Yes it should. Everyone should have the right to make the decision when to die....

No, because it would quickly turn into a situation where the elderly and sick were routinely encouraged to kill themselves by their family members with their eye on the inheritance.

Definately not - however the terminally ill are a different subject altogether.

agreed.

Ssssscccchhhh spoilsport

No more training and knowledge of good palliative care obviates this! There is such a thing as a good death hospices have proved that!

That's the reason I voted no.

I've watched both parents die painful deaths with cancer. My mum's situation was particularly grim and she chose to die at home which meant our whole family pitching in for round the clock care. I was quite young (21) and one of my sisters had just lost her husband and had three small children. It was a very stressful time for everyone involved and nobody was thinking clearly, the choices we could have made then, were not the choices we would have made in hindsight. Fortunately the law was there to protect all of us from making a huge mistake that we would probably have regretted for the rest of our lives. We (my siblings and I) asked hospice staff if there was anything they could do to speed things up. They said that the amount of morphine they were administering was being increased daily and that it would quite quickly lead to death. If someone is capable of taking their own life then they're not usually sick enough to want to end it just yet, and if they need assistance, it's then no longer their decision to make.

Indeed.

That must have been so awful for you all.

I don't follow that logic. Why should needing assistance mean denying someone the right to make their own decision? (Assuming, of course, that they are able to make a decision.) Just because the body fails, doesn't mean the mind has, too.

I agree it could lead to situations where people take the decision for the wrong reason. But if the person who is sick has already made their wishes known, in a Living Will or whatever, and has been quite clear for some time that they do not wish to live past the point where they can care for themselves (or whatever point they choose). then surely the Law should allow those wishes to be respected.
I wouldn't wish to continue living if I was dependent on someone else for everything, or if my mind had failed quicker than my body. I don't believe it would be fair either to me, or to those around me - I would prefer to be remembered as I was, and also prefer not to be a burden on anyone. In a situation like that surely there is a strong case for euthanasia?

That's the crux of it really. My MIL passed away in similar circumstances fairly recently.

My OH said he is gonnae save up a concoction of dubious drugs to help aid him on his way, when the time comes! - and if he can't reach them himself, would I care to pass them over!

I said it all depends really, on whether or not I've already done him in years before.

well thats what i always thought until i nursed a bloke with locked in syndrome who communicated with eye blinks and a spelled out alphabet, he told me he had thought the same way but that now that it was him life was precious even in his state and he was terrified that drs would allow him to die by not treating a pnuemonia or something like that it was quite a shock as all the medical staff were sure he wouldnt want to live like that!!

Because legalising euthanasia would mean that there would have to be laws for a million different scenarios (such as the one you mention) and more chance for grey areas within these laws. When you find out you or a member of your family is terminally ill, there are a number of stages of emotion and grief, the decisions you make during these times my change with each of these stages.

Agreed that there would probably be more grey areas; there is with lots of legislation. But I don't see that there would need to be laws for every possible different scenario.

My Mum died two and a half years ago of a brain tumour. I was seven months pregnant at the time. It didn't occur to me until many weeks after her death that the doctors did absolutely nothing to try and resuscitate her. She had gone into hospital with suspected epilepsy and was scanned and tested until the diagnosis was made. I forget what the medical name was (pregnancy brain strikes!), but her cancer was fast growing (possible that she'd only had the tumour about 6 weeks, we were told), very aggressive and like moss - no clear edges so surgery was not an option. Attempting it would have left her likely blind and paralysed. It was only after her death and rethinking over what had happened that I wondered about the lack of resuscitation. And then I realised that the doctors had made the call to allow her to die with some dignity, rather than bring her back to face what would have been a terminal diagnosis with absolute dependence on her family. I am grateful that the doctors did what they did - we were allowed to stand by her bedside and hold her hand while she died. They'd removed her heart rate monitor, so at least we didn't have to watch that flatline. Doctors are constantly making decisions about how people should die. I think that there should be more protection for them. Another family might have sued the hospital in our circumstances.