Opponents say it is murder; supporters say it ends unbearable pain: Euthanasia is again in the spotlight with two high-profile cases in Britain - one a promising young rugby player and the other a retired professor, who both chose to terminate their lives in the same euthanasia clinic in Switzerland.
Twenty three-year-old Daniel James, a university student and former national rugby team player, had made repeated wishes to die after a rugby training accident left him paralysed from the neck down. He persuaded his parents to bring him to Switzerland in September this year.
Craig Ewert, 59 suffered from an untreatable motor neuron disease that would eventually leave him completely paralysed. He allowed his last hours to be filmed, and they were screened as a documentary - The Right to Die? - in Britain last week.
Their deaths echoed the situation of Hong Kong's 39-year-old Tang Siu-pun, or Bun Tsai, who has been paralysed from neck down after an accident 17 years ago. He appealed to then chief executive Tung Chee-wah to support euthanasia in 2004, and last year published a memoir about his life, reiterating his call for legal euthanasia in Hong Kong.
Euthanasia - 'good death' in ancient Greek - is highly controversial, and only a few countries, such as Switzerland, Belgium and the Netherlands, have legalised it.
Switzerland is alone in allowing it to be offered to foreign nationals. Opponents of Swiss law say the result is 'death tourism' - a stream of seriously ill people and their families, paying as much as #5,000 (HK$58,000) to visit Switzerland and end their own lives.
In the past year, Switzerland assisted more than 700 deaths - most of them from Germany and Britain. One of the major arguments for euthanasia is everybody has the right to choose what to do with their lives, even if their decisions are not considered wise. Every adult has the right, for example, to decide what kind of medical treatment they receive, no matter what doctors advise. From this point of view, euthanasia is entirely a personal choice, and prohibiting the choice is, therefore, a breach of their human rights.
