The Myth of Dying (Great Article!!!) [View All]

The myth of dying

In the cacophony of debate about insignificant things, the torture of unassisted death goes on unremarked

Polly Toynbee
Friday March 25, 2005
The Guardian

Most religions have a day of the dead, and today is that day for Christians. In this most secular nation, polls show few now know what Good Friday is for, this day for sorrow, for contemplating death, loss and endings.

But here the usefulness of faith ends, for it is mainly the power of the religious lobby that forces people to die in pain and indignity due to beliefs on the nature of life and death shared by very few. For 20 years now, every poll on the subject shows that 80% of people want the right to be helped to die at a time and in a way of their own choosing. But that kind of "choice" is not on the agenda. Or not yet.

It happens to be a good day for contemplating how we die and watch others die as the US courts finally let Terri Schiavo go. She has been 15 years a-dying in a persistent vegetative state, probably beyond pain, though not beyond reflex responses. But if there is still suffering to be had, now in her seventh slow day without water or food, the law inflicts death by slow dehydration in the name of "ethics". It's a shocking spectacle that could be stopped with one merciful injection. But here in our own dying rooms similar terrible ethical deaths are inflicted on British citizens every day by kindly nurses and doctors. There is a conspiracy of silence about the actual processes of death.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1445522,00.html