Putting the You in Euthanasia - is it a time we looked again at assisted demise and dropped the religious dogma?

Leaving your body is an incredible experience

I have done it, as many others have

It is a strange conundrum, but we prosecute people who allow an animal to suffer when nothing can be done for it, yet a human can be condemned to a miserable existence because no one wants to have the discussion about assisted demise.

We all know that 'assistance' is used to 'help' some patients, Morphine administered by  pumps to cancer patients OD's them in the end and ends their suffering, but why the hell are we using such a blunt instrument in this day and age?

Recently there have been cases publicised in the media about people choosing to end their lives in clinics where they can elect to die. If that is their choice, fine, but on the other side of this coin is that these people could also elect to help others to live.

They could however elect to donate vital organs to people whose lives could be transformed by this gift.

Does this not make absolute common sense?

Is it not better for maybe six persons to have their lives transformed by the gift from someone who no longer wishes to continue living, than for someone to simply choose to die and benefit no one? Or worse, perhaps denied legal demise, then goes out and commits suicide.

I mean to say, as a Train Driver or Lorry Driver, doing your own job, some desperate person decides to use your vehicle as a means to end their life? These drivers will never forget these incidents and will often be powerless to avoid them. This could all be so easily avoided.

Some people either with diagnosed or undiagnosed mental health issues may decide they are no longer wishing to live on this planet. They may be desperately unhappy for many reasons, to the extent that they feel condemned to life, they may view this world as some sort of open prison, from which death may be the only escape for them to reach peace in themselves.

For them there may be no treatment, no resolution to their plight and inner turmoil. If the core causations can't be resolved, what do they have? a medical cosh? or descent and collapse which ultimately may lead to suicide eventually anyway? This is only putting off the day that they choose to act.

In a road accident, as an organ donor, you automatically elect to help others in the case you are pretty much finished.

It is time we put the 'You' into Euthanasia, that we had an adult discussion and addressed the ridiculous religious dogma of the sanctity of life, when these same religions often condemn people to large families by prohibiting contraception, having families endure poverty, less quality of life, hardship and problems to our environment from overpopulation.

I mean where the hell are they coming from? That they do not allow someone to make an informed decision about themselves and their life and when they can end it if they so choose, but refuse to accept that change to some self imposed dogma such as no contraception and all the problems that entails needs to be made?

Its not about THEM its about their followers. We are the most educated and informed that we have ever been, we are not children but are being treated like them.

My discussion here essentially covers two issues, one that people should be allowed to choose if they want to live or not and secondly, that we need to define some guidelines to prevent the abuse of the situation if assisted demise became legal in the UK, as assisted demise is already legal in some other European countries, at institutions like Dignitas.

With advances in neural interrogation, we can record video of our dreams, so it won't be long before we can perhaps get into the mind and get a definite answer from someone incapacitated as to their wishes. Or perhaps be able to delve into someone's mind to get a definite point of view, when they are mentally incapacitated or comatose.

If as an active person, you suddenly lost all your limb use and became dependent on carers, would you want to live on? Would you see yourself as a burden? Would you decide that your quality of life was nil and pointless to continue with? But be powerless to act?

There is the counter argument that 'there could be a cure, tomorrow, or next week, a month, a year.'

Might.

Might not.

You would have to weigh up the situation on a case by case basis, a person with a sound mind but disabled body might be best placed to decide their outcome.

It is 'their' quality of life that is the issue, not some out of date and perhaps spurious dogma that the law adheres to, grasping desperately to, like a drowning man grasps at a passing twig.

Have you ever left your body? The out of body experience is amazing. I have done it.

What are you seeing now, hearing as you read this? That is your consciousness. That is your spirit. Ask anyone who has had a near death experience in a hospital, where they have left their body and observed the medical staff operating on them.

Yes, they are fully aware, they can feel, see, hear. Out of your body, just as you are now in yours.

