Dr David Goodall Ends His Life at 104 with a Powerful Statement on Euthanasia

I think many / most people simply have a negative emotional reaction to ideas of suicide or euthanasia; death is fearsome. People have to reconcile their feelings with knowledge to avoid cognitive dissonance. Religion often provides that validation to people's existing emotional prejudice, and gives them a pass on accepting uncomfortable ideas.

Looking beyond religion, one can have reasons for opposing euthanasia, such as:

- acceptance of voluntary euthanasia may lead to accepting non-voluntary and involuntary euthanasia and mental illness-based suicide.

- consent may be fabricated for a variety of motivations.

- doctors may be obliged to kill patients, placing them in a moral dilemma.

- people may be coerced into euthanasia by inheritors.

Samson killed himself rather than live the life of what would have essentially been court jester.

Interestingly Christians will say his suicide affirms his trust and belief in God, and would never suggest that he had sinned and therefor condemned to Hell.

Practically, and at this point in time I agree, but theoretically, if abundance through technological progress can be achieved, in the limit of humanities fine grained causal control over matter, why abandon consciousness if its experiential content could be arbitrarily modified? Why not cryonically freeze yourself and wait for a life that is worth living again?

I suppose the momentary certitude about the future and ones death is more comforting than all the if's that arise when choosing life.

Many sects of Christianity seem to include the idea that believers need to spread their beliefs to non-believers, so if you just allow people to commit suicide (which the religion deems abhorrent), then that basically means the believers failed in their mission.

It's the same reason that religious societies (including Christian ones) tend to try to push their religious values into law, instead of allowing citizens to choose freely.

Something I consider related to euthanasia, but distinct from it, is the right to cryo-preservation before natural death. Currently, cryonics is simply viewed as death causing, with no recognised therapeutic worth, so can only begin after legal death. The ability to resuscitate or reconstruct the mind of a preserved person seems highly dependent on the level of age or disease related degradation. Being able to carry out a cryo-preserving procedure promptly also improves the plausibility of resuscitation.

With regard to neuro-degenerative disease, waiting until a person's death may mean that the person's mind is permanently lost, or not faithfully reconstructable.