I am asking the question because I don’t know the answer, not because I am trying to push a point.
This is important. If it is not advisable to do this evaluation before making this particular decision, it should be done afterwards, to help improve the process as much as possible, and to make sure these considerations are kept at the forefront for future situations.
If I’m understanding you correctly, I don’t think you’ve presented a fair dichotomy. Medical intervention is a science-based process that usually requires the consent of the patient or their caregiver except in emergencies where consent isn’t possible and no living will exists. It has the explicit purpose of either improving quality of life or extending a life that the patient wishes to prolong.
I very strongly feel that these decