Suicide Pods Now Legal In Switzerland, Providing Users With a Painless Death (globalnews.ca) 363
Switzerland is giving the green light to so-called "suicide capsules" -- 3-D printed pods that allow people to choose the place where they want to die an assisted death. Global News reports: The country's medical review board announced the legalization of the Sarco Suicide Pods this week. They can be operated by the user from the inside. Dr. Philip Nitschke, the developer of the pods and founder of Exit International, a pro-euthanasia group, told SwissInfo.ch the machines can be "towed anywhere for the death" and one of the most positive features of the capsules is that they can be transported to an "idyllic outdoor setting."
Currently, assisted suicide in Switzerland means swallowing a capsule filled with a cocktail of controlled substances that puts the person into a deep coma before they die. But Sarco pods -- short for sarcophagus -- allow a person to control their death inside the pod by quickly reducing internal oxygen levels. The person intending to end their life is required to answer a set of pre-recorded questions, then press a button that floods the interior with nitrogen. The oxygen level inside is quickly reduced from 21 per cent to one per cent. After death, the pod can be used as a coffin. [...]
Nitschke said his method of death is painless, and the person will feel a little bit disoriented and/or euphoric before they lose consciousness. He said there are only two capsule prototypes in existence, but a third machine is being printed now, and he expects this method to become available to the Swiss public next year.
Currently, assisted suicide in Switzerland means swallowing a capsule filled with a cocktail of controlled substances that puts the person into a deep coma before they die. But Sarco pods -- short for sarcophagus -- allow a person to control their death inside the pod by quickly reducing internal oxygen levels. The person intending to end their life is required to answer a set of pre-recorded questions, then press a button that floods the interior with nitrogen. The oxygen level inside is quickly reduced from 21 per cent to one per cent. After death, the pod can be used as a coffin. [...]
Nitschke said his method of death is painless, and the person will feel a little bit disoriented and/or euphoric before they lose consciousness. He said there are only two capsule prototypes in existence, but a third machine is being printed now, and he expects this method to become available to the Swiss public next year.
Good news (Score:5, Insightful)
This is good stuff actually. It's amazing that we give our animals a better death than humans. Especially in the case of terminal illness.
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Yep. This is fantastic.
I just found out that only a few miles from me there's a green burial park. No headstones, no embalming, just a simple wood or cardbood coffin, lots of fields and trees with paths between them.
Combine these two? Sounds like a pretty amazing way to say goodbye to the world to me.
Re:Good news (Score:5, Informative)
I agree, aside from the whole pod part. I'm not clear on what the point is - seems like an expensive way to go out with a bizarre sci-fi sarcophagus bang. Which, I suppose if that's your thing, why not? I mean, you only get to die once, why not have some fun with it? It's certainly less messy than a lot of options.
When my time comes though, I think I'll opt for sitting under a tree, perhaps in a park like yours, with a simple nitrogen-fed "oxygen" mask. Securely fastened, because I do *not* want to wake up with my brain only half-dead from interrupted oxygen deprivation. Hmm... I begin to see the point of a pod. Just seems a shame to cut yourself off from the world before you leave it.
I also seem to recall that Oregon recently legalized human mulching for body disposal - I like that idea far more than being buried in a sci-fi movie prop. Mulch me, and maybe plant plant a nice shrub or something in my remains as a nice symbolic marker of my passing back into the world.
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Oregon got the idea from watching the movie Fargo.
Re:Good news (Score:5, Informative)
You seem to be missing an important piece of information:
Your body can only detect "suffocation" in the form of a build-up of CO2 - e.g. from being physically unable to breathe, or being trapped somewhere that your exhaled CO2 can build up. Importantly, you have NO way to detect an oxygen shortage - it's actually a serious risk of high altitude work, or any work where nitrogen or other invisible odorless gasses can build up and displace oxygen.
