@David (14:47)
Whilst I fully empathise with the scenario you describe regarding your gran (my father suffered a long debilitating death due to cancer during my teenage years) it is in fact you who is pontificating.

Death is as natural as life. People have been suffering long, painful deaths like my father's & your gran's since time immemorial, and do so every minute of every day all over the planet. We afford people dignity in life & in death by actually enduring suffering with them; by valuing every last morsel of life they have even when they can't reciprocate it any more; by weeping & mourning with them even. What parent has never wished they could take even the mildest suffering from their children? That is how we know we love them.

Dignity is not an inherent human trait - you do not 'possess' dignity. It is something that is bestowed upon you by others. "Terminating" people (or whatever euphemism we choose) is not bestowing dignity upon them.

You 'pontificate' about how you would like to be treated in various scenarios, but the reality is that you actually have no idea what you might be feeling or thinking during those times. In fact, the anecdotal evidence from those who have survived through some horrific illnesses/suffering is that they often were desperately clinging to life and/or trying to communicate the those around them.

We have to examine our motives too. How much of "S/he wouldn't want to live like this" is actually us saying "I can't bear to see them living like this"?

I would personally argue that infanticide is justifiable in rare and exceptional cases. However, this is in part down to my vegetarianism. If you look at my first post, I was making a point about society's ethics. If we are to allow the killing of animals on an unprecedented and industrial manner and argue that it is the mother's right to abort her child, it is hypocritical to unreservedly condemn infanticide.
P.S. Not all animals are sentient under your definition and the definition I was using was more philosophical and reffered more to higher emotional reception and basic intellectual ability as found in higher mammals

And am I reading you correctly when you say there is negative sexism and positive sexism. So sometimes it is justifiable to discriminate on the basis of sex. This because it can be seen as positive discrimination because it is relevant as opposed to irrelevant.

Can you give some examples of positive discrimination and negative ones?

Surely, we as a society have collectively decided that future prospects of happiness are irrelevant. Instead, what the person (if they are a person, which is debatable (just ask Peter Singer)) is worth depends on their current sentience. If we are to decide to take into account prospects for future development- we would be logically inconsistent if we were to still allow abortion. A foetus isn't a sentient person but will almost certainly grow to become one. If we therefore decide that someone in a condition of PVS shouldn't be killed for fear of potential future developement, we must too decide that abortion is immoral and decide to prohibit that. We have a choice in society and I personally feel that the most progressive and caring choice is to allow both abortion and euthanasia.

I am a doctor, and to be honest, i find this article repulsive. to say doctors allow people to die to keep their own hands clean, and that allowing people to die is murder is calling doctors murderers. in fact, treatment can only be withdrawn with relatives consent - not many murderers check with their victims nearest and dearest before they pull the trigger. it appears you have no real knowledge of the real world - patients relatives do not like to say to us "please, give relative X a lethal injection". and to be brutally honest, i see no harm in easing their conscience on this topic. as you rightly said, no one has come back from a PVS. not once you say we do not know how much consciousness they have. true. however, we do know they cannot breathe without assistance - hence they have no brain stem function. that makes it impossible - literally, impossible - for pain to be experienced physiologically. the affective component of pain is a mystery, but no one can possibly account for that. grow up, stop commenting about decisions that are all shades of moral gray with eyes suitable only for black and white.

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Hypothetical situation.
A baby is found to have a severe mental handicap. They will never develop full cognition but always remain at this level. Lets say they are the equivalent of a cat (I know this is very unscientific). It is also found that they suffer from extreme pain. Is it not humane to kill them rather than make them suffer?

What sort of doctor are you Joseph? One who doesn't know how to use the shift key?

@ Mr. Divine
Actually, I would.
Before recoiling into Daily Mail style shock, i beg of you to hear me out. Now we permit mothers to kill a foetus since the foetus has no ability to feel pain. Emotionally and intellectually, they are closer to a fruit fly than a developed human. They therefore have no ability to suffer and in my opinion, are as significant as a non-human animal. To argue otherwise would be speciesist since it would rely on their mere species to define their moral value. As a progressive, I see racism, sexism, homophobia etc as ignorant and wrong. It would therefore be hypocritical for me to be speciesist. Now, do are infants sentient? Some are- particularly older ones. However, those who are not shouldn't have the same rights as a developed human. So, under certain circumstances, it is justifiable.
P.S. read Peter Singer to gage a better form of this argument

Excellent piece and I fear too close to the nerve for many.

Interesting the reactions of "you don't know what you are talking about, so shut up" from Chris Yapp.

Sorry for your loss Chris, but the similarity with the "just shut up, OK" remarks from supporters of abortion is striking.

Can anyone doubt that we are moving towards executing the old and infirm for convenience and to put an end to our own distress at their condition?

And that is the positive interpretation of people's motives.

I have thought the same thing myself. I would be happy to die though an opiate overdose or maybe cocaine. The other painless way is breathing pure nitrogen. I would not want to be dehydrated to death. Should not happen.

You have taken my argument and exaggerated it in attempt to show its flaws but instead have shown the flaws of your position by doing so.
But anyway, of course I don't agree with that action and of course not only on the grounds of feminism.
My point was this:it is justifiable in certain situations to commit infanticide, just like abortion. Moreover, it is hypocritical for society to condemn infanticide but permit abortion and the killing of sentient animals (incase you hadn't guessed, i'm a vegetarian). And I don't believe infanticide is permissible on a large scale for such trivial and ignorant reasons such as your example.

So under what circumstances is it justifiable to kill new born babies?

Aren't all animals sentient, for all of them have senses.

The mother of my children died recently after 8 years and 7 months in borderline PVS/minimally aware. the health professionals throughout did their best. It is however, not what she would ahve wanted and you should really stick to writing about something you know about. Your pontifications are about a different planet than the one we lived in those years

I see the comments are full of people missing the point.
This article was not about it being morally wrong to bring about the end of a life, in a situation where they needed constant attention and machines to remain alive.

The point was that once we have made the decision that we consider it acceptable to cause by inaction, the death of a person, that allowing them starve to death and so on is repugnant. We don't do it to animals and the people who wish a choice to choose their own death don't want to have to starve themselves to death either.
We have the capability to give people a quick death but due to our moral qualms about taking positive action we cause people unnecessary suffering.

If we are to allow for situations where people make a choice that a sick person be allowed to die, then we need the honesty to bring that event about with the absolute minimum of suffering, by direct action, not by inaction that allows us to pretend it is natural.
It is not natural for humans to allow loved ones to starve to death.

It's the old expression
"They shoot horses, don't they?"

This is a really interesting, thoughtful article.

The use of euphemisms to avoid speaking about death is, I suppose, understandable. Although there are verbs that can be used for the death of an other, (‘kill’, ‘murder’, and ‘execute’) there is no verb that easily can be used to describe my willing of my own death. Suicide was used in the 19C as a verb but I’ve never heard anyone use it that way. I think it tends to be ‘commit suicide’ which also seems to borrow the verb ‘commit’ to avoid the verbal action of suicide. It seems then that the use of euphemism or metaphor sometimes needs to stand in for an absence of language.

I’m not sure agree that give a lethal injection is more honest a description of the event because it seems to place the action on the giving of the injection rather than the receiving a lethal injection.

Mary Warnock considers the argument about capital punishment to be settled but I’m not so sure that the principle of the state authorizing the death of its citizens doesn’t have the potential to reintroduce that argument by the backdoor. Once you concede that the state can, on principle, terminate the life of its citizens (which of course it does but likes to pretend it doesn’t) then the similarities of language from one arena might well bleed into the other.