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Euthanasia





Do you believe that a person that helps another person to commit suicide is a criminal? Do you?

The term Euthanasia means the killing of a terminal ill person by a physician to end his or her suffering or any action taken by a physician to provide death to a patient.



Many people argue that the decision to kill oneself is a private choice which society has no right to be concerned about.

This position assumes that suicide results from competent people making autonomous, rational decision to die, and then claims that society has no business "interfering" with a freely chosen life or death decision that harms no one other the suicidal person. However, according to experts, who have studied several cases on suicide, the basic assumption is wrong.



It is very unlikely that someone with serious disability and terminally ill person commits suicide.

A careful 1974 British study, which involved extensive interviews and examination of medical records, found that 93% of those studied who committed suicide were mentally ill at the time. A similar St. Louis study, published in 1984, found a mental disorder in 94% of those who committed suicide. There is a great body of psychological evidence that those who attempt suicide are normally having conflict feelings and that they are most of time the victims of mental disorder.



Almost all of those who attempt suicide do so as a subconscious cry for help, not after a carefully calculated judgement that death would be better than life.

A suicide attempt powerfully calls the attention to people who are going through serious and difficult conditions. The humane response is to mobilize psychiatric and social service resources to address the problems that led the potential suicide person to such extremity. Typically, this counseling...