@ William Reed Actually it is not true that there is unvoluntary euthanasia in the Netherlands in the sense that people are euthanized against their will.

However, there seems to be a tendency, in the Netherlands, towards ending people's lives when in coma / demented who have not expressly agreed on euthanasia. That is a slippery slope.

@ Kostya, are you sure assisted suicide will not erode into much more?

Hello Kostya. It would be a sign of a barbaric society to allow physician assisted suicide. Herbert Hendin was one of only three foreign observers given the opportunity to study assisted suicide medical practices in the Netherlands in depth, to discuss specific cases with leading practitioners, and to interview Dutch government-sponsored euthanasia researchers. Hendin stated in Congressional testimony, "Over the past two decades, the Netherlands has moved from assisted suicide to euthanasia, from euthanasia for the terminally ill to euthanasia for the chronically ill, from euthanasia for physical illness to euthanasia for psychological distress and from voluntary euthanasia to nonvoluntary and involuntary euthanasia. Once the Dutch accepted assisted suicide it was not possible legally or morally to deny more active medical [assistance to die], i.e. euthanasia, to those who could not effect their own deaths. Nor could they deny assisted suicide or euthanasia to the chronically ill who have longer to suffer than the terminally ill or to those who have psychological pain not associated with physical disease. To do so would be a form of discrimination. Involuntary euthanasia has been justified as necessitated by the need to make decisions for patients not [medically] competent to choose for themselves."

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“I am typing this having just had an injection to try to reduce the pain in my arms, hands, and fingers. The chief side effect of this pain is numbness in the extremities, filling me with the not irrational fear that I shall lose the ability to write. Without that ability, I feel sure in advance, my “will to live” would be hugely attenuated. I often grandly say that writing is not just my living and my livelihood but my very life, and it’s true. Almost like the threatened loss of my voice, which is currently being alleviated by some temporary injections into my vocal folds, I feel my personality and identity dissolving as I contemplate dead hands and the loss of the transmission belts that connect me to writing and thinking.”

I still pray for Mr. Hitchens, my Adamic brother, daily. And Kostya: hugs, friend.

The value of being fully conscious is perhaps diminished if all one can think about is the extreme pain and suffering that often accompanies cancer death in our barbaric age in which physician assisted suicide is not an option.