In many other countries with good socialized medical systems such as the United Kingdom, France and, yes, Cuba the individual is a priceless being. Expenses for adequate treatment of a very sick or terminally ill patient are fully or mostly covered by the state.

The United States and many other countries in dire straits often leave the dead to bury the dead. The indignity of being told the out-of-sight cost of a major heart operation to a a person on welfare must be unbearable to the patient and his family.

But whatever country you are in, the state has no right to strip an individual of the right to die with as much dignity as is possible. No religious dictates or rubber stamp law should ever be used to deny a person the right of euthanasia.

We all must die regardless of whether we can artificially keep a man’s blood warm. To keep a man’s heart pumping through artificial means can be an invasion of privacy of the person’s family or the patient himself. Intravenously feeding an unconscious person incapable of eating on his own may well be cruel and unusual punishment to family members and the spouse. Making a person bear unbearable pain of a degenerate disease may be a form of torture.

Whether we find ourselves viced by a high- or low-standard health care system, the choice of carrying on life or dieing with dignity must not be the choice of the state. It must be sacrosanct to the involved family.

Euthanasia is an act regarding the welfare of a single individual, not an attempt to alter the gene pool through selective breeding (or killing). People have no right usually to tell us who to marry or befriend. They also, by common decency, have no right or obligation to orchestrate our death.