I’m unconvinced that a person does not have a right to their own life, seems to me that’s about the only thing somebody does own in this world. Apparently i’m the only one in my social problems class with this opinion, no matter how much they try to convince me that they know what’s better for people more than the people do. I like to be informed on both sides of an issue…i just have a hard time seeing the other side on this one, and i don’t think the people i was debating with represented their side very well(they used a christian standpoint). So give your strongest arguments on why assisted suicide should be illegal
One possible concern is that as soon as you allow assisted suicide you inadvertedly make it an officially viable option in more cases and create a certain pressure on those who don’t choose it. Of course this is not totally different from non-assisted suicide but perhaps you lower the threshold in some cases.
Ok, I am not very convincing but that is because I am not quite convinced myself.
Are you only talking about persons that are confirmed terminally ill by some independent standard or about anyone?
I’m under the assumption that religion/morality of suicide is outside the parameters of your request.
IF the only person affected is the would-be deceased, then I think anyone would be hard-pressed to demonstrate assisted suicide is unethical. BUT this is not easily proven. Other interests to consider:
Motivation of the assistant: Did the assistant convince the subject that this was the best solution? Is this person really a murderer posing as an angel of mercy?
Motivation of the subject: Does the subject fully comprehend the alternatives? Is that person mentally sound enough to make the call? Many people in the position to consider this option are delirious with physical or emotional pain and are arguably not mentally competent. And what are the qualifications for assisted suicide? Typically we assume it’s some old duffer on his way out anyway, but where is the line drawn? If I’m just really bummed can I pay my $100 and get killed? What if I’m just as bummed as the last guy, but I don’t even have the $100? Do I have to live? That’s not fair. And maybe I’m bummed because of a chemical imbalance which could be corrected by taking brain candy—and then my life is good again?
Other interests, such as life insurance companies come to mind, but I think the number of subjects would not be great enough to impact mortality tables used in determining premiums. Health insurance premiums (a benefit for the living) could actually go down some, but again I doubt the scale of this topic would be great enough to make an impact.
The difficulty I think lies in convincing everyone else that the suicide was the best choice. And that the death was not a cleverly disguised murder. The unethicalness of the suicide increases with the vagueness of the conditions surrounding it.
Another approach you might take in an argument FOR assisted suicide is, “How ethical is it for a society to withhold the assistance when the subject will try, and possibly fail or worse, take someone else out with him?
Like it or not, we have a responsibility to those around us.Friends and loved ones.
Taking one’s own life spits in their face. It’s cold, self-centered and uncaring.
Possibly the fact that it is a taboo has caused some people to hesitate and begin the long hard healing process.
Of course some people in history should have been encouraged.
Maybe…but address the ethics of the issue.
I could argue that I have a responsibility to my family to prevent their hanging in limbo while I linger and cloud the memories they have of a vibrant & lively Inigo Montoya. I have a responsibility to not bankrupt them while my disease incurs increasingly expensive and futile treatment. I have a responsibility to my family to encourage them to be able to stand alone-not co-depend on my unreliable existence.
Possibly the taboo has made the suicide process all the more agonizing for those who commit. And many times there is no healing process for the subject–only the prospect of further decline. Delaying the death delays the emotional healing process of the survivors. How is THAT a good thing?
Say a man who is suffering from depression goes to a psychiatrist and tells the doctor he has been contemplating suicide. Does the doctor give him a gun? Hell no. His job is to make the man well, not make the man dead.
Now in cases of fatal illness where lots of suffering is involved, and the quality of life is degraded to a point where all living does is permit a person to suffer longer awaiting death, I am more inclined to believe that assisted suicide is an option. But to flat out suggest that assisted suicide is exactly opposed to what the whole concept of medical ethics is built on. Your argument (“it’s their life”) could be paralleled to suggest that doctors should give prescriptions to people who didn’t need them, or unnecessary surgery to masochists (“it’s their body”). Doctors do not simply do what people ask, they do what they need to to make people well.
“ethical is” <- Place this after “flat out sugges that ethical suicide is” in the above post. Thanks, and have a nice day.
The reason assisted suicide is illegal is NOT because it is always unwarranted or unethical, but rather because it is not really possible to ascertain when it is or is not in most cases.
Short of being able to crawl inside and experience life as that other person there is really know way of knowing if the decision to die is completly rational.
Not nearly as self-centered and uncaring as expecting a friend or loved one to stick around in a life that makes him miserable just so you don’t have to lose him.
Some good arguments. The most convincing to me is the idea that should assisted suicide be legal it it would be hard to tell when it is being misused or corrupted. Obviously there would be guidelines set out for the procedure, and to object to the procedure itself in fear that the laws may be broken seems silly…every law will be broken. Of course i see that this case has something more “valuable” on the line than most laws, a human life. I just noticed with a lot of the people i was debating in class most of them used some personel story meant to draw up emotion, while my heart goes out to them…i think it’s too easy to let emotion get on the way of making a rational and fair judgement in this instance. A big argument i hear is for all the people who wanted to die but then went on to live fulfilled lives…seems to ignore the people who wanted to die and STILL wish they would have died. Some active people would rather not live than to live life in a wheelchair, we are pretty arrogant to say “people live happy lives in wheelchairs all the time, you’ll be fine”…We do not know anybody better than they know themselves, if THEY are truely miserable and derive no value from life it is not up to us to make that decesion for him. Can anyone rebuttal that?
