Dear DoktorMo, it is not long (a few days)since I've begun to read through the net and as soon as I found your site I was very interested in it. The issues which form the subject of this letter are of much concern to me since I'm a neurologist and my very job is to relieve pains, namely cancer-pain . So I would like to write down my opinion and ask you to help me to make them clear if they are not provided you at least understand them. I was stimulated in taking part since the way that euthanasia and medically assisted suicide are addressed by most people taking part in the discussion the world over looks to me like the effort of putting a pyramid upside down and trying to maintain it standing on its apex. This happens because pre-exixting general rules written to control individual behavior are used for this issues before solving the problem of what is more important when conflicting with each other : the individual or the society? In my opinion, and it surely comes from my everyday effort of adapting Health Service's rigid rules to soft patients' needs, when it comes to this kind of patients , i.e. the terminally ill, individuals rights must prevail. Trying to clear this concept I believe that the first answer must be given to the following question: "Are (competent) human beings entitled to decide fully about their own life, or is this right somehow limited when it comes to decide very important issues like going on with life or taking one's life away?"

The other way round this question could sound like that: "is everybody's life a private property i.e. nobody else's than the living person or is it somehow (on religious or philosophical grounds) a public wealth to be defended by general rules also against the (competent)will of its (apparent unique) owner?". In both cases I would say that life is a private property and there must be no one interfering with the style and way that individual man chose for their own. If we admit that life is a private property and there's nobody else (God or Nation, sib or lover)entitled to interfere than the decision of putting an end to one's life is a right, the right to die: if a man is desabled to the point that he cannot perform suicide the problem is how his right to die can be accomplished. If a human society only formulates the rights of its citizen and makes no effort for its weak and poor members to get them realized this means that human rights are in fact disattended.( In every time and society strong and rich people succeed in getting what they deserve and often much more) So if the right to die is a real right we must wonder whether those who ask for it get an answer (by public Health Services?) and this must come before the problem of who among the members of a society is intended to give this answer i.e. to help peolple die. If we do not identifiy aforehead that it must be e.g.doctors or nurses who help people die, than maybe there will be less identification of killers in one or the other category of health personnel and principle of right to die could find less opponents.

yours sincerely Alberto Gottlieb MD