Today there is a taboo about death. It seems morbid and dark to speak about death and if one does speak of death those who love them fear that they have a death wish. This has not always been the case
The Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius said in his philosophical diary Meditations said “Do not despise death but be well content with it, since this too in one of those things nature wills” (Aurelius)
Studs Terkel mentioned in 2001 in “Will the Circle be Unbroken” that people want a sort of drive-by grieving. Nobody wants you to carry one about it. They want you to deposit it like you do in a bank. (Terkel)
Back in Plato’s time there was a different attitude of death than that of modern times “Death is one of two things. Either it is annihilation, and the dead have not consciousness of anything or, as we are told, it is really a change-a migration of the soul from this place to another. (Plato)
Many of the attitude of death today may be due to the way death is treated impersonal Kubler-Ross wrote in “The Fear of Death”, “ Dying becomes lonely and impersonal because the patient is often taken out of his familiar environment and rushed to an emergency room” , she goes on to write “when a patient is severely ill, he is often treated like a person with no right to an opinion” (Kubler-Ross) The modern attitude about death are things to take into consideration when approaching the topic of assisted suicide.
Assisted suicide is when a physicical provides information and the patient provides the performs the act. In the Netherlands it is legal and Euthanasia guidelines have been drawn up by a common consensus, which give informed patients the opportunity to have death administer to them. Even the Dutch Reformed Church has a policy known as “Euthanasia and the Ministry” that explains the difference between regular and assisted suicide. In this country professional explore several different alternatives to assisted
