Mercy killing

'Life is a one way road, where you can look back but cannot go back.
So, never miss anything'. 'Enjoy every moment because life is how we look at it.

Conceptually and factually near to euthanasia, is the medically assisted suicide. One of the defining characters of euthanasia is therefore its aim to reduce suffering. Sometimes, it is believed that the request for a euthanasic intervention or assisted suicide by patients is directly proportional to the seriousness of their disease, and to their suffering.

The best example is the case of Aruna Ramachandra Shanbaug, a staff nurse who is confined to a hospital bed for 38 yrs,leading a life like a vegetable.

Recent Hindi film 'GUZAARISH 'protagonist life-loving Ethan lives out the rest of his life as a quadriplegic or has he a right to end the pain and opt for euthanasia (mercy killing)? Though it's about mercy killing and a paraplegic patient, it makes one think on the similar lines.

Though the government cannot authorize to taking a life, it is not taking one's life, on the contrary choosing between suffering and the desire to die. The patient's request is therefore considered a "necessity" that makes the physician practicing euthanasia non-prosecutable.

Actually, such a position introduces in the legal system a sharp discrimination between healthy life –which has to be protected – and ill life. Such a law gives the conscious and major patient the chance to request for euthanasia when terminally ill or with untreatable pain.

Thus, it is accepted the possibility that even other people may sign a request for euthanasia on behalf of the incapacitated patient and in the presence of witnesses.

Finally, it would relieve the patient's relatives mentally, physically, financially and emotionally from the grip of fear thus giving the patient a dignified death if not a decent life.

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