I voted that I’d rather die because dementia puts a terrible emotional burden on the affected person’s loved ones. It’s just heartbreaking to hear someone you’ve loved for a lifetime say, “Who are you?” I would never want to do that to the people I love.
My dad withstood his mom forgetting him, but then she started screaming whenever he visited. He was heartbroken. He wept inconsolably.
If I held this same standard, I’d have been for years already! 
I’ve seen dementia up close and it’s horrible. You lose your mind & your dignity, & your family suffers both emotionally and financially. Death is a blessing compared to dementia.
Beautifully said!
I would absolutely choose death. In fact, unless I go via heart attack or accident or something, I fully expect to take my own life one day, whether ill or not (not for many years yet, so don’t worry). There is definitely such a thing as living too long. Even if you’re in relatively good health and not actively dying of some horrid disease, the older you get, the more your body and mind begins to deteriorate. I personally do not wish to live long enough that I can no longer take care of myself. Not for being a burden on others, simply because I’d rather not rely on anyone else to take care of me. Freedom and independence are the most important thing to me. The last thing I’d want is to live to 100 but have lost most of my marbles and be laid up in a nursing home with some stranger wiping my ass for me. Quality over quantity. When I eventually decide I’ve had quite enough, I’ll go quietly on my own terms, with dignity intact.
Yes, it is. I find the idea of accepting it to be completely insane, especially the idea that one should wish to cease existing forever because they don’t want to be a burden.
I don’t care how burdened anyone feels by my existence. I intend to snatch every last second that this universe is willing to give me, and I want my last words to be “Not just yet.”
I wasn’t speaking only about cases of dementia, but in those cases, one can set down directives in advance. One of the great things about humanity is that we can think about the future and plan for it; there are people in this world who would have seen my grandmother’s “no hospital! well, ok, for stuff like X-rays, but no stays and nothing invasive” as unacceptable, because those people confuse lasting with living. From previous threads in these boards I understand you to be one of those. If Grandma’s wishes had been “if I get to the point where I consistently don’t know who the heck people are, cut off medications” I would have had no problem with it.
Many of them do, both in early and advanced stages. It’s one of the reasons for the ill-tempers, that they know things are about as wrong as they can be. Depending on how much their memory is failing, they live in a world where everybody looks thirty years older than they remember (including themselves), or where things are consistently not where they should. The President isn’t the right guy. The TV series they remember watching isn’t on - it’s never on.
Nah, that’s got nothing to do with it IME. The concept of the Good Death is a religious one, but not every nominal believer accepts it, and not every unbeliever has a problem with the idea that “life ends in death, and you’ll be able to enjoy your life better if you accept that”.
If someone claims that we should get rid of Gravity, we at the very least look at him funny. Death is as unavoidable, but the amount of effort we spend trying to avoid it is huge.
By the time of her death from Alzheimer’s, my grandmother could no longer speak. So her last words may have been “not just yet” but if so, they were spoken a long time before she died.
Uh-oh… Now I’m going to spend the day wondering if I’m actually suffering from advanced dementia. Or whether I might be suffering from advanced dementia. Or whether I…where the hell are my crayons!
Well, as of now, we are at 122-8. Do you think that views across any section of society (US or worldwide) approach that ratio?
I guess this is an area in which I may have been ignorant. I assumed that a significant portion of Americans opposed voluntary euthanasia for religious reasons akin to their opposition to abortion. I dunno - viewing it as suicide or something.
Is there any other public policy that we could name that runs counter to the wishes of 90+% of the people?
Well, for starters, a lot of the respondents aren’t American. And while I know many religious people who oppose active euthanasia (giving a lethal dose of whatever) but not passive euthanasia (discontinuing medical treatments)*, one thing in which they absolutely agree with those who are in favor of active euthanasia is that any end of life decisions must always and as much as humanly possible be in accordance with the patient’s wishes. That’s the point of talking about end of life measures with your relatives, doing any related paperwork that your local medical system will consider valid, etc. Never met anybody who didn’t consider involuntary euthanasia as anything other than murder.
- The third variant (giving high doses of painkillers to terminal patients) is often seen, at least in Spain, as a sort of “blind bullet” thing. Yes, giving such high doses is likely to mean the patient will last less than with lower doses. But lower doses aren’t working any more, we’re not in the business of making people suffer just because, and we don’t know for sure whether or which dose will cause death.
I think there’s a difference between “I would rather die” and “I would commit suicide” and “I think there should be a policy of euthanasia.” I have to run out to a briefing, so this is shorter than I intended, but I do think people think differently about each of these ways of phrasing the issue.
Not only would I rather die than have dementia, I’d rather have stage four pancreatic cancer, NYHA class IV congestive heart failure, or any other horrible physical condition than dementia.
The physical structure doesn’t survive, so everything else you point out after that is impossible.
Alan Alda some years ago in an ep of “ER” played a doctor in the beginning stages of dementia. After doctors realized the secret he had been harboring he mused (paraphrasing), “I’ve seriously considered suicide. The problem, though, is if I do it too early, I’ll miss out on what time I have left. And if I wait too late, I won’t be able to.” I think that’s probably how I would feel.
That’s definitely the core of the dilemma. But life is full of striking that balance–eating avocados while they’re a little green because they’ll be overripe and inedible in 15 more minutes, playing blackjack, skydiving, sex without a condom…the trick is knowing when it’s time to take action to avoid the inevitable and undesired consequence, and that means being alright with leaving some happy on the table.
Okay, I am back.
To clarify what I was saying above, I don’t think this poll is really getting at “How many people think there should be euthanasia for people with advanced dementia?” Our sense of “I would rather die!” is not necessarily linked to exactly how that death is supposed to come about. In a general, philosophical way, yes, I would rather die. But if we get down to specifics, am I talking about shooting myself in the head or am I talking about how it would be nice if I had a heart attack and died before the dementia got too bad? And am I confident, even if I think I would commit suicide, that we can build policies that really protect people with dementia from someone simply murdering them?
This poll is not really getting at these answers.
OK - perhaps I did not think this out sufficiently when writing the OP. I guess I was assuming that “I would rather die” included, “I would rather that institutions exist that would allow me to express a preference, and have that acted upon in a humane manner.”
Because permanent non-existence is unavoidable. That’s how you, me and everyone will end up.
So what’s the point of living then?
Let’s put it another way. Would I give my life to save my daughter? Absolutely. What, aren’t I afraid to die? Sure, but I’d rather be dead than live in a world where I could have saved my daughter’s life, but didn’t. If I chickened out I’d be tormented by that failure for the rest of my life.
The point is, death is an inevitable part of life. At various points, fighting death doesn’t make any sense. You weren’t born for immortality, you were born for death, so you might as well get used to the idea.