I'd happily have had Shipman as my personal GP, though I'd prefer to be offered the choice when to be topped and by what means. I personally am in favour of voluntary euthanasia but opposed to the death penalty. For those who advocate involuntary euthanasia (ie. murder) of paedophiles, just remember that there was a lot of controversy in the Netherlands when a recidivist paedophile sought and was given euthanasia to evade being punished for a recent spate of offences. His victims felt they had been cheated. If you have been a victim of sexual abuse (as against merely being a parent of a victim) you are likely to feel cheated of justice if the offender faces exactly the same penalty for abusing one child as for abusing hundreds, because in effect you are diluting the punishment the more victims there are. With a prison sentence, the length reflects the number and seriousness of offences, broadly speaking - though in Britain, serial offenders still get proportionately much less severe sentences than first time offenders who have committed a single offence. Equally if the victim is female, the sentences are consistently less severe!
Euthanasia should be allowed for consenting adults for untreatable and unbearable chronic pain, untreatable chronic depression and serious terminal illnesses. Those who have chosen a religious lifestyle can simply refuse to participate, or have any right to euthanasia curbed by the law specifying that only those who registered as non-religious in the last Census are entitled. This would not violate their human rights as euthanasia violates God's law. For non-believers God's law is a human creation and therefore denying non-believers euthanasia on religious grounds imposes religious beliefs and the Crusader lifestyle upon us, which is what the House of Lords currently demands. As an increasingly militant atheist, very much radicalised by the actions and threats of the English Christian evangelical right - who I now refer to as Crusaders because that is precisely what they are in the political sense - I find this increasingly unacceptable when the State has made so many compromises to accommodate others' religious beliefs. If they believe in the right to life, which is their argument against voluntary euthanasia, it should be universal. Where they demand, imply or make death threats against those they disapprove of, they, like non-Crusaders should be liable to prosecution for incitement - not as at present where they cannot apparently be prosecuted unless they make an actual attempt! Odd then that when Muslims do the same, they face imprisonment.
ukel: 
