🚀 go-pugleaf

d-moss@adfa.oz.au (David Moss) writes:

>we value the life of a
>dog much less than that of a human. So we kill it quickly and
>humanely, rather than go through the expense of treatment, time spent
>in looking after it and the emotional cost of supporting it.

Most first world people spend a great deal more money on feeding and
maintaining their family pets than they do on the poor. In the world
today there are more than 1.2 billion people with incomes under a dollar
a day; this is already less than is spent feeding a small dog. When you
factor in the cost of grooming, housing, litter and veterinary you'll
see that people really don't value the lives of their pets less
than "a human" - they just value them less than they do their own family.

Okay, chalk that one up to basic human selfishness, but don't we kill
our pets because they're too much trouble? Well, I can't speak for
folks around David's neighbourhood, but no, no one I know has ever 
killed a _pet_ to "save trouble". 

People kill animals for food, because they're pests, or just out of
sheer bloody-mindedness. Some people acquire an animal with the
intention of making it a pet but don't have the emotional capability to
do so and kill it on this account.

Pets, real pets, are special. People get attached to them, love them,
and will go to extraordinary lengths to care for them. When a real pet
is put to sleep, it is generally a decision filled with anguish and only
considered when the owner has no alternative that will spare their
beloved suffering. This is indeed euthanasia: the motive is love and
compassion, not expedience.  With regard to real pets, we certainly do
seem to "treat dogs better".

>When you devalue a human life by permitting people to be "put down"
>because we "treat dogs better",  you lubricate the top step of the
>dreaded "slippery slope". 

You speak as if "the slippery slope" were more than a fallacy. No one so
far has introduced a single piece of historical data to lend real support 
to this argument. If you really think that chalk can spontaneously turn to
cheese, let's have some kind of realistic scenario in which it can: start
with the RTI laws and show how you expect them to degrade, and justify 
each degradation by considering popular support and popular opposition to it.
If you can't explain how you think this could happen, you can't expect us to
consider it more than a macabre fantasy.

>If they wish to commit suicide, thats their choice.
>If they want someone else to kill them, thats society's choice.

Then you support physician-assisted suicide? I seem to recall that you
don't.  Frankly, I don't see why any victimless crime should be
society's concern, and this seems to be a thoroughly victimless crime:
the dying person benefits by determining their own fate, and the
assistant benefits by the exercise of their compassion. Why should
society then concern itself?

>My research into the euthansasia issue has taught me that in almost
>every case where a terminally ill person in pain has requested
>physician assisted suicide, he/she has withdrawn the request as soon
>as proper pain management was effected.

Figures please, David - I recall your thinking that a few gun-nut emails
were statistically significant on that issue - let's have the results of
any formal poll that backs your contention here, not handwaving.

Also, please explain why the choice of one dying person should be
impressed on some other dying person who does not share their beliefs
and experiences.

Also, please explain why the right to suicide, which you agree is enjoyed
by the healthy, should be taken from those few people who have a rational
desire to avail themselves of it.

>We often hear this "relatives in agony for months" saga from the
>pro-euthanasia camp. Much better they take their bloodthirsty thumb
>off the "green needle" plunger and hand the pain management job over
>to someone who cares about a person rather than an agenda.

40% of the dying experience severe, unmanageable pain on a regular basis.
When they're not experiencing this pain, this 40% are generally doped to
the eyeballs: their existence is a cycle of agony and unconsciousness.

If you care about a person, you respect their choices; if your don't
respect their choices, you don't care. What you're promoting is the
institutionalized torture of those for whom pain management is a joke.
Reread Dent's and Mills's accounts of their suffering, and then explain
why we should not respect their choices.

-- 
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