you cant be specific without being general.

this post is about the news today concerning right to die, right to live. the story is here.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-19249680
A man paralysed from the neck down has lost his High Court case to allow doctors to end his life without fear of prosecution.

so a bit of a take care with this blog post because of content warning.

I stumbled into an argument about the news that a paralyzed man isn't allowed to die earlier. I seemed to be in the minority, of one, to think that it was the correct decision. I think, if it gets flipped on its head a bit, the story becomes different.

If within the UK and this society that we live in there is an assumption that paralysis reduces the persons life to such an extent that there is no longer any quality of life, then that is a dangerous and often untrue assumption. One only needs to look at the paralymics to see the counter argument. The quality of a persons life is surely determined by the care they receive and the enabling aspects of that care to be holistic and look after emotional, spiritual as well as physical needs. Again, its social model ideology that I am thinking of, that if a person doesn't have any quality of life, should we be looking at the persons impairment or the ability of the person to engage within society at whatever level they are able to?

I also want to make the point that if we allow this person, or any of the other people who wish to have the right to die, then it sets a dangerous precedent  within law to say that when someone becomes disabled, their quality of life reduces and its ok to think about death for this person (just imagine what the DWP would do with that...) 

Although, the people I was having this debate with couldn't see the link. They seemed to think that this one case should be dealt with in isolation and it wouldnt have any impact on any future law or policy. However, I don't think its possible to be specifc without thinking more generally. Nothing happens in isolation, everything has a consequence, every action an equal and opposite reaction.

In this case, you cant be specific without being general. The general right to life debate applies here, it cant be got away from. The actions from this event has an impact on many thousands of others. It has to be considered in general, as well as being specific.