Tanada wrote:If you really want to make death for prisoners quick and painless the easy option would be to inject a large dose of any opiate drug, Morphine, Heroin or so on which stops respiration instantly while rendering the recipient euphoric and rapidly unconscious. I shall never understand why using the same cocktail of drugs used to euthanize pets was chosen when a much faster and more certain single drug method was available but then again many government decisions do not make sense to me.
Sounds great to me (should be backed up by adequate testing and monitoring of actual prisoner behavior while dying, IMO).
To me, the ENTIRE moral question, whether it is food animals or people on death row, found guilty of heinous crimes, it's about minimizing suffering. If animals are well treated and terminated compassionately with minimal suffering (if any), then much of the "moral outrage" argument of vegans goes away, in my opinion.
Same thing for criminals: If a multiple or serial axe murderer, etc. is put to death without suffering, then the whole "revenge" theory goes out the window, IMO. (Making it cost effective by stopping the vast majority of endless court cases taking decades to resolve is another issue).
In fact, as someone who is approaching being a senior citizen, I wish ***I*** has the right to choose painless or nearly painless assisted suicide in a legally acceptable manner (re societal rules), when I get some terrible disease, and don't want to put myself OR loved ones through the emotional ordeal (and lots of pain for me) of dying over months or years. Not to mention the horrendous expense to society, presuming there are LOTS of societal "good" that could be done through various OTHER government programs (if insurance funds are used on me, against my wishes, that's still funds that can't be used on someone else, say a sick person with a good
prognosis).
To me, the height of immorality, re rights of people of their own deaths from disease, is from the state, who let me minimize the suffering of all the family cats, once it was hopeless or the family judged that the quality of life for the cat was BAD and getting worse, but won't let people make the same call FOR THEMSELVES, while they're still healthy enough not to be mentally debilitated by their disease.
If you think that's ludicrous. Fine. Try having a disease causing significant intermittent pain, which doctors are helpless to truly diagnose, much less effectively treat, for four decades or more (so I have an idea of what the horror of true unending pain as one approaches death might be like, vs. a very abstract concept), and THEN judge me harshly for my opinions re people having the right to CHOOSE for themselves. (NOT dictate what anyone else should do).
I blame religion and religious tradition for a lot of the needless suffering. Given that modern science eliminates the need for "magical sky people" to make reality "work" for educated or rational people, it's past time we moved by that nonsense (again, letting EACH person make their own choices, whether it's going to church, or how they die).
Oh, and sorry if you're say, a serial murderer or lifelong child molester, but at SOME point, personal responsibility needs to be "a thing", again, IMO. So if society decides it would rather execute you and spend a LOT of money saved on helping people -- in an imperfect world, I vote for society.
Given the track record of the perma-doomer blogs, I wouldn't bet a fast crash doomer's money on their predictions.