Can you imagine the feeling, being unable to protest, when those that had been entrusted with your care decide it would be easier to take your life?
You misread my post. I argued the exact opposite in terms of costs. If a doctor has been told to let the no-hopers go because keeping them alive is a waste of money, what kind of attitude does that create? The emphasis on providing good care and keeping patients alive (what doctors in the current system aspire to do) is significantly lowered.
I have already addressed this point. Nature is indifferent to suffering, but humans are not. Indeed, if we were, this whole debate on mercy-killings would not happen.
As for the Spartans, how common has their ethos been in history. As Aristotle said of their culture:
"It is the standards of civilized men not of beasts that must be kept in mind, for it is good men not beasts who are capable of real courage.
Those like the Spartans ... turn men into machines and in devoting themselves to one single aspect of city's life, end up making them inferior even in that."
First the question is more likely to be the opposite, meaning imagine how someone would feel if they protesting to have an end to suffering only to be ignored. The fact that people live with pain all their life, you make it sound like the act of martyrs and saints, you say they are go on to live 'fulfilling lives'. Actually they live pain filled lives for many it is a constant misery. I am not sure if your interest is in the person suffering and what they would want or if your more concerned with letting society off the hook. Either way is extreme to me, I don't think society has a right to tell me or anyone else that they don't have a right to end their suffering and die with dignity as opposed to living as a vegetable or worse yet being completely aware but having zero mobility, not allowing an end to someone's suffering because society does not want the responsibility is just as fascist a notion as society deciding I cannot live, its just justified under the guise of 'compassion'. The Dutch have no problem allowing for assisted suicide and euthanasia and it is quite humane indeed. Norse is asking this question:
"Logically, again, show me what the genetically unfit and sick contribute to the survival of the species. For many, it's quite literally nothing. Thus why sustain them?"
Logically there is no reason to sustain them outside of judeo-christian notions of what is good and what is evil. Someone can live in a society like Norse advocates and still feel compassion as a human being, someone can live in a society like the one you admire and as we see feel no compassion at all nor have any love of what life is at all. To say that it is humane to leave a human being like a carcass incontinent, forever incapacitated and in constant need of 24hr is an odd notion in my book. Please if you would like that for yourself then fine but I would hope that someone would spare me the indignity. I mean really is that what it means to live in your book? Is that all life means to you? To breath and shit and nothing else? Urgh!
You misunderstood my point about care and cost. Facilities do not want the cost lowered, its not in their interest to cut costs, they benefit from keeping people in those states as they are paid as long as people are in those states. Norse's suggestion would be their worse nightmare. The doctors keep patients alive yes but what of QUALITY of life? Can they provide that? No. This notion that any life is worth more than quality of life is absurd to say the least.
There were lot's of things said of Sparta. The Athenians were rivals with Sparta but they were in fact admired by many many Greeks and so I would take the quote with a grain of salt after all they were not inferior in what they devoted themselves to were they? No they were the best, unequalled. Even today we use their military model in elite forces. And I'll tell you one thing I would have rather been a Spartan woman than an Athenian, they held property, were educated and claimed a freedom no other Greek female could ever have enjoyed. You judge their society through the eyes of a modern when in actuality you should have a sense of the time they lived in when all these morals you exalt had no bearing, for example slaves played a major part in Greek civilization not just Sparta and this form of eugenics was also practiced in other parts of Greece including Athens it just was not mandated by law. Sparta declined because of declining population and the slackening of their rigorous discipline not because of it. Read Paul Cartledge an authority in world classics and specializing in Sparta he offers a very balanced account of their society.
But anyway one aspect of this you forget is someone can be incapacitated while still very young and look at a lifetime of complete suffering, mental suffering not physical. A spinal cord victim doesn't feel anything at all but they can live in such mental anguish and this society we live in would have it continue for a lifetime no matter what they wanted for themselves. Its horrible and unconscionable.
That's what I will tell the guards at the gate and if that doesn't work I'll offer them sex!