for sale, to ship such a device, or import it, even though it would be identical to one used for life support for divers. We produce rebreathers, but would not dream of offering them for terminating life, and we take measures to check that anyone buying them is going to use them for their intended purpose, and not something malign.

Rafael Simões de Oliveira
Requirements Engineer at DAF Trucks
The comparison between pets and conscious humans doesn’t hold. Is eating a chicken wing the same as cannibalism? Some would disagree.
The majority of comments pro euthanasia just reflects the objectivity and coldness of those who practice the trade of health. In general population opinions may differ.

Juan Traspaderne
Director Técnico de Calidad en Althea
Death is one of the most important and enigmatic moments of our life. Why don’t we leave anyone to front facing as it wished. We do not have the right of deciding for others…