Hey Ozspen,

"Now, euthanasia promoters don't use the word 'kill', but it is the only accurate word to describe the reality of what happens."

How would you know?
Is this because that is what makes logical sense to you without experience;
- Or is this what you actually know from first-hand experience?

I took a beloved pet dog to be euthanised many years ago.
Did I kill him, well yes technically I did - but to frame it that way is to remove oneself from the reality of the situation.
My dog was terminally ill with a 100% mortality rate.
There was nothing I could do to save him and he'd suffered enough.
I didn't really kill him, because the leukemia had already taken his life away.
What I did was put him out of his misery, and it was the final act of kindness I could give him.
You're focus on the word 'kill', when it doesn't describe the reality of the situation adequately.
You're trying to make it black and white, and are inadvertently denying the grey area in between.

"Even though it is clear from this Dutch example that it is impossible to control VAD, is this the right kind of morality Australia should follow?"

Why is it clear from the Dutch example that it is impossible to control VAD?
What's clear to me is that the Dutch system is flawed.
What you need is a system that is foolproofed against misuse.
Can a foolproofed system be developed to deal with this issue?
- Well that's the challenge isn't it?

[Cont.]
"How do we know what is good? We need a fixed standard of good by which to judge right and wrong, rather than a person's opinion of what is good."

Start by removing 'religion' as your moral compass and put 'ethics' in that space instead.
Why? Because Christians are too ignorant and close-minded.
First they 'Leave it up to God', then when things go wrong they claim it was 'God's will'
Christians speak of 'Morality', but what does that mean?
The difference between morals and ethics is that ethics is knowing the difference between right and wrong and morals is how you act upon that knowledge.

So you CAN'T have good morals if you don't firstly have 'ethics'.

- Use These Tools

1. Truth (the way to get to it on any issue is by separating arguments that do hold merit from those that don't)
2. Ethics 'Everyone has the right to live how they choose so long as it doesn't have a negative or detrimental effect on others'.
(Ethics of Fairness means 'What you do for one you do for the other').
3. Arguments that hold merit
4. Ability to see 'The Bigger Picture'

"When Luke Gormally, director of London's Linacre Bio-Ethics Centre, was in Australia he warned that legalising euthanasia could lead to 'killing the disabled and dependent for economic reasons'. He also warned that euthanasia would endorse youth suicide because of the 'wholly negative message' it would send to youth.

'It's better that 10 guilty men go free than one innocent man be wrongly convicted'.

I think it better that 10 people who want euthanasia for the right reasons be denied it than 1 person be given euthanasia for the wrong reason.

- But denying people who want euthanasia for the right reasons is still a serious issue for those who find themselves in that situation, which is why you've got to get the policy right, instead of ignoring and dismissing it and thinking that ignoring and dismissing these peoples problems or suffering is somehow more ethical than helping them to end that suffering.

To Banjo Paterson.

What you're describing sounds very close to a concept I've heard as "spiritual laws." Basically the principles that everything and everyone is governed by regardless if they know them or not. The idea is that "do not murder" or "do not kill," are spiritual laws and that by breaking those laws there are consequences. The laws in the bible could be counted as spiritual laws as well as legal laws, based on them being from God, and that most of them being incorporated into legal mandates throughout the world. Arguably laws and principles from other religions could be counted as spiritual laws and given the presumption of governing everything. Karma in Hinduism for instance would be considered a spiritual law that affects multiple lifetimes of a person. However the downside for the arguments for spiritual laws is knowing what is actually a spiritual law, and what is something made up from a different religion. It's with that in mind that I'd rather discuss laws and rights, as a moral thing because that is the simplest yet still accurate descriptions of laws and rights, without complicating it with arguments of which religions (and thereby which religious laws) are the correct ones.

As for the laws of nature that you've described as being the most efficient and the most just, what you are doing is basically making a belief system (call it religious, call it spiritual), and philosophizing it in a brand through calling it a law of nature. I've heard of a similar philosophy on something called the law of attraction be described as a law of nature that can grant wealth or hardships based on what you focus on. Again the same issue with the potential spiritual laws out there is the same issue with your philosophized "natural laws," that go to the point of what actually is and isn't a natural law.

(Continued)

[Cont.]
Just to make it interesting Spencer lets change stuff around.
Let's say that tomorrow someone invents a ground breaking technology, Where for $100 our brains can be preserved in a jar and we can remain conscious, free from our physical bodies and pain - but escaping death.

You'd then find somehow to complain that it's wrong for everyone to stay alive and escape God's Judgement by not dying a natural death.
In this scenario, you'd be advocating death instead of life.

- Think about that -

(Continued)

For simplicity sake and without trying to pull more weight around on specific beliefs (through calling it a law from nature, from God, or from anything else), we can look at the matter from the point of rights and laws are a moral thing. Nothing with more authority over that to argue over.

On the other hand if you still want to consider suicide as a natural right. Then that means we should look at nature or the consequences that we've seen from suicides. In the natural world there is predator and pray, cause and effect, tragedy and fortune. None of those that we can see come from a stance of justice nor efficiency. A sickness doesn't hit the unjust only, but hits populations as a whole. Nor do predators hunt the unjust only, but they find the easiest sources of food. The weakest among the packs, or the most defenseless of the animals. Nor can cause and effect be counted as a tool of either justice or efficiency. Many populations have to go through hardships while they learn what not to do that causes hardships, and what they should do to prepare for winter or for other struggles.

(Continued)

(Continued)

The idea of a natural law based on nature itself that you've presented is a false idea. It's just not true. However more to the point suicide and assisted suicide, the moral case of suicide, as a right, can be looked at through not just differing systems of morals, but also through cause and effect. And as something to observe or study, suicide itself is harmful to the community that it happens in. The grief of one can be the source of motivation for another. Making the times suicide occurs be something that happens in groups over a small period of time instead of just occurring occasionally on a regular interval of time. As an observation of cause and effect, (and arguable any laws of nature) suicide harms any positive impact on the population it occurs in, and thus is not a law of nature.

More then that though, by looking at the countries that have legalized assisted suicide, a second and more damning conclusion can be seen as OzSpen has pointed out. The course of actions that follow legalizing assisted suicide destabilizes other rights that we've already established in society. Such as patients being killed (assisted in being killed) when they've not wanted any such thing.

If you look at it in terms of cause and effect, then both suicide and assisted suicide break the standards it would require to be deemed as a "natural law."