As a retired Registered Nurse, who has spent many years nursing in geriatric wards, I have heard many discussions on the topic of euthanasia.

May I suggest, before anyone decries it, that the following points may be taken into consideration?

1) Please go to work in that environment... not for a short pastoral visit, which often makes one feel better (in many ways) than the patient visited.

Get your hands dirty for a few weeks, and physically help many of those poor souls!

2) How arrogant can some people be to claim that they know the Will of God? If anything, surely, one's allotted life span is His Will.

The Hour of ones Birth, and the Moment of ones Death... be it assisted or not.

3) I cannot understand any religion, which preaches that there is a much better place for
us to aim for, be it Heaven, Paradise, etc.

And then preaches that it is A Sin for us, to help anyone get there.

Please, please, before I get to the stage of lying stupefied in my own urine and excrement, the open wounds of bed-sores on hips, back, heels, and unable to turn, I implore.

Almighty God to find someone, or indeed have the strength myself, to end such suffering... for suffering it is... and let me die in peace and dignity.

E Baker (SRN), Tauranga