y people would feel guilty for not choosing death. Too often many people feel like a burden to others especially because of financial situations. Proper health care is an expensive cost of living and slowly more states are cutting back on health care coverage for poor state residents. This again may lead some to believing they are a burden to others and again may choose death out of guilt. Even the smallest gesture could create a gentle nudge into the grave. Major organizations, including Choice in Dying, believe that people have a natural fear of suffering and dying. They try to make dying look as non-painful and as accepted as possible by making greeting cards saying, I learned youll be leaving us soon, and creating advertisements showing pictures of a peaceful death with loved ones around. (6) Do these gestures really help or even tell the truth? Killing is not the way to end excruciating pain. Often times the death is more painful than life. Lethal injections often cause muscle spasms and great pain that are awful for a family to witness. (1) Everyone, whether its someone with a life-threatening illness or a chronic condition, has the right to pain relief. With modern advances in pain control, no patient should ever be in excruciating pain. However, most doctors have never had a course in pain management so theyre unaware of what to do. If any patient is in so much pain they would rather die, a different doctor should be consulted. But that doctor should be someone who will control the pain, not one who will kill the patient. The solution to pain is better educating health care professionals, not taking somebodys life. In the Unites States, active euthanasia, killing a person who is awake and able to make decisions, remains to be a serious crime, punishable by life imprisonment, while passive euthanasia, disconnecting any mechanical respirators that are keeping a comatose patient alive, may be conducted in over thirty states. Proble...
