Risible rubbish!

Nobody is forced to accept unwanted palliative care, which can and does snuff out the life force almost daily in almost any large city hospital.

This is a witless bystander witness approach? And not something from the pen of a stroke victim or the terminally ill?

Simply put, we're able to withhold, miracle cure nuclear medicine, to treat countless, death sentence inoperable cancers!

But don't have too much of a problem allowing access to a life terminating poison!

Just what does that say about us and our alleged priorities!?

As someone with an apparently inoperable brain tumour and recovering from a stroke, which hasn't helped a serious lower back injury (five spinal fractures) that forced an early retirement!

WTFH would you know sonny?

And just who gave you the right to decide on what is quality of life!?

As for a loaded firearm beneath a pillow?

If I had the choice sonny, I'd have one!

Not to top myself but gut shoot the intending armed intruder, in the liver! [That's your warning shot punk!]:-)

These days, not even safe to set foot outside the house, to check the fuse box! Nor it would seem, in the stroke ward (target for tonight) of a large regional hospital? As for me? I'll live till I die and on my feet fighting, not on my knees begging for relief!

And if I want to end it? Why wouldn't a 9 mm round very rapidly injected into the brain pan, be more painful or slower than Nembutal?

I could do it in the shower, with the water running if you're bothered by unseemly blood sonny?

Or you can do what any fair minded person would and start badgering gormless pollies to allow peaceful purpose only, nuclear energy!

Which might allow me and countless others to go to our maker at the predetermined/appointed time, by the method already chosen! The day we came into this world!

Not a minute more nor a minute less!
Alan B.

We are taught from childhood, to take control of our own destiny. Throughout life we chart our own destinies. So at the end of life, why should the moral question take us further away from the final act of suicide?
Suicide becomes a philosophical question in the end: However, there are clauses.

One is, if suicide is chosen as a selfish means of avoiding consequences of errant behaviour, such as, for example, bankruptcy or failed relationship or an act of evil, the guilt of which is intolerable, I believe that to be an act of cowardice.
If suicide is a decision to be made to end physical suffering, the like of which is untreatable and insufferable, suicide is justified.

But then, way down at the bottom of the list of grubby acts, is a suicide bomber, the most detestable and inexcusable acts of suicide

Could someone please first enlighten us regarding the facts?

Is any institution currently legally allowed to grab us away from our homes and imprison us in an aged-"care" facility?

The most dignified and sinless way to die when our time comes, is to just stop eating, allowing our body to waste away and return to the elements.

They would struggle to get a permit for a firearm small enough to fit under a pillow. Buy Nembutal (overseas, as they would have to) and they would more than likely be visited by the AFP and charged with importing a prohibited drug. They might get a warning if, when the liquid was tested, it was found to be tap water (which often happens).

Just quietly, I don't think the author's grand daddy was serious about shooting himself, performing ostentatious displays of checking a weapon in front of his grandson, then complaining, when he was close to death, that he couldn't assemble the gun.

And, if two octogenarians per week are killing themselves, that is there business and nothing to do with the rest of us.

This is just another appeal to the nanny state to interfere not just in our lives, but also in our deaths. All people have the right to kill themselves – not much can be done to you afterwards. But, don't ask society to take the responsibility.

People living into the 80s and 90s are usually kept alive by expensive drugs (a paradox, given the constant whingeing about 'ageing populations' and how much they cost). So, stop taking the drugs; reject all treatment; stop being tortured by rent-seeking medical researchers, and have palliative care. You cannot be made to eat, take life-extending medication or payroll greedy doctors.

Many years ago I had a dog I which I loved more than I care for most people.
He was diagnosed with multiple myeloma - a form of lieukemia with a 100% mortality rate.
I watched my best mate slowly go downhill.
I had him in the vet for a week or so, visiting every day and it cost me a bit in tests and care trying to save him; but nothing would help so I brought him home for his last days.

I took him to the beach and his favourite places.

He tried chew at his front forearm where the marrow was hurting him.
He'd lost weight and started to go lame.
His eyes glazed over and he went blind.
He bled from his nose, and maybe a little from his bum and crotch towards the end in his final days as well.

In his better days he loved playing fetch the ball.
He lived for it, it was his favorite thing.
Even when he was more or less completely blind he still loved his ball and wanted to play.

But finally the day came when he didn't want to play any more.
And I knew that that the time had come.

He walked into the vet on his own four legs the following day.
It cost just $15 for the shot would soon kill him.
His eyes went open wide as he received that dose of green liquid, and he drifted off to another place, died in my arms, and I closed his eyes...

I loved my dog 'Buddy' - R.I.P mate.
Killing him was the final act of kindness I could offer him.

Consensual homocide. That's what this "ethicist" is arguing for. In fact that's exactly what "assisted suicide" or "voluntary euthanasia" is. Knowingly causing the death of another is Homocide.

And well said Alan. Agree if it's a personal choice carried out by the self by own chosen means how dare anyone deny that ultimate liberty. Agree also on your right to keep that 9mm. Should be everyones. Rather orwellian that the control freaks who'd deny you the means to end your life also deny you the means to defend it.
Have lost relatives and aquaintances to suicide. Mourned the loss and lamented the circumstances that led to their sense of hopelessness but never disrespected them for their fateful choice.