This is jumping on the disability wagon to promote your own agenda. The sad fact is that there are some lives just not worth living and one day, they could be yours and mine. As was shown in the movie "Me Before You", the humane choice is offered by very few countries, because organizations like Hope scaremonger and resist change. My own mother lay in a vegetative state for a decade - you wouldn't do it to a dog. I have cared for a severely disabled son for forty years and my personal experience is that people with a disability in this country are embraced as part of our celebrated diversity, supported generously and now more so, with the coming of the NDIS. They have nothing more to fear than the rest of us - being kept alive longer than we would wish.

Not so long ago a young man lay in a reported deep coma, some would call it a vegetative state? After some years although never having been exposed to any chinese person, radio/TV program or lesson, he eventually awoke speaking fluent and almost flawless mandarin. Arguably the most complex and difficult language to learn but particularly as a second language!

My mother recounts an out of body experience while in surgery. aqd was able to discribed in minute detail what the surgical team did to revive her, as witnessed from around the ceiling from where she could see the bald patch on the senior surgeon's head. And the only aspect from which it was actually visible.

We assume because someone is in a deep coma or so called vegetative state, they're no longer here, but that may not be so. Just because the lights are not on doesn't mean there's nobody home, but perhaps someone witnessing a callous or brutal conversation where they are the subject matter or thing under discussion and something to be managed or like last week's garbage, to be disposed of thoughtfully?

The nazis had a euthanasia policy that included the disabled both physical and mental.

As a disabled person in and out of various emergency wards for life threatening medical conditions, one was generally in the hands of angels for whom there will never ever be enough superlatives!

But not always and times when as a totally dependant person, I feared for my saftey, had my personal belongs riffled through or watched in trembling trepidation as the same thing happened to a roommate!

I'm not too concerned about hate crimes and folks with a disposition towards such, just folks who pretend to care?

And that is why we need CCTV in aged care homes/geriatric wards, so that the odd occasion when one of these pretenders has some helpless cripple or the most vulnerable at their mercy?

The irrefutable evidence should see them moved on, to say a slaughter house, where their mental attitude and disposition, wouldn't be entirely out of place!?
Alan B.

//You see, Denton visited places like Belgium, Holland and Oregon, where euthanasia and or assisted suicide is practiced under legal cover, and asked those who run peak bodies for disabled people and senior citizens if they knew of any abuses. He found none. I have been to Belgium and Holland too and I found the opposite. So, I guess we did not talk to the same people.//

Obviously not. Presumably, Denton did not limit himself to Catholic clergymen.

//But here's the rub: the fears that come from hard experience don't really appear in empirical studies. These things are hard to measure. In terms of euthanasia and assisted suicide, there are plenty of anecdotes and assumptions that can be drawn from any number of cases that point to the reality that such discrimination and abuse does exist.//

Sod off, Paul. You can't just ignore empirical data when the empirical data supports conclusions you find distasteful. That way madness lies.

So put up or shut up. If you have the evidence to support your absurd hypothesis that people who support euthanasia hate the disabled, please present it. Otherwise, pipe down, because you're making an ass of yourself.

//Oh and I'll consider euthanasia when people change their Facebook profiles to mourn the disabled victims. Why aren't they?

Indeed.//

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their Facebook profiles.

Because apparently everybody is defined by their Facebook profile.

Which leaves people like me in a bit of a pickle. Do we really exist?

It's interesting (in a good way) that one of the things that unites most commenters here is disagreement with anti euthanasia campaigners, like the author. I salute you all.

After seeing my father dribbling and crapping himself and pleading to have his life ended only to have it drawn out by another month because of a lack of humane euthanasia laws, my level of disagreement is further towards disgust at the author.