In a pure nitrogen atmosphere, such as a pod or mask supplied with a fresh flow of pure nitrogen, you'll be able to breathe normally, so there's no CO2 buildup to make you feel like you're suffocating. Instead you'll rapidly get "drunk" and stupid as your brain shuts down from oxygen deprivation, and pass out in well under a minute* without ever having suspected anything was wrong. A few minutes later you'll be dead.
This isn't theoretical stuff - we've lost, and almost lost, a whole lot of people to oxygen deprivation. It's a well understood process, and scary stuff precisely because you get no warning. The reason airlines tell you to always put your own oxygen mask on first in an emergency is because you won't realize you're suffocating, you won't be gasping for breath, you'll feel perfectly fine and then pass out halfway through getting the increasingly complicated mask properly secured onto Little Jimmy's face.
* you won't last nearly as long as you would holding your breath, because in an oxygen-free environment your lungs actually work in reverse, with oxygen diffusing out of your blood and into the air.
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Nitschke added that people who use the capsule will not feel any type of suffocation or choking in the low-oxygen environment. Rather, they will “feel their best.”
I could use a pick-me-up. Is there a model where death is optional?
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"... everyone!" - Was that meat to be a Futurama reference? You sound like Farnworth to me.
Suicide Booth 25c [knowyourmeme.com]
It looks more like a cryo-capsule though.
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Re:Good news (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re: Good news (Score:5, Insightful)
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THIS!
We call it the "department of corrections" because it sounds nice, but any effort to make it actually corrective will be rejected if it makes it less punitive. This attitude even extends to execution.
old sparky (Score:2)
old sparky
Re:Good news (Score:5, Informative)
I've advocated for this for years.
Either that or a big ol' shot of fentanyl, like 50 times the usual dose. You'd go out like a light and never feel a damn thing.
I mean, people are literally dropping dead in the street from fentanyl all the damn time; it's seems like an obvious solution to quickly and painlessly kill a person.
But no, they need super-expensive drugs that are hard to get and a fancy machine to administer them. Why?
Just give them a monster dose of fentanyl and that's that.
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Notably, helium intended for balloons often has enough oxygen added to support life in order to avoid terrible accidents when people inhale it.
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Notably, helium intended for balloons often has enough oxygen added to support life in order to avoid terrible accidents when people inhale it.
You have any citations for that? Because I think it's B.S.
At most you'd pass out from inhaling it and then you'd stop putting the balloon up to your pie-hole. Normal breathing would resume.
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I don't think a helium-filled gas chamber would quite have the same effect for the family of the victim(s) if the prisoner suddenly did have some last words to impart.
Re:Good news (Score:5, Informative)
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Same with nitrogen - it can leak, not have enough pressure or whatever. It also has a long time for someone to regret it.
Just like a shotgun cartridge may be defective. But it it works, death would be much faster, the pellets would probably travel faster than the pain signal does, pretty much no time to regret it.
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Re:Good news (Score:5, Informative)
Physiology 101: Our feelings of air hunger are triggered by breathing CO2. If there's no CO2 accumulation in an area, but low oxygen, it's very easy to just pass out without knowing anything is wrong. It's one of the risks of welding with shielding gas (nitrogen or argon) in confined spaces.
Same applies to cabin depressurization in aircraft. If the decompression isn't obvious (explosives), pilots may not know there's anything wrong, just get loopy and lose the ability to think straight before passing out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re:Good news (Score:5, Informative)
https://www.csb.gov/hazards-of... [csb.gov]
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Only very rapid onset hypoxia will catch you unaware.
I imagine those who summited Everest without supplementary oxygen wished you just got loopy, though.
It's the breathing 120 times a minute and respiratory alkalosis that really take the fun out of the deal.
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Suffocation is a painless death? How does that work?
the body does not detect low oxygen levels but high carbon dioxide, so if you breath in pure nitrogen ther is no oxgen being turned into co2 for you to detectsyour body will think it is fine, and you will blissfully suffocate after loosing consciousness.
