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Should old people with dementia be pushed towards death?
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E-mailMade Popular Sep 20 2008
The expert on medical ethics said yesterday that elderly people with dementia are wasting people’s lives, family’s lives, and the resources of the National Health Service. The argument is also supported with the logic that if pain is insufferable, then someone should be given help to die, but only when somebody absolutely and desperately wants to die. However, the expert from the Alzheimer’s Research Trust opposed this and said that people with dementia can live quite comfortably when cared properly.
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I have always believed that euthanasia is a viable and humane option for many those who has no hope, living in pain waiting for death. People with dementia are like vegetables who don't even know whether they exist or not.
It is a difficult one for me.
I’m all for euthanasia and in some cases even suicides.
Dementia is, however, a difficult proposition. I mean the person concerned is supposed to be conscious to make his own decision in this case and yet he’s not.
Yes, the elderly who feel they should die, should be allowed to do so, and be assisted to do so.
But to bundle off someone, not conscious enough to make an informed choice seems a bit arrogant and inhumane to me.
I’m all for euthanasia and in some cases even suicides.
Dementia is, however, a difficult proposition. I mean the person concerned is supposed to be conscious to make his own decision in this case and yet he’s not.
Yes, the elderly who feel they should die, should be allowed to do so, and be assisted to do so.
But to bundle off someone, not conscious enough to make an informed choice seems a bit arrogant and inhumane to me.
I believe if an elderly feels they no longer wish to live, they should have a right to let go..the same as any other human should be allowed to relieve themselves of misery. However, in the case of dementia, it is much more difficult. This person is still alive and functioning, just not on a certain level of recognition. I think there would have to be a ruling on an exact definition of dementia first... It would be way to easy for some just to bump off their old parents who they didn’t want to care for by claiming dementia.
Definitely not! It’s such a cruel thing to do. How can the medical ethics expert be so crass? What it he gets dementia or any such deadly disease tomorrow? It is rather inhuman to think that the diseased elderly waste other people’s lives and resources. They are the same people who had taken care of those who think that they are garbage now. Even infants are helpless in so many ways and need to be taken care of. So are they wasting people’s lives and do they deserve to die because of that?
Living with a disadvantage becomes cruel not because of the disadvantage, but because people or circumstances around that person make it a curse for him/her to live like that. I don’t think any person in this world desires euthanasia out of his or her own free will, but because of compelling circumstances. If only people come forward and help such a person without thinking that he / she is wasting their time and resources, he/she will not want to die. Even the most painful of diseases can be lived through if other people give that person the necessary emotional and physical support and encouragement
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I read somewhere: Dementia, a progressive brain dysfunction, leads to a gradually increasing restriction of daily activities. The most well-known type of dementia is Alzheimer’s disease. Dementia not only affects patients, but also those surrounding them, as most patients require care in the long-term.
It would be an injustice if we are sensitive enough to care such arguments that they are wasting ”people’s lives, family’s lives, and the resources of the National Health Service.” Even if it is so, they should not be treated as a burden when they’ve been bearing the burden of upcoming generation since long.