Things live, things die..

Also people who eat meat really should shut the fuck up about killing animals lmao.

...

Let me use an extreme example that happened with me at work this spring.

I had a woman, and for HIPAA purposes we're going to call her "Apple", as a patient of a 911 call I answered. Apple was around 80 years old, and lived in a very rural area, far removed from society, where you'd need to travel rough dirt roads to get to. When we checked her medical history, Apple was suffering from:

- (In the past) Received a Mastectomy
- Colon cancer, which then also spread to her heart and brain
- Multiple sclerosis
- Alzheimer's
- To top it off, a stroke victim.

Apple has had a rough go. She lost her husband, Pear, back in the 1940's. Everytime she was moved or touched too quickly, she was screaming in pain. Which is why when we took her in the ambulance, and drove down those dirt and rock roads, she was in agony. We could not get answers about Apple's life, she was too busy either screaming, or psychotically pleading with her family Grape, Orange, Pineapple, and Melon to wake up, it's time for breakfest. Apple wasn't with Grape, Orange, Pineapple, or Melon. But she thought she was.

To top this all off, the family she lived with was dirt poor. She actually lived in an ex-sharecropping house. This family was going under to treat apple.



This is a true story. This is a patient I was trying to help save in a 911 call. It was a patient, but she was hardly a human being. She was a bunch of bundles up nerves that was doing it's best to destroy itself from the inside. She was psychotic break downs, screaming agony, and otherwise confusion and depression. And she shouldn't have to live through it anymore. She's a reality that a great deal of families never want to face.

Any case is unique and deserve its own thoughts, the decision of ending the life of any living thing shouldn't be made through an emotional process but using logic. Showing empathy and wanting hoping for things to live is good, but empathy won't magically make an injured animal feel better.

You can either end its agony, or let it wander into the wild, painfuly moving its injured body, getting rekt by other animals if it's a territorial species, or getting eaten by a predator and suffering a bit more before it finaly dies. That's what would happen to pretty much any injured wild animal. Any other story of a wild animal surviving an injury and living a happy life is because you watched too many disney movies with talking animals.

A pet, on the other side, is a different matter, you can ease its pain in a safe environment, showing it love and care and wait for its natural death. But it can also be hard to see your beloved pet suffering every moments of its day, and not showing any sign of joy whatsoever... Sometimes euthanasia is the "human" solution.

Human beings are a more complicated matter. It's not only about the dying person, it's about its entourage as well. Some people would like to live no matter what, some people would prefer to die instead of inflicting their regression and disease to their family etc... Because taking care of a seriously sick person you love can be psychologically very hard. Some people want to go before losing all dignity, some want to stay until their last moments of lucidity...
Euthanasia isn't "more inhuman" than boxing up old and sick people in "specialized institutes" until they die, alone and considered like a "job to accomplish" for people that doesn't give a fuck about them.

It's complicated, but everything has to die at some point. Life is a beautiful thing, but sometimes it's better to go before it turns into a nightmare.


Edit :

Actually I've some personnal experience to add to that matter. Not that long ago my kitty (which is a ruthless hunter, she sometime brings 3 rodents in one day) bringed me a mouse she didn't kill in front of my door, the back of its body wasn't working properly anymore and its spine seemed fucked up. It couldn't walk straight, it was only able to stumble in circles, afraid and going to a certain death.
It put me in front of a dilemma : saving it, giving it food, a box, until it healed unproperly so it could never walk again. Letting it where it was until it painfully died on its own, or killing it.
After thinking for 10mins and seeing it wouldn't go any further, I put it gently on a sheet of paper, bringed it to the corner of my garden, under a tree, and crushed with the flat end of a log, in one strong & solid blow to destroy the brain. I had no mouse related surgical knowledge to slice its nervous system with a blade.
It didn't feel good at all, but it felt right.

@Deprav: I can relate to that, I've had such things happen a great many times. It hurts me to know that an animal will suffer for the rest of it's life, and although it's sad, killing a critically disabled animal seems like the right thing to do.

The other day as I was driving back to my house, I saw a half flattened squirrel, struggling along the edge of the road. I pulled over, and examined it to see if there was any hope of recovery. There wasn't... I took it a couple meters off the road and crushed its skull with a rock...

Zelda the sad part about you saying "Starvation is probably a harsher death than euthanasia" is that the number one cause of legal/illegal euthanasias is starvation...

I agree with animals and humans(in some cases). Animals have one basic function: Survive. Horses can't be running around with broken legs and sharks can't be eating without plenty of teeth. If they're at a point we're they're at no return, it's better to end it then to make them suffer.
As for humans, it depends. If the person themselves requests it, go ahead. You supposed to "help and serve the people". But, if let's say this person was in a coma with a low but possible chance of surviving but it's up to the family to decide. I've seen things like this happen before. Family's choose that their family members are put out of their misery instead of the actual person. When somebody else determines the fate of the euthanasia other the person who wants it, is when I think there's problem.

I'm pretty sure that isn't mercy killing its just negligence. Just because people call something euthanasia doesn't mean it can come under the same topic as the type of thing we are discussing.

you can end pain without killing something

Not usually cheaply. There is a point where it becomes an economic issue as well as an ethical one and not everyone can afford to give animals a pain free life so a pain free death sooner rather than a painful death later is sometimes a good alternative. Sure if you can it's best to give the animal to someone who can afford to look after it (probably a charity or something like that since I doubt anyone is going to want a near death pet which requires pain killers to exist happily), but that isn't always possible. It seems kind of harsh to say this but there is a point where the owners well being can come before their pets. As a species we treat domestic animals ridiculously well, its a symbiotic relationship where one of the members just has to be be cute and fluffy and try to stay out of trouble most of the time (obviously there are good and bad owners). So, when an animal is nearing the end of its life I think an owner who has cared for it for all its life (and probably saved it at least once) can make the decision to end the futile and essentially pointless struggle which the animal is going through.