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Hypoxia presents as being disoriented and unable to think clearly, generally euphoric. They aren't desperately gasping for air, they are so out of it they don't realize what's happening. A hypoxic person with an oxygen mask right there will blissfully ignore the mask until they pass out. Even if told to put on the mask they likely will ignore that while giggling all the way. This is why under decompression conditions you take care of your mask first even if that seems 'selfish' because by the time you help
Re: Good news (Score:2)
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Our breathing drive is controlled by CO2 levels in our blood. In a non oxygen atmosphere where your lungs can continue to remove CO2, there is no unpleasant feeling of suffocation. Instead there is euphoria, unconsciousness, then death.
That can actually be a problem for divers and fighter pilots. They may not realize they're oxygen deprived until they are no longer thinking clearly enough to take remedial action (if then).
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It's not suffocation, which you would have got had you even bothered to read the summary. For fuck's sake, you lazy bastages....
It's hypoxia or oxygen deprivation. You still breathe, you're just not getting any O2. Your body feels panic/pain in the the presence of elevated carbon-dioxide levels. But it doesn't feel a damn thing with elevated Nitrogen levels.. This is why manholes have to be ventilated before workers head down.. Low O2 levels and they'll never even know.. They just keel over.. D-E-D. De
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Breathing while in a nitrogen saturated environment causes a rapid loss of consciousness without any feeling of suffocation.
You feel sleepy, you pass out, and then nature takes its course over the next few minutes. It's a quick and painless way to die.
More than a few service engineers have found this out the hard way while working on underground cable vaults.
Sadly, oftentimes their buddies go in to rescue them and they end up dying too.
Re: Good news (Score:2)
Lacking coin slot and mode selection (Score:5, Funny)
But apart from these shortcomings, I agree it is a good thing Switzerland approved such devices.
Re: Lacking coin slot and mode selection (Score:2)
Using nitrogen (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Using nitrogen (Score:5, Funny)
Back in the day, all you needed to commit suicide is leave back windiw open on your SUV.
And that was just while driving around L.A. on a regular day. Now you have to go to Shanghai or Beijing for that kind of air quality.
Sounds familiar (Score:2)
We could use the scoops for the riots (Score:2)
No text
Oh great (Score:5, Funny)
I ordered an iPod and one of these showed up instead. I thought it was a giant pod for listening to music.
Re:Oh great (Score:5, Funny)
Typical nerd. Arrives in the afterlife, and the first thing he does is post on Slashdot.
Re: Oh great (Score:3, Funny)
Heaven's VPN connects to Slashdot directly. Unfortunately, so does Hell's.
Get same-day suicide with Prime (Score:4, Funny)
An Amazonian neighbor here in Seattle hinted that there is already a new product suite being developed for this space. Code name is "Done For". Will leverage existing assets in typical Azon full-vertical fashion with emphasis on re-usable components set up in a la carte offering, so if you want to project your vacation or breakup pics from the "Sled" -- Sled is the rented/licensed/proprietary pod-thingie --you just agreed and Alexa puts that on the tab. Lots of poems and quotes from famous people are included gratis; other PD stuff, too.
The whole nitrogen thing is a known thing. and grey integrated Sprinter vans will could dispense the sled/pod at the desired location. You trigger the process with agreed 2FA prompts (think "Alexa, I am done for"). Once you press the Gone button, you are dead and shrink-wrapped in under 5 minutes.
I'll try to get additional dope.
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Is the pod penis shaped?
A pity suicide pods aren't more widely available (Score:2, Offtopic)
With these available, why does the United States invent one horrific, terrifying method of execution after another to administer capital punishment?
I'm not an American, but I thought the eighth amendment to the US constitution outlaws "cruel and unusual punishment", and my American friends insist that the US system of justice is the best in the world.
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Re: A pity suicide pods aren't more widely availab (Score:2)
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Actually, the distinction is one that has been recognized by the Supreme Court.
