Two Sisters Kill Their Demented, Ill Father

Yahoo’s lead news today is about two sisters in their sixties who “murdered” their 85 year old father who had dementia, cancer and multiple other maladies. The thrust of the article is that they would have gone scot free had they not both had a relationship with the same man who they told about their act and who reported them to the police. The article celebrates that man who turned them in and demonizes the women who carried out the act.

The sisters will both go to jail for life. And, Yahoo News and all its readers will celebrate retribution for their dastardly act. But, many human beings who reach their eighties and nineties and are overcome by the horrors of dementia and the extreme pain of cancer and other incurable diseases and who dream of ending their lives if only there were a way to do so. The sad fact is that suicide is very hard to successfully carry out, and the assistance of other, as in this case, is deemed murder in our society. The result is that many older people with terminal and painful illness must suffer through years of agony before finally dying.

One doesn’t recover from dementia, nor from most forms of advanced cancer. In both cases, the afflicted suffer years of endless pain and dependence, often banished to warehouse nursing homes. The deeply religious deem all this God’s way. Relatives and friends shudder at the end of life tragedy

These sisters who helped their father die should be celebrated, not put in jail for murder. There is something terribly wrong with societies’ deaf ear and blind eye to end of life extreme suffering.

Assisted suicide for the terminally ill and suffering should be celebrated and legal, instead of scorned and outlawed.