At times I feel I should stop watching news channels. What news do we get to see? Murders, suicides, terrorist attacks. Ok. Abhishek and Aishwarya were also in the news. You must have got to know what they are going to wear and whom they are going to call for their wedding. How silly of these news channels! It seems they don’t have any news to show at all. But amidst such silly reports there are some news which really make us think about how helpless humans can be in the face of disaster.

My mind veered to two reports.

First one was the much publicized case of Terri Schiavo. Remember? Her brain was damaged severely and  for 15 years she was kept alive by artificial means. Her husband, Michael Schiavo, filed a case in court to allow Euthanasia, in common parlance known as mercy killing. But her parents were against that. A tough legal battle ensued. Michael argued that Terri would never have wanted herself to be kept alive artificially. After seven years of legal battle, court finally allowed her feeding tube to be removed. She was finally dead.

 Second case. A patient had terminal cancer. He was going to die within three months. That’s what doctors had told him. He belonged to a middle class family, had a wife and two daughters to look after. Because of this disease, he had to leave his job. He was devastated. All that he ever saved from his job was spent for his cure.  He realised that if he continued to live in this state, his family would be left without a penny. He loved his wife and daughters very much. All he could think of was to end his life to save them from penury and that’s what he did. He committed suicide.

 I talked about these incidents to a friend who is a doctor. I also asked him why could not mercy killing be legalised in India, at least for terminally ill patients?  He said, as a doctor, he was against euthanasia. Nobody would ever want to die. Even those who are terminally ill are ready to put up struggle. Moreover, he stated that there were other complications too.

Who will decide that one deserves to die?
Will the relatives be willing to let the patient die? In Terri Schiavo’s case, her parents were against mercy killing. No parent can ever bear to see their child die.
Who will kill the patient? And the one who kills her/him – how will she/he survive in this world with her/his conscience?
How many innocents will be bumped off in the name of euthanasia? This is an important question. In a country like India, where corruption is rampant, such a law can be misused at an alarming rate, as is happening  with abortion which is supposed to terminate pregnancy only in case of severe medical complications. We know very well how abortion is used to kill female foetuses in the womb. Is there any guarantee that mercy killing will not be used in an illegal manner?

Then there are religious implications too. Aren’t we taught that God has given us life and only He has gotten the right to take it? Mercy killing, as the name suggests, means that somebody is killed, although it is in the name of mercy. Is it God's wish?

But what about the financial complications that comes with such severe diseases? More often, people get depressed, not only because of the physical pain that comes but also because of the fear that they are not that secured monetarily, that their family members will have to suffer if they continue with the cure, that it would be an immense emotional strain for their loved ones to see them suffer.

To end, I would like to quote something which I had heard in a television programme which showed how a person got lost in Sahara desert and survived after facing an ordeal for 9 days.

“The closer a person gets to death, more determined he is to live.”