For example, the court's opinion in 501 U.S. 957 (1991) HARMELIN v. MICHIGAN [google.com] does make this distinction (United States Reports directly from the Supreme Court web site start with volume 502 so this is a secondary source). This opinion also notes that some state Constitutions forbade "cruel or unusual punishments" in that time-frame.
See at pg 994-995 in upholding imposition of a mandatory sentence:
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If your school bans guns and knives, does that mean Johnny is off the hook if he "only" brings a gun to school?
I think not.
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Both "cruel" and "unusual" are modifying "punishment" which is a single object.
This is quite different than your example where the operands to the "and" are distinct objects and are a list of banned objects (lacking a comma because the the school didn't ban "guns, knives, and throwing stars").
Consider if there a city imposed a rule that "Unregistered and non-operational cars may not be parked in the front driveway". Would you take that to mean it was against the law to park you car in your driveway and subj
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I think that analysis fails on two counts. Firstly, the actual text is
so that the noun is clearly plural and therefore cannot be a single object. But even in the counter-factual case that the final s were absent, punishment can function as a count noun or a non-count noun according to context, so it would also be necessa
Please select mode of death. (Score:3)
Obviously thought of this from the Futurama pilot ...
[Scene: Fry with Bender, in a suicide booth, thinking it's a telephone booth.]
Suicide Booth: Please select mode of death: Quick and painless, or slow and horrible.
Fry: Yes, I'd like to make a collect call.
Suicide Booth: You have selected slow and horrible.
Bender: Good choice.
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I'm assuming that's why the first post was titled "Good News".
Inert Gas Asphyxiation (Score:2)
Why do people continue to invent news ways of ending a life when we already have and understand Inert Gas Asphyxiation? All you need is a tank of Nitrogen, a pressure regulator and a mask that covers the nose and mouth. Turn it on and you quickly lose consciousness and then die.
Re:Inert Gas Asphyxiation (Score:5, Informative)
Inert gas asphyxiation what this new pod is: a user-initiated flooding of N2 into a confined space.
For those who do not know, one of the odd bugs in the mammalian biological system is that O2 levels are not included in determining breath hunger (the desire to breathe, or, conversely, the feeling of asphyxiation), but, rather only CO2 levels. The O2 concentration in the atmosphere can go to zero, and you will not be aware of it happening, especially if the transition is sudden. That is exactly the reason that we have the message "put your mask on first before you help others" on airplanes -- if you suddenly lose O2 in the atmosphere around you during a rapid decompression that empties your lungs, you have about 10 seconds of consciousness left, and nothing you can really do about it. So, you make sure you are conscious first so that you can successfully help your child or anyone else who needs assistance.
Getting back to euthanasia, if the atmosphere around a person or animal is suddenly made O2-free (by flooding with pure N2), the response is to feel a little light-headed, giddy, and then to fall permanently asleep. The video channel Smarter Every Day has done a related experiment https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] that reviews O2 deprivation at altitude and the results are both entertaining and deeply serious.
Also note that flooding the chamber with CO2 would be deeply traumatic, causing a full-on panic from air hunger.
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That is an interesting question but consider the evolutionary scenario where you might enter a room with concentrated N2.
This was almost impossible until the last centuries and so therefore there is zero evolutionary incentive to develop a response to that. On the other hand scenarios that include too much CO2 are abundant, from holding your breath for too long, a small cave, and many other situations lead to an excess of CO2. And additionally if your lungs don't fully work you can compensate that to some
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When you hold your breath you stop gas exchange. CO2 builds up and eventually forces your breathing reflex. You can survive without breathing for a lot longer than a minute.
When you breathe a low-oxygen atmosphere gas exchange continues. Breathing *removes* oxygen from your body.
