what about letting nature take its course? I guess to me that would depend on the circumstances. someone being bitten by a snake and denying them ant-venin or a heroin addict whos overdosing..denying them narcan...yeah..i'd think it morally equal. but what about a cancer patient? a person that could live longer by taking terrible treatments? i think in some of those cases its kinder to just let nature take its course.

Well, of course, expecially if it is a painful/disgusting/sucky way to die. But I will say that my viewpoint has always been that we shouldn't be so afraid of death. Medicine is a great thing, but dying is just how it's supposed to be sometimes. It's part of population control. We should have some dignity about it instead of scrambling in the opposite direction.

My health insurance costs $10,000 a year. Is it morally acceptable for my neighor to not purchase his own insurance and still expect to receive the same medical care as I do for free (actually, it is my taxes that pay for his care)

Death is always a tragedy - to allow it is always wrong, and morally equivalent to murder. I've read a lot about "nature taking its course" and "natural way". At 23, I had an appendicitis. Some have it younger than I did, if they have it. For the most part, your chances of surviving without surgery are bleak. Should I have died? It IS natural for me to have died. Any denial of treatment, for ANY form of dying, whether it be tuberculosis, polio, AIDS, cancer, or even aging is unacceptable, if treatment exists. To make any other judgement is to make an arbitrary decision about which things are for some weird reason "not natural" and which things are. We should fear and hate death. Every great achievement of mankind has come out of fearing, hating, and avoiding involuntary death. People now have longer, healthier lives, and some people who might have been goners doomed to horrible suffering deaths now live decades longer in health and happiness and spend this time with their loved ones, and share their experiences and their lives with the rest of us. Even our fantasies about various afterlife scenarios, from Heaven/Hell to reincarnation, are really reducable to us simply not wanting to die, fearing it, hating it, willing to believe that somehow we will persist and NOT mean nothing afterwards, rather than the obvious alternative. It is always good to fear, hate, avoid death. We must rage against the dying of the light. If we don't do that, why not die now?

yes

I have worked all of my life in the medical profession so I say a limited yes. Limited by a couple of factors: 1) is the person going to have a protracted life of pain if life saving measures are implemented, 2) is the person worthy of life. I.e., to me a pedophile or rapist is not and I would stand there and watch them die, 3) is the person going to be horribly disfigured or rendered a quadriplegic for the rest of their life if I save them to the point that it hinders them? I would think that for someone who has the skills to save the person, this could be equated to killing them yourself. Again, I would factor in the above when making that decision. Excellent question!

There are worse things than death. Being afraid and raging against the ONLY inevitable thing in life seems sad to me. We used to wash and wrap or dead ourselves. It was a family obligation, an act of love and connected us with our loved ones who had passed on. Now we have handed the work of dying over to nursing homes and mortuaries. We have lost a lot. We have lost our connection to our mortality and our humaness. People are denied cures and treatments every day by insurance companies. Can you make the case for murder against these powerhouses?

I would say that it is equal to actually killing them yourself.