in a terminal cancer ward, It's grim but enlightening. Anyone who's been there can know how much people can suffer before they die. And not just physically. The emotional, even spiritual, agony is often worse. Today our medical hardware is so sophisticated that the period of suffering can be extended beyond the limit of human endurance. What's the point of allowing someone a few more months or days or hours of so-called life when death is inevitable? There's no point. In fact, it's downright inhumane. When someone under such conditions asks to be allowed to die, it's far more humane to honor that request than to deny it.(Barry 405) People have a right to die with dignity. Nobody wants to end up plugged into machines and wired to tubes. Who wants to spend their last days lying in a hospital bed wasting away to something that's hardly recognizable as a human being, let alone his or her former self? (Nobody) The very thought insults the whole concept of what it means to be human. People are entitled to dignity, in life and in death. Just as we respect people's right to live with dignity, so we must respect their right to die with dignity. In the case of the terminally ill, that means people have the right to refuse life-sustaining treatment when it's apparent to them that all the treatment is doing is destroying their dignity, and reducing them to some subhuman level of humanity. The reasons just stated in favor of euthanasia are often over looked due to the following arguments that are against euthanasia. The way you talk you'd think people have absolute right over their bodies and lives. But that is obviously just not true. No individual has absolute freedom. Even the patient's Bill of Rights, which was drawn up by the American Hospital Association, recognizes this. Although it acknowledges that patients have the right to refuse treatment, the document also realizes that they have this right and freedom only to the extent permitted by l...
