a'la the Netherlands, for instance.
Funny the tangents the Net can lead you off
on. I was checking out the story of the recent
black bear attack in Tennessee, when I noticed
a hit for a Chinese guy who was having a face
transplant due to his face being chewed off by
a bear a couple of years ago.
Now, I'm always intrigued by "science and technology"
stuff, so I did a google on "face transplants."
Turns out that the results of such transplants are pretty "iffy" (tissue rejection and all) and a lot of
doctors would refuse to do them for "ethical" reasons and so on.
BUT the article did address the fact that mutilations of the face and body can cause someone to become suicidal. (DUHHHHH...)
Well, here's the deal. Face transplants may NEVER work, and there is good reason to believe that medical technology has reached a plateau where it could stay at for centuries. (Notice how cancer research has stagnated since the 1930's, for example?) So the victim of facial mutilation is likely to become worm-meat long before anything can be done for them...
Many such people WISH they could build up the gumption to hit the "self-destruct button." They spend there lives sitting in their rooms with the cutrains drawn, sometimes poking guns in their mouths or squirreling away sleeping pills or what have you... but never getting up the courage to "follow through." I think I can understand that... I doubt I will EVER commit suicide no matter how bad the situation, as putting that 12-guage in my mouth and pulling the trigger would take more cojones than I see myself EVER having. (My main thought is, "what if I BUNGLED it..?)
I've seen photos of poor schmucks who didn't manage to get the angle of the shotgun right. *Pretty gruesome stuff.*
So I hereby say, that it is time to have assisted suicide on demand, for any reason and at any time, without silly "counseling" and other such wastes of time and money. Administered by M.D.'s - quick, painless, and sure.
What's so BAD about suicide, anyway? I've NEVER understood this. All the reasons for opposing it, seem to ultimately boil down to superstious, magico-religious mumbo-jumbo.
But even the BIBLE, doesn't have a prohibition against suicide. NOT ONE. (Didja know that?)
The traditional Christian argument against suicide, is from Augustine (a cracker-barrel philosopher if there ever was one, I myself could rip him up one side and down the other in a serious debate I'm sure! But then he'd have me burned as a heretic I suppose. But isn't that how "theologians" - i.e. useless wastes of intelligence quotient - have ALWAYS won their philosophical debates?) He said that it was covered by "thou shalt not commit murder." (But if we go there, we'd better shut down McDonald's, Wendy's, ect. as they are slowly but surely murdering us all with heart disease!) I'd say that for killing to count as "murder", you need a non-willing victim (or at least an un-informed one.) Thusly, your friendly Mickey D's manager is more of a murderer than any suicide is! His "victims"/customers are mostly UN-INFORMED - unlike the suicide is, about what he's about to do. (Sorry, St. Augie old boy..!)
If "God" would send a miserable wretch with a life-destroying, un-fixable, life-long problem, who chose to "take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them" to "Hell" - then such a "God" isn't worthy of "worship." (What a silly idea anyway, "worship". Just another word for "GROVELING".) Such a "God" can lick the sweat off my gonads, as far as I'm concerned.
So, to wrap it up... it is time to do like the Netherlands, and make assisted suicide available to one and all. (John Ashcroft be damned!) And while I'm at it, we need a 50-foot bronze statue erected on the Washington Mall to one of America's GREATEST heroes - Jack Kevorkian. (I AIN'T kidding here, folks.)
I can dream, can't I?

B-man

Hi Chum,

I can understand that there are situations in which assisted suicide would be a reasonable choice.  Situations in which a person must suffer lasting and needless pain in a body in which they do not even feel human might be such an instance.  I don't know if disfiguration would be such an instance; however, certain kinds could very well qualify.

It seems to me that most suicides could not normally be described by this kind of scenario and cause needless pain and suffering for the loved ones left behind, as well as stopping in their tracks life paths which could hold unlimited avenues of possibility for many kinds of happiness and service.  Most kinds of pain can come to an end through a greater understanding.

I believe that a loving God would not punish a person for a choice made in error, which I have to consider most suicides to be.  But there is always hope, love, and a purpose in this life for all of us with no exceptions.  

love, blink

Blink--- there was a case where face disfigurment did prompt a woman to commit suicide here in the NorthEast. 
I will say about 20 years ago, some kids where tossing chunks of iced snow over the bridge of an overpass onto unaware passing cars. One chunk shattered a windshield of a local teacher. The shattered glass tore her face to shreds.  After years of plastic surgery kept failing, the school teacher (who never went back to teaching) took her own life.  That was in Massachusetts.  Here in New Hampshire, around 1999, a registered nurse took her own life becasue she had dibilitating firbro myalgia.  She couldn't take the daily pain any longer. And in the Genuis Book of records, a man who had hiccups for years finally shot himself in the head because he couldn't lead a normal life.  I also had a neighbor who took her own life because she was a cronic depressive and couldn't find happiness after a brutal divorce.
Do I think God turn these human beings away? No---not on their lives.
Love and Light--cat

identcat,

Those are compelling stories.  I agree with you and Chum that sometimes life can be unbearably hard.  We all could be a little kinder to those among us who are suffering.  We may be their last memory...isn't that so? 

We never know if someone we meet on this day is having the worse day of their life, do we?  How could we know?

Chum, soul annihilation is one idea of yours which comes up often.  However, what if your soul could merge with all that is beautiful in the universe? 

What if you could pass beyond all the heavens and hells of our imagination and merge with a great light of love and understanding?  That would be an experience of ecstacy that could be eternal. 

Of what use would annihilation be then?  Assimilation into a greater LOVE may be the cure for what ails some souls. 

Perhaps that is a choice all of us can make on some level if we really want to be part of a greater existence.

love, blink

if a person was just a face he/she would automatically seize to exist when something happened to his/her face..but such thing doesnt happen, does it? this means a person is not his/her face.
i worked with  beautiful beautiful women with one arm, a young baby faced man with no right leg and a hunchback...a blind guy who has to walk with somebody else everyday to his bus..there is no way i can tell how gorgeaous they are with that smile on their face each time i see them..he cant see yet he smiles so generaously.. he recognizes voices so well you dont even say who you are after you meet him once.
*****************
Say what you will, but I'd rather be DEAD than blind any day.
I'm a solitary person by preference, and my independence is my life. (I wouldn't be able to handle having to be led around by other people.)
Not to mention, everything I love in life, requires vision - I'm VERY visually oriented.
Top this off with the fact that there's glaucoma in my family. One reason I keep a sawed-off shotgun on the premises, and I like to think I'd have the "ballz" to use it if I had to.
You know, one of my greatest fears, is that I have a "yellow streak" in my character - COWARDICE - that would prevent me from taking action if the need arose. (Imagine how awful it would be, if the only thing "keeping you going" was your own wretched fear of death..!) As it is, I haven't faced such a test of courage in my life to date, so I DON'T rightly know how I'd react! And not knowing, BOTHERS me - truth be told. (Hopefully, such a "character test" isn't in the offing for me..!)

B-man

Hi Ive had 2 minor strokes but if i had the big one, if i survived, i would will myself to die and i would not eat i would do everything i could to end my life .I would no way want to live being paralysed and helpless, and i love my children but if i was in that state what good would i be to them.God bless juditha