Interestingly, family pressure to euthanize is a major practical concern for countries with euthanasia.
The point is actually that there is no distinction between taking your life own or someone else's. If consent is our metric, dueling is permissible (with societal pressure safeguards, if you'd like). Consent is irrelevant, the issue is that intentional killing should be a relic of a more barbaric past. The cure (resolving psychological distress over having a painful death by being willingly poisoned, often in front of your family) is worse than the disease.
Ultimately, you're saying that it's permissible to kill when a terminally ill patient would "live through misery", where someone who is not the patient defines what constitutes "misery". Am I understanding that correctly? On what grounds would that not apply to, for example, a severely depressed homeless person suffering from substance abuse, who a doctor might judge has much more suffering in store for them than a cancer patient with access to painkillers?
The point is actually that there is no distinction between taking your life own or someone else's. If consent is our metric, dueling is permissible (with societal pressure safeguards, if you'd like). Consent is irrelevant, the issue is that intentional killing should be a relic of a more barbaric past. The cure (resolving psychological distress over having a painful death by being willingly poisoned, often in front of your family) is worse than the disease.
Ultimately, you're saying that it's permissible to kill when a terminally ill patient would "live through misery", where someone who is not the patient defines what constitutes "misery". Am I understanding that correctly? On what grounds would that not apply to, for example, a severely depressed homeless person suffering from substance abuse, who a doctor might judge has much more suffering in store for them than a cancer patient with access to painkillers?