This question has come to me a few times before; so I figured I'd post it and get everyones thoughts on it.

The year is 3030. Technology has gone so far as to do the impossible: Interactive Enviorments within a Small Amount of Space. (IESAS)
That is, we know have the ability to put on a helmet and enter a completely different world from our own via computer interface with our brain. Convincing to the smallest detail, the brain cannot tell the computer world from the real world.

(Example: Halodecks from Star Trek, the one episode of The Outer Limits, ect)

Benifets:
You're old and dying, unable to do alot of the things you love (running, talking, typing, drawing/painting, seeing things, feeling things, tasting, touching, ect) and can no longer do because of reason X. With IESAS you would be able to live the rest of your life as you wish, providing the ultimate comfort.
However there are other benifets. You could Run on a Treadmill and wear the Helmet for completly new scenery as you run. Or you could go on a fantastic date with your specail someone for $3.95 at your local IESAS station. You wouldn't have to go to Hawaii, you could go to your living room for a weekend.

Cons:
I don't think I need alot here; but I'll list a few. Keep in mind that there can be safe modes and ways to alert someone if they're not in a real world; I am assuming here that a hacker has hacked the program, getting rid of any and all indications of this not being a real world and disabled anything that would let the inhabitant leave from within the IESAS.
A sadistic rapist kidnaps his women by slipping the helmet on them when there back is turned. He takes them home to his basement where he rapes them daily. However they believe they are making love to the man they love in their IESAS.
The Government has lost control of it's people. Their answer is IESAS. They steal their own citizens and place them in a huge werehouse where they are living their lives in IESAS while slave workers keep making money for the Government; and no one has to know.
As a joke the oldest brother of two puts the IESAS onto his little brother where he lives for ten minutes as a chicken. However it malfunctions to an adult program where he is skinned alive over and over, and the Helmet fries his brain waves; unable for him to live without the device.

I am of course assuming that there are more evil people in the world then there are good. That the needs of the one out weigh the needs of the few.

So then, should this technology (should it ever be invented to it's perfect state) be banned? Is it worth it for one person to live in agony so ten can live in happiness?
For the sake of arguement; assume that all body functions are moving as if they were in the real world (so excersizing in the IESAS would have the effect of really excersizing).