I sometimes wonder if the existance of a right to die might lead to a reduction in suicides.
If someone who is despondent enough to throw themselves in front of a train knew that they could choose a medically assisted death, might they choose not to make the jump? If I had the option of being hooked up to a gentle death might I shy away from blowing my head off with a gun?
All that aside, I support the right to die. Medical advances are increasing the likelyhood that my body is going to outlive my mind, or outlive my ability to have a quality life. I’d like the option of saying “Enoughs enough. It’s time to go.”
My grandmother had an Advance Directive stipulating that she not get any last minute measures to sustain her life (including nutrition and hydration). She made her Living Will when she was healthy and of sound mind…but in retrospect I really wish that assisted suicide had been an option,. As soon as she had a massive stroke, the living will kicked in. It was horrible. We basically had to watch her wither away and eventually die of thirst. Whenever one of us would wipe a moist wash cloth on her face, she would strain over and try to drink the water out of the wash cloth. The doctors insisted that it was a reflexive instinct and she was neither aware nor suffering…but I am not convinced of that. Even if she was not suffering physically (which I am still not convinced about since she WAS conscious) she completely lost her dignity, which for her would be devastating.
I compare that with the final days of my dog. She had to be put down due to renal failure, which caused her terrible suffering. So our vet made a house call…gave our dog an injection and she died peacefully and painlessly in the comfort of her own home.
I hope that someday we will treat humans with the same level of compassion and respect that we currently reserve for our pets.
Aren’t any of you worried about the implications of legalized assisted suicide? Here’s what I see, in the case of Kevorkian.
There was no oversight. Nobody with legal authority on the scene when Kevorkian performed his assisted suicides. There was no intervention at all by anyone who had legal authority to determine the legitimacy of Kevorkian’s patients’ requests. All we have to go by are what family members said, what the person said before they died, and what Kevorkian himself said. Courts can’t even decide whether a contract to buy a car is legal based on evidence like that, but all of you are up in arms about how it’s inhumane to prevent people from taking someone’s LIFE based on that.
Assisted suicide is serious business, guys. If you want to make it legal, at least restrain it in the same ways that any other legal life-ending measures are restrained. You can’t just let a doctor run around killing people because he says they want it. You need judges to determine the fitness of the person to make the decision, multiple doctors to concur with a diagnosis and life prospects to be assured the patient has information that’s most likely to be correct, legal representatives present at the time of death to ensure the patient is allowed to change his mind at any time, and probably even more that I can’t think of offhand. We can’t just flippantly toss around sayings like “we treat our dogs better than our people” because dogs don’t get to make decisions. Do you really want to use our pets as standards for providing medical treatment and advice to humans?
I agree there is serious potential for abuse, so of course there must be oversight. But I believe 100% that individuals should have the **option **to chose assisted suicide if they so desire… just like they can chose to deny all medical treatment (including food and water) if they wish. The only real difference between the 2 is that one is active and the other is passive. With assisted suicide suffering can be truly minimized, whereas living wills/advance directives only allow a person to be denied medical care. And if their directive classifies food and water as medical care, then that person will most likely die of thirst. Having witnessed that first hand, I would absolutely prefer a lethal injection. If others would rather die of thirst or wither away in a nursing home until they go into multiple organ failure, then that should be their choice.
And I agree that comparing humans and pets is imperfect in this case, since pets have no ability to make decisions for themselves. But I still think pets are getting the better deal in many cases.
I think the thing there, Mosier, is that all of the negative aspects you see of Euthenasia exist specifically because the practice is illegal in the first place. If it weren’t and we had proper transperancy and protocol regarding the whole thing, then none of the seedier aspects would come into play.
The strongest argument I have read against assisted suicide was written by a philosophy professor of mine in college. The gist of it was that giving someone the choice to opt out of life puts a burden on the terminally ill (or even those who are considerably disabled) to justify their choice to remain living. Essentially, euthenasia would cause people who might not truly want the procedure to be “guilted” into having themselves killed.
I don’t think he was wrong, frankly, but I don’t think that problem outweighs the very real need for some type of legal suicide option.
You said the only difference between denying medical treatment and assisted suicide is that one is active and the other is passive.
You’re correct, but you’re also minimizing the monumental, enormous, very big and serious importance of the distinction. Actively killing someone is in fact absolutely nothing like passively allowing someone to die.
Once they are in your care, it is very similar. Standing and watching a baby starve to death when you have food to feed it is not fundamentally different to snapping that baby’s neck.
How much of a need for suicide options is there, really? Can you name a dozen people in the history of the world who want to die, but physically can’t do it themselves? Or are you counting people who want to die, but just don’t have the courage or steady hand or whatever to actually go through with it?
Well, I can’t name anybody by name, no. But it’s easy to think of the circumstances, don’t you think? I mean, there are all kinds of ways in which a person might lose the use of his limbs, for instance, and it seems like that’s all it would take to preclude him from doing the deed himself.
And even in cases where a person would be able to do the job himself, don’t you think there’s some value in having it done painlessly in a hospital rather than using riskier means at home?