When you leave your body and look down, you will see yourself leaving your body, you will see an almost transparent version of yourself emerging from your earth body.

It is a bit scary at first, but then you realise you are still conscious, thinking, aware, feeling.

You are not dead.

When you are 'dead' the earth body is dead, but you are not. 

A friend of mine has advanced dementia, but even though she is now completely reliant on carers and has lost all communication, bed bound and just 'existing' one could ask, what is the point of living on?

I wouldn't want this.

Cases like Dementia have obvious legal implications as to mental capacity. A person who might seem 'normal' and able to function, loses their right to make decisions immediately they are diagnosed, even if this early onset dementia.

But, at this stage, you might be absolutely clear-minded enough to make your own decisions, clearly, logically and surely.

You may be fully aware of your demise and what it will entail, so should you then be able to decide that you should be able to plan your own way out?

I think so. Provided established guidelines are set and met, this would be an adult way of dealing with something we all eventually have to experience.

When the spare parts take over - transplant nightmare, here's where it gets a bit 'Frankenstein.'

That life saving transplant could have side effects!

Thanks to the Organ Donor scheme, thousands of lives have been saved and the quality of lives improved with donated human organs.

But, beyond the success stories, there is the other side of the coin, rejection and influence.

Rejection of organs, we have all heard about, this is likely due to the brain detecting that a rogue part has been installed and is trying to remove or eject it, pretty clever? So how does this work?

The Genetic strands of life perhaps code our being deeper than we think

Well, this likely has to do with the Genetic Coding unique to each of us. Essentially, all of our body parts are 'data coded' with our own genetic coding, like a computer has a unique IP address, we must therefore have a genetic fingerprint.

So, medication to stop rejection has to be given, why is this? Because the brain has already gotten the message that an organ has been 'deleted' from the body? And maybe then works out by the chemical messages that reach the brain, that something is 'different.' So, when a 'new' part appears in the circuit, it 'knows' chemically that something is wrong.

Almost, this like installing a wiring loom in a car and getting some of the plugs wrongly connected, it can start sending error messaging to the 'brain', like asking it do something out of sequence, as might happen to a robot if the software became corrupted. In a modern car, a wrong signal to the ECU can make the car malfunction.

Perhaps this type scenario in a human sends the brain neurons into some sort of a panic, or it might send out a signal that gets confused, much like a defective memory board that gets installed in a computer and the computer can't 'recognise' the board. But you know its there and installed.

Perhaps the brain neurons can't detect the original 'coded' organ that should be in the chain of human components and only detects something that is right, but is wrong because the fingerprint doesn't match.

Perhaps the DNA coding in our bodies goes deeper than we may appreciate, but this could have another reason that goes very deep and that is concerned with the next part of this work, influence.

Whilst the transplant of an organ may be a success and the rejection issue has been negated by medication that may fool the body by blocking chemical changes and then by reduced medication fooling the body into accepting something that should not be there, there is sometimes another thing that occurs and this could be straight out of a Frankenstein movie, that of 'influence.'

'Influence' is when the alien organ starts to exert the 'personality' of the donor and bring traits to the new 'host.' Such 'influences' have ranged from being attracted to certain foods, or in some cases turning people to become vegetarians, it can be attractions to some thing or a newly discovered dislike of something that you previously liked.

Although we now have a record of the human genome that if printed out on paper is an enormous 'build document,' within that 'script' as it were, must be trait indicators that code our very existence.

This is the brave new world of science, a world where we are in the shallow end of the gene pool at present in being able to determine the sex of a baby, perhaps in years to come, a manipulation of the human genome at a nuclear DNA level will effectively allow us to create a 'shopping list' human being.

Whilst this is preferable for disease or behavioural trait situations, it is starting to mess with nature. Nature makes compensations, what we may find is that by our 'customising,' that we are in danger of beautifying something but also causing further and possibly damaging and far reaching future problems.