Email to my Professor

What do you guys think?

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This is nothing against you personally, I think you are a good professor, but the articles you have chosen for us to read for class really make my blood boil. This latest article, for tomorrow's class, literally made me sick before I even read it. All I had to do is read the caption. "When motor neurone disease became too much to bear, GP Elizabeth Curry downed some pills with a pint of gin and tonic. Why can't others be allowed to choose when to go, asks her daughter, Hazel Curry." Articles like this take us down very a slippery slope. If society views it not only alright, but as I believe in the case of this article rather noble for people "suffering" from diseases or disabilities to commit suicide then it isn't very far fetched to deem it ok for parents to be allowed to murder their disabled children in order to end the "suffering" which they may or not be experiancing. This is beginning to happen more and more frequently and I am affraid that as it increases in frequency it will become more and more accepted by society. One of the most famous cases is the murder of Katie McCarron, who had been diagnosed with autism. She wouldn't take her nap and her mother (a doctor) placed a plastic bag over her head and smothered her in order to end both of their suffering. Who's to say Katie was ever suffering? We'll never know now--she's dead.

As I get older I am very likely to become less and less mobile. Their may become a point where I will need quite a bit of assistance to accomplish activities of daily living. Am I then a burden on society and those around me? Would I not deserve to live? Of course I do. The thought of killing me off just sounds ridiculous doesn't it? But you see, where do we as a society draw the line...

I don't know, I hope you don't view me as over reacting. I'm just sick and tired at the lack of value that is placed on the lives of people with disabilities. Maybe if we weren't as marginalized by society Elizabeth Curry wouldn't have seen the need to kill herself. So she couldn't see patients anymore? Does that mean that she is completely useless? There were still things that she could do from home I am sure.

This quote really makes me sick: "It's sad that other dignified human beings such as Diane Pretty, who don't have the same resources, can't end their lives at the same point. Leaving it longer means a year of dribbling in a chair, paralysed, while your mind ticks away normally." I drool on very rare occasions. What does that say about me?

Cheryl