How about if the man were able to go to a doctor who routinely performs executions via lethal injection? Isn’t his job to kill someone at the behest of the government for the protection of its citizens? How can society justify it’s right to choose the death of someone who can’t even choose their own death?
Maybe that’s the answer. If you’re really serious about suicide, just kill someone else. Oh and to be really effective, be sure you do it in Texas or Florida. I think it’s already been proven it works: I could be wrong, but wasn’t that why Ted Bundy committed his crimes in Florida? Hey, if killing some innocent person who would really rather live bothers you, just pick some terminal Texas patient who’d really rather die but whose suffering society doesn’t give a squat about.
Again, with the exception of the quacks who prescribe the drugs (sodium thiopental, pancuronium bromide, and potassium chloride–all of which are either a controlled substance or available by prescription only and which must be supplied by only those licensed to dispense or, um, physicians) used in executions by lethal injection. 'Nuff said.
Sorry about the I hijack, but I can’t help thinking of the absurdity of pro-death penalty and anti-assisted suicide. It’s either all or nothing when it comes to doctors involved in assisting death by euthanasia or lethal injection executions. Specifically, what I’m saying is that your argument is doesn’t stand up to what’s really going on.
Damn, posted before I read what I typed.
Correction: I didn’t mean to say that doctors are performing lethal injections. I don’t know if there is any proof one way or the other because it’s my understanding that the identity of executioners are protected. BUT, there is no doubt that somewhere along the line, licensed medical doctors MUST be involved because the drugs used MUST be prescribed by someone who’s licensed, as I mentioned further in my post. The same physician could very well prescribe these drugs to anyone, could he not?
By the same token, it seems to me that prisons could do a good business in assisted suicide since they already have the facilities and resources to carry them out. That would be eye-opening! Alas, but the government has already decided that only they have the right to decide who lives and who dies.
He did a buncha ladies in in Washington (State that is…I hate having to clarify that. We should move the US capital someplace else…like Byhalia, MS.) too.
Insurance won’t cover it.
Then how did Florida get there hands on him? …googling…
Oh how I hate googling serial killers, which is why I didn’t the first time I claimed (more precisely, said I thought) that Bundy went to Florida because he knew they’d be sure electrocute him, essentially committing suicide by murder.
Admission: It appears he fought long & hard to avoid the execution and I could not find one reference to my original supposition so I have no idea where I heard that nugget. :::slaps own wrists:::
Anyhoo, he started in WA, continued his spree in Utah getting caught and escaping, and ended it in Florida with his ultimately DP-achieving murder of the FSU sorority gals. Incidently, he once worked as a suicide hotline and he claimed at the end that soft porn made him do it. I now know much more than I wanted to about T. Bundy. :::kicks self for bringing the damn thing up in the first place:::
BTW, I usually think of the state when someone says Washington and the capital when someone says DC. That’s not universal, but I gotcha.
Damn, insurance won’t cover my LASIK surgery either. See, that’s what’s wrong with this society! Insurance companies suck!
I think at the time Washinton’s preferred method was still by :hurk: hangin’ so he didn’t need to go all that far to do the suicide by execution thing (I’m conveniently ignoring your gracious recant because I’m a total (insert Pet terminology here).
And as for insurance. What kind, capacitor? Life insurance will pay on a suicide as long as you have passed through the contestibility period (usually 1 or two years after the policy issues, but that varies from state to state). Health insurance probably won’t pay for the procedure directly, but drug overdoses, as discussed here would be easy to pull off. I think Health insurers would be one of the biggest proponents of assisted suicide, especially for terminally ill patients who are just going to linger and incur more expensive therapy.
You would think, wouldn’t you. But then why would they rather pay to put me in glasses/contacts every year for the rest of my life (or policy, whichever came first) when a simple procedure could pay itself off long before I even need reading glasses. I just don’t get insurance companies.
Now that everyone seems to have put in their .02 it doesn’t appear that this hijack is really bothering anyone…hmmm. Maybe another thread on why insurance companies suck so much and how we could get them to pay for anything sensible up to and including offing oneself.
They do and they do. Doctors often give prescriptions they do not need to hypos and as to people having unnecessary surgery, ever hear of cosmetic surgery? Hell Getting brests that are each twice the size of your head is the definition of masochism.
My personal view on the matter is that it is not that terrifically hard to kill yourself in most instances if you reallly wanted to. Unless I was seriously paralysed or unconscious (in which case, please don’t make the decision for me) I’m sure I could manage. Now, this sounds like a purely practical rather than ethical argument, but I would seriously question the motives of someone who could do themselves in but wanted someone else to do it for them. Why? Could it be that they are not sure? Do they not want to deal with something as scary as organising the sleeping pills/gun/rope whatever? And if not, have they really thought it through? In that case wouldn’t our time could be better spent trying to talk them out of it? The bottom line is that “helping out” would make suicide seem like an acceptable option to this person. I personally would argue against this in the great majority of cases where someone is asking for asistance.
This article went a long way convincing me of this. It the says same thing I said above, but they put it a lot better.
I’m sure most people in that situation do manage - assisted suicide is mostly for people who need assistance. If you’re conscious and able to communicate, but you’re stuck in a bed or a wheelchair, you’ll probably have trouble doing yourself in.
Only if you believe that the most important goal is keeping someone alive, whether or not they enjoy living.
The final sentence from that article is quite telling:
Clearly, the author does believe that keeping humans alive is the #1 goal, regardless of whether they enjoy living. I sure wouldn’t want a person like that making any medical decisions on my behalf.