Euthanasia

TO Live and Let

Die

Chantal Sebire is a French woman whose request for legal euthanasia was rejected by the high court of Dyon, France. Sebire was found dead on March 20, 2008, two days after the court made its ruling.Sebire, a former school teacher, suffered from Esthesioneuroblastoma, a rare, painful and disfiguring facial tumor disorder. Reportedly, her extensive facial tumors took her sight, as well as her senses of smell and taste. According to Sebire, she endured hours-long attacks of excruciating pain.

Aruna Shanbaug was sexually assaulted 36 years ago by the ward boy of the hospital, where she used to work. Currently, she is suffering from a brain drain and not able to speak, hear and see. The doctors who have been treating her since the last 36 years said that Aruna Shanbaug is brain dead and there is no chance of her getting recovered. She has been lying unconscious in a Mumbai Hospital for the last 36 years. Should Aruna be allowed to die or be left is such a state?

Eluana Englaro (November 25, 1970 – February 9, 2009) was an Italian woman from Lecco, who entered a persistent vegetative state on January 18, 1992, following a car accident, and subsequently became the focus of a court battle between supporters and opponents of euthanasia. Shortly after Englaro had been fed with a probe, her father requested to have her feeding tube removed and to allow her to die "naturally". The authorities initially refused his request, but this decision was later reversed after seventeen years.

Mr. Sampedro was a 25-year-old ship fisherman when he dived into the shallow ocean waters near his home and broke his back in August 1968. Doctors informed him that his paralysis was incurable. For years, he fought unsuccessfully in the courts to be helped to die. Tired of struggling, ampedro died on Monday 12 January 1998 in Boiro, Spain, from potassium cyanide poisoning.

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