Do you think if assisted suicide was legal, hospitals would be willing to expose themselves to that kind of liability? Legalizing assisted suicide isn’t going to make hospitals suddenly start gleefully executing people. You’ll have to find the Kevorkians out there who are willing to break the foundation of their ethical oath. How many medical professionals do you suppose would even consider giving someone a lethal dose of medication because they asked for it? Not just on ethical grounds, but on liability grounds? Or are you also proposing to make it illegal to sue doctors for irresponsible assisted suicide after legalizing it?
I disagree, as soon as the legal profession are involved we will see lengthy holdups and the person suffering while lawyers are making money out of them. A simple written/spoken to witnesses or other form of communication should be permitted.
You’re denying the right of a person to change their mind. If the doctor comes at them with the needle and they have second thoughts, who or what can stop the doctor from finishing the procedure, if not the law?
Well hospitals in Switerland and the Netherlands apparently already do, I for one hope that we Daniel’s parent case will enable similar methods to be used in the UK.
As for naming individuals who are suffering and wish to die, how do you know there can’t be more than a dozen in all recorded history? I can name a number of my friends who agree that in certain circumstances life would be intolerable and would request assisted suicide if it were legal. I can think of circumstances where I would do it myself.
I don’t see that the liability is anything that can’t be gotten around with sufficient hurdles to jump over. I think that there would obviously have to be a lot of transperancy in each case. Things would go wrong some of the time, I imagine, but that’s true of anything.
Hospitals already deal in life and death matters anyway, so it doesn’t seem to me that the liability is any greater than it is normally. We already sue doctors for all kinds of things that involve someone dying.
At any rate, I don’t think potentially problematic logistics mean that the idea is wrong in principle. How do they handle this kind of thing where it’s legal?
I agree. In many cases, allowing them to die passively is much crueler than actively ending their suffering. Not to use another irrelevant animal analogy, but would you prefer to let a horse with a severly broken leg die slowly and naturally…or just actively shoot it? If I were the horse, I’d prefer a quick bullet in the head, rather than the painful passive alternative. Others may make a different choice. But I am a big believer in individual CHOICE. And btw I do not minimize the enormity of that choice in any way, shape or form.
IMO, it’s pretty simple. The Right to Life is the simplest and most basic of our rights. However, I also believe it is implicit in any right that we also have the ability to waive a right. As such, while I am morally opposed to suicide in almost every situation, it is not my life nor is it my place to impose my morality on anyone else.
This is a very valid concern. In fact, this is all the more reason, in my mind, to make it legal. When it’s legal, it can be monitored, either directly by the government or by some sort of organization.
People were giving horror stories about watching loved ones die slow deaths through starvation and dehydration. Wouldn’t it be cheaper, not to mention humane, to let someone who has chosen the “pull the plug” option to just get a quick shot and end it, rather than watching their body slowly wither, while the doctors assure the family they’re not suffering, but it’s so difficult for anyone to see and actually believe that.
So yes, make it legal, but make sure there are laws in place to protect people, and make sure that abusing it can be prosecuted as murder. Allow someone who is very sick to get whatever tests they need to make sure they’re of sound mind, so they can make that decision. Allow anyone who wants to include any sort of euthanasia options in their living will to do so.
Involving MDs gets tricky because most docs feel that assisting suicide violates their Hippocratic oath…but nurse anethetists or LPNs could easily do the job. And there would certainly be no need to do it in a hospital setting, but rather in the comfort of one’s own home.
Obviously the legal kinks would have to be worked out…just like they were for living wills. I come from a medical family and can remember when many doctors in my own family thought it was horribly unethical to deny a patient medical care, even if they didn’t want it. They felt it was their ethical duty to sustain life. Period. It took a while, but now living wills are legally enforced in all 50 states.
I know this was already addressed, but it’s just not a fair question. Just about anyone, even someone who’s very sick can end their own life at home. Just fill the tub and dunk your head. Slit your wrists. Shoot yourself in the head. Take some pills. But you DO realize that for everyone one of those, there’s many times where someone attempts it and ends up dying very painfully. Sometimes people take a lot of pills and just get violently ill and don’t die. I’ve even seen examples of people who’ve shot themselves in the head at point blank and not died.
If anything, I believe legalized suicide will not only make those determined to die do so in a much more humane way, but it will probably save lives. Sure, someone who is depressed and wants to die right now may still reach for a gun or a knife; but maybe if there were legal ways to do it, where you’d be able to get pretty much 100% guaranteed painless and successful death, but you have to be psychologically and/or medically evaluated first, you may be able to get some of these people the help they need.
They’re also extremely regulated. As a professional in the emergency medical field, I can tell you that many of the people who think they have a living will don’t in fact legally do. In Nevada at least, and probably in most other states, a DNR form has to be signed by a physician, submitted to a legal agency, and renewed regularly. You don’t actually have the right to say “I want to die” and expect not to be given medical care. Uttering the words “I just want to die” is enough evidence to declare someone unfit to refuse consent to be treated, legally.
Some of you are arguing that we can’t get the law involved too deeply with this, but if not the law, who is going to declare whether someone is mentally capable enough to decide to die? Do you think a doctor ought to have that much power?