Nine uraemia patients from Xi’an City, who are tired of unbearable suffering and not willing to burden their families any more, after long consideration jointly wrote to local media asking for euthanasia, or mercy killings, according to April 8’s Yangtze Evening Post.
Some of them received an interview on April 4. Due to kidney failure they have to depend on naemodialysis for life, and every time before doing they suffer a lot with no sleep all night. This life is better dead than alive.
Mr Wang told the reporter: “For me, every day is as long and miserable.” The 68-year-old Cheng Yunsheng said: "I have to go through three times naemodialysis every two weeks, and I’m too weak to move, feeling like staying in a jail all day.”
Apart from the pain, the heavy burden on their families is another reason for their lodging the request. Li Xinhua, a teacher from Shaanxi Economic and Trade College, said that the minimum treatment fee for every month was over 4,400 yuan, a heavy load on his family despite helping hands from his working unit, relatives and friends. One of his sons had to quit college and went to find a job in Shenzhen. Now both his two sons are near thirty but they have no money to get married.
However, China has so far no legalized euthanasia, that is, no institutions and persons are permitted by law to conduct euthanasia, otherwise legal punishment would follow. So what doctors can do is for the time being only to try their best to ease patients’ pains.
(People’s Daily 04/10/2001)
