This is a very difficult issue.

The science and technology of medicine are transforming
the treatment of the ill and injured, and millions of
people owe their health and lives to the dramatic medical
innovations of the past few decades.

Some of the new technologies, however, are creating new
problems even as they solve old ones. In particular, the
new technologies have given doctors and patients a range
of difficult life-or-death choices that they did not have
even a few years ago.

Terminally-ill patients can now be kept alive through
artificial respiration, intravenous feeding, electronic
heart stimulation, mechanical organ substitutes, or even
transplants of body parts from other people or animals.

Consequently, medical dilemmas frequently become moral
and legal ones as well.

Today patients can be hooked up for days, months, or years
to machines that sustain their lives, and this step may be
taken even if they are in constant pain or even if they are
permanently comatose.

Thus, technologies that were intended to save people from
unnecessary death may actually have the efect of depriving
them of a dignified death.

If someone is in a vegetative state, has lost all of their
functional and mental independence why would anyone pursue
a vigorous therapy that would benefit no one except their
own satisfaction in twarting death, regardless of the
consequences? Why not allow that person to die in peace
and dignity?

They already can, Lexi. No one's trying to make people stay alive longer than they want. You can have a 'Do Not Resuscitate' order if you are very old or terminally ill. A life support machine can be turned off. And, as I said before, extreme pain can be relieved even when it means death is a likely side-effect. All these things are already options. There is no need to legalise euthanasia. We should perhaps call it assisted suicide more often, because that decribes it better.

Paul Russell raises an excellent issue. I was not aware that elder abuse was such a serious problem.

But it is not a reason to ban voluntary euthenasia.

Peter Hume,

Your story should be mandatory reading for anyone opposed to voluntary euthenasia.

"Voluntary" is defined. For example http://www.thefreedictionary.com/voluntary

Legislation must pass 2 houses of Parliament in most cases, usually via Parliamentary Committees along the way.

Lots of people get to have a say.

I say let's draft laws that enable voluntary euthanasia.

The "protection from abuse" angle raised here should be built into the mechanism that enables the voluntary election to be made.

I respect the author's right to have a position contrary to mine but that shouldn't mean absolute veto on drafting a law to enable truly voluntary election to commit suicide.

If the ONLY evidence-supported argument the author can muster against legal, regulated, monitored euthanasia for those who want it is that an old woman was murdered, then further comment would appear to be superfluous.

We euthanasia for a lot more young people than we do for old ones.