Should old people be helped to die, if that is what they wish?
ENDS: 13/06/2010
Old age can bring a lot of problems and complications for old folks such as numerous diseases ranging in severity. Some more severe ones include Alzheimer's disease and the list can go on and on. Such diseases can often bring the patient or person intolerable pain, leave them as both mental and physical invalids and often spending the majority of their days in a hospital ward. Countries such as the Netherlands have specialized hospitals to allow the person to die at their will, whilst the UK introduced a 'Mental Capacity Act' that gives legal force to "living wills" so patients can appoint an attorney to inform doctors when their food and water should be removed, in effect leaving them to die. Also, some wish to do this as they view their condition a burden on their family and don't want to see anymore suffering.
Others completely dismiss this saying no matter in what state or condition a person may be in, it is still a living organism and is immoral to let them die. Some say that with the right care people can lead quite a good quality life late into diseases such as dementia etc. and killing ones self will send out a bad message to others who might not want to fight on anymore. Anyone's life is precious and should be saves to the last moment, it is more from the moral standpoint, with some viewing the act of killing people off in such a way as being "barbaric".
Anyway, this leads on to the question of this week's debate that is should old people be helped to die, if that is what they wish? You can take any stance and provide various views and pieces of evidence.