Why don’t people get same mercy

[suchandra]

Looks like a global campaign for medicide in advance. "If you believe that you own your body, then you certainly should be able to end your life by committing suicide or terminating medical care. If you own your body and can’t kill yourself or terminate care yourself, you’re also morally entitled to ask a third person, a physician, to help you end you."

 

Why don’t people get same mercy

08/16/2008

http://www.nhregister.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=20020453&BRD=1281&PAG=461&dept_id=635049&rfi=6

 

Q: Most caring, ethical pet owners endorse the merciful termination of their pet’s life in the face of a terminal illness, where suffering is apparent to a medical professional. How is it that Judaism and Christianity do not hold the same view for human beings who suffer in pain with terminal illness? — A loyal reader, via e-mail A: Love melts the differences we’ve erected between human beings and other animals, but it doesn’t dissolve them. The love we have for our pets is so deep and uplifting that some pet owners treat their animals with more care and concern than is available to millions of people around the globe. But right there in that last sentence we see the difference you seek.

We naturally and rightly speak of a “pet owner,” but since the demise of slavery, we’d never speak of a “people owner.” Because we can own an animal, we can euthanize that animal. You’re correct that when a pet is dying and a vet determines it’s also suffering, this is indeed a merciful act. The animal can’t be cured and its suffering can’t be alleviated. These conditions, plus the fact that we have autonomy over an animal — we determine its fate — give us the right and the merciful obligation to put the animal out of its misery.

The reason we don’t “put down” people in the same fashion is obvious to our moral instincts, but there are other considerations. First, consider the differences between the medical facts in the case of a dying animal versus a dying person. For a dying person, unlike an animal, there’s the possibility of long-term palliative care.

Palliation means managing pain when you can’t cure. We can make a dying person comfortable. We can alleviate suffering and anxiety with medications. We generally can’t do this for animals. We can’t ask them how they feel, give them daily meds that are helpful over the long run, limit their activity or constrain them in appropriate ways. Because we can truly comfort people and not truly comfort animals, we terminate the life of a suffering, dying animal, but palliate the suffering of a dying person and allow death to come when it comes.

The next reason we don’t kill dying people is that they’re autonomous moral agents. They can decide for themselves what they want. Animals can’t do that. So what about people who’ve decided they want to die if they’re terminally ill and in pain? There’s a difference of opinion on this question between the legal community and people of faith. The difference stems from very different beliefs about who owns your body.

If you believe that you own your body, then you certainly should be able to end your life by committing suicide or terminating medical care. If you own your body and can’t kill yourself or terminate care yourself, you’re also morally entitled to ask a third person, a physician, to help you end you.

Of course, there are complicating factors even if you believe you own your own body. One is determining what an unconscious person would want if he/she has not left a formal health care directive or appointed a health care proxy. Therefore, if you believe this, you should write down and explain to others what you want done if you fall into this terrible state. The other problem occurs when the sick or dying person is a child.

The opposite position — the one I favor — believes that God owns your body. This means we have no right to take the life of an innocent person (killing in self-defense is permitted by most religious traditions). The last words I say at a funeral are, “God has given, and God has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”

In the case of a dying person, the religious belief is that we must avoid two terrible intrusions on God’s sovereignty over all life:

1) We must not stop death from coming in its natural time.

2) We must not cause death to come before its time. The first concern means it is spiritually appropriate to stop all but palliative care and move a patient to a hospice center where their last days will be made as comfortable and serene as possible if they’re beyond the help of modern medicine, whether or not they are suffering.

Active euthanasia — killing a dying person — is like murder and not at all the same as merely removing an external impediment to death, such as some clacking medical machine.

It should be mentioned that religious traditions such as Jainism, Buddhism, Hinduism and even some types of Christianity, Judaism and Islam, believe and teach that animals are also ensouled beings. Some practitioners are vegetarians for this reason, and their sensitivity to the suffering and the spiritual dignity of animals ought to make all of us reflect on the ways we use and abuse animals on earth.

I felt that bond on the day my dog, Miles, died in my arms in the vet’s office after a virulent cancer had ravaged him. I held Miles long after he was gone to whatever place God has in store for good dogs. My tears were the same ones I would cry for any person I’d also loved so deeply.

Write to The God Squad, c/o Tribune Media Services, 2225 Kenmore Ave., Suite 114, Buffalo, N.Y. 14207 or godsquadquestion@aol.com.

[Bart Happel]

 

 

Why don’t people get same mercy

 

 

 

This may also be related to our fear of our own death. The way we treat other people may be the way we will be treated by other people some day. Pets can’t kill us. Other people can.

 

Kind regards, Bart