10 seconds is probably a bit of an exaggeration, particularly in the case of an airplane decompressing. The time of useful consciousness at 40,000 ft is 15-20 seconds. You won't pass out at the end of 20 s, but the hypoxia will make
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If you can successfully hold your breath against a rapid decompression that would undoubtedly be accompanied by a loud noise and condensation filling the cabin, well, you'd be more in control of your faculties than nearly everyone on the planet.
With the rapid decompression, your lungs will empty out, I'd wager, faster than you can react to close your glottis and mouth. Maybe you'd trap a residual amount of air. Meanwhile, your sympathetic nervous system would undoubtedly send your body into fight-or-fligh
Can anyone just fly to Switzerland and kill 1self? (Score:2)
Pro death penalty people aren't big (Score:5, Insightful)
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if we really want it to be painless we would use a high velocity large bore bullet to the brain, as the bullet travels faster than the pain signal can propagate destroying the brain before it knows it is damaged.
Re:Pro death penalty people aren't big (Score:5, Insightful)
Because people never get falsely convicted of murder based on junk evidence by the injustice system of the Untied Shysters of American, aka the "Land of the Free, but heavily incarcerated."
Ask Cameron Todd Willingham. Oh wait! We can't. He was executed based on evidence that he was a Satanist because he liked black metal music, and on the testimony of a "fire investigator" with an 11th grade Texan edumacation.
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Because people never get falsely convicted of murder based on junk evidence by the injustice system of the Untied Shysters of American, aka the "Land of the Free, but heavily incarcerated."
Ask Cameron Todd Willingham. Oh wait! We can't. He was executed based on evidence that he was a Satanist because he liked black metal music, and on the testimony of a "fire investigator" with an 11th grade Texan edumacation.
People are falsely convicted all the time. That's why the bar for "execution" should be undeniable evidence. I.e. if there's camera footage of you dragging the woman into the bushes, raping her, and then killing her, YOU DO NOT GET TO CONTINUE TO BREATHE.
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Re:Pro death penalty people aren't big (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't go murdering and raping people, you know, cruelty, and you won't have to worry about the death penalty.
Almost 200 people since 1973 were wrongfully executed. In most cases, these people committed no crime.
Wrongfully locking a person up for 40 years can be (partially) undone. Wrongfully killing a person is permanent.
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Almost 200 people since 1973 were wrongfully executed. In most cases, these people committed no crime.
Wrongfully locking a person up for 40 years can be (partially) undone. Wrongfully killing a person is permanent.
Now, Captain Liberal, go get the stats for number of murders committed by parolees. I can assure you it's higher than 200..
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You do have to worry about the death penalty, regardless. The rate of exonerations in death penalty cases is estimated to be above 4% [pnas.org]. That's a lot of innocent people who came very close to being tortured to death. There's no reason to think a similarly large number of people weren't so lucky.
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Sometimes the justice system fails and executes innocent people [innocenceproject.org].
And even so, the eighth amendment to the constitution protects against cruel and unusual punishment. Executing someone is punishment enough; doing it in a cruel way just shows how primitive our culture still is.
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> the constitution protects against cruel and unusual punishment
Does it? It think there's a good argument to be made that it protects against cruel and unusual punishment. As in cruel is fine, so long as it's the usual. I mean, the entire point of punishment is to be cruel - otherwise it's not actually punishment. Some would even argue that imprisonment is far crueler than death.
Perhaps the core question to ask is, what is the point of institutionalized justice system? Well, what did we have before
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Unclear. It can also be read as "both cruel punishments and unusual punishments are verboten."
No. It's not unclear. SCOTUS has already defined it via case law.
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Way too many people on death row have been unequivocally exonerated over the objections of prosecutors.
A few of them after the execution. So in fact, not murdering or raping is not a guarantee of avoiding execution.
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Like so many things in our justice system cruelty is the point
Don't go murdering and raping people, you know, cruelty, and you won't have to worry about the death penalty.
Or isn't that an option?
