You wouldn't treat an animal this way . . .

I've watched a lot of TV over the past two weeks, since the only thing I can do at the moment is sit still and look straight ahead. The other day I was watching a vet programme, and there was a dog that had been hit by a car. The vet told the owner that the dog's injuries meant he was going to be left in chronic pain, and that obviously wasn't fair, so the only option was to euthanise him (his words).

It's not like this hasn't struck me before, but nonetheless I did just sit there for a minute, dumbstruck. Then I got furious. So it's not fair to keep a dog alive in chronic pain (and I completely agree, it's not), but it's OK to expect humans to live with pain indefinitely? Pain that's never going to go away, never going to change, never going to get any easier to bear? What, does the fact that we can comprehend the pain better than an animal, can identify it's source and quantify it's effects, mean that we deserve to endure it for longer? That's our punishment for our 'higher functioning' is it? The more you can understand something - not just at the base, instinctual level, but intellectually as well - the more you shuold have to put up with it? An animal, that has no concept of the implications of it's situation, the problems it's going to face, how long it could go on for, is put out of it's misery. But a human, who can understand all those things and so much more, is left to suffer.

And if the human in question decides that actually they aren't willing to do that, that they're going to take matters into their own hands, society jumps on them, saying what a terrible thing that would be, that it's weak, selfish, morally wrong, a terrible waste of a life. I'll tell you what's a waste of life - an intelligent, fun-loving person with their whole life ahead of them, suddenly unable to do any of the things she used to, unable even to sit, eat or sleep without pain, just because some idiot in a car couldn't keep their eyes on the road. That's a waste of a life.

Yet this society, which claims to care so much about everyone and everything, claims to abhor cruelty or suffering of any kind, thinks that's OK. People who haven't been there - who often don't even know anyone who has - and have no right to judge, think it's OK. Well if it's so OK, why don't you try it? You try living with endless pain, waking up day after day in agony, knowing it's never going to change, and just see how you feel. And it's not just about people in my situation either - what about people facing terminal illness or degenerative disease - they're in the same boat. You think that's OK too? And don't start with the 'life is sacred' bullshit - it's the QUALITY of life that should be sacred, not the mere fact of a beating heart and recognizable brain function.

No-one should be left to suffer - animal or human. It's cruel, it's inhumane and it's unforgivable. It makes me sick to live in a society that forces it's loved ones to die a slow agonising death, or live an endless miserable life, rather than give them the gift of setting them free.