Futurology

Active euthanasia is legal in a few countries for terminally ill patients.

That doesn't seem an accurate description of the situation. Yes, doctors and nurses sometimes 'help people along' in their final hours or even days, that is not the same thing as the euthanasia being described here.

You're so very wrong about that. The chemicals used right now for lethal injection fail often, cause undue pain and distress, and often will paralyze you instead of killing you quickly while you slowly suffocate, unable to call for help. Nitrogen has no downsides. This isn't a "techbro" solution. It's a humane one. A guillotine was kinder to the one dying than the current method.

The current method prioritizes minimizing violence and maximizing comfort for spectators over being humane to the one dying. The only reason there is a paralytic in the chemical slurry is because the sleep and lethal chemicals sometimes fail spectacularly and the patient spasms painfully as they die. Their solution wasn't to change the method to be more humane, it was to paralyze them so they don't spasm. They're still in pain. They're still dying slowly. They're still scared. But we don't have to see it, so it's okay.

Nitrogen euthanasia is safe and humane, killing entirely painlessly. For some reason the fact that it's a gas, even an inert one, makes people crazy.