How many murders are committed because the killer thinks the victim has committed some transgression that is worthy of death? Even in just the instant before the killing?
Every time the state executes someone it reinforces that thinking.
Eliminate the death penalty, start sending the signal that even the state doesn't have the right to take someone's life, I suspect you'll start to see a decline in murders.
I'm not sure if there's been many studies done on this but the first resource I found seemed to indicate [deathpenaltyinfo.org]
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Locking up a person for life, without any possibility of parole is expensive.
Still cheaper than executing them though.
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The only reason to execute is to seek revenge, always a lousy end to seek in my opinion.
False. Execution makes sure the person can commit no further crimes and is no longer a burden to the taxpayer.
As a side note, it's interesting that we have no problem putting down a dog which bites someone yet feel we shouldn't do the same to the supposedly smartest animal on the planet when it goes out of its way to murder or rape someone. Or torture as in some cases.
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The only reason to execute is to seek revenge, always a lousy end to seek in my opinion.
Bullshit. Execution means you can't ever rape or kill anyone again. You won't even have the opportunity to murder someone else in prison. Of course, you're leaving that part out because your position is stupid.
Prisoners escape. Prisoners rape other prisoners. Prisoners murder other prisoners.
People don't abort babies (Score:5, Insightful)
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IMHO you are confusing the cause with the consequence. It's unlikely that Afro-Americans have higher abortion rates because there are more abortion clinics in their neighborhoods: it's far more likely that there are more abortion clinics in their neighborhoods because there is a higher demand there, very likely caused to specific socioeconomic conditions that make women there more inclined to have abortions.
Ultimately for abortion clinics, abortion is a business and there is no need to bring to the table im
Re: Pro death penalty people aren't big (Score:2)
All are conceived with Original Sin, so until baptism are guilty.
Except Mary, of course, but there was only one immaculate reception. [youtu.be]
Re: Pro death penalty people aren't big (Score:2)
What if the baby that the woman wants to abort is a result of rape?
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Murder is _unjustified_ intentional depriving someone of their life.
Self defense, for example, is not murder, even though it is intentional, because it is justified.
So is the death penalty.
IMO some criminals deserve to be executed and a small minority of criminals deserve to executed in the most unpleasant way possible.
Re:Pro death penalty people aren't big (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd be all for public execution by small nuclear weapon (instant vaporization) in the capitol of the state that imposed the penalty. The foreman of the jury that imposed the sentence should be cordially invited to press the trigger. All of the legislators who voted for that particular brand of barbarism should be required to watch.
It's odd how you're all for violently killing people that want to get rid of murderers, but don't similarly feel bad for the people the murderers killed in the first place.
You have a strange way of looking at things.
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Just what do you think the execution does for the dead victims? It certainly doesn't resurrect them.
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But does the firing squad deserve to shoot someone?
The whole point of the squad is to try to reduce the guilt born by individual members over killing someone in cold blood. Almost all healthy, well-adjusted people have a real problem with that.
Not to mention the fact that the historical record proves that at least several percent of those given the death penalty were later found completely innocent. If you happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time you might well be the next person falsely convicte
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Allow the family members of the victim to shoot the criminal. If they don't want to, then sentence the criminal to life in prison - to be served in "the hole". I am pretty sure some parents would shoot the individual who raped and killed their child.
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Why did you type that? Is there really any difference between typing something or not typing something by the end?
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It's a pod, not a pot.
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> Nothing justifies the taking of innocent life, including your own. I get it if you want to disagree, but I firmly believe this is and will always be evil.
The very religious philosophy that teaches about the sanctity of life and about evil also teaches that nobody is innocent. You seem to be mixing up your doctrine here.
Note: I'm a Christian and I'm generally opposed to euthanasia myself - but this argument doesn't seem self-consistent.
Re:Unpopular but true (Score:5, Informative)
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No, I'm not overlooking abortion, either: a clump of cells isn't "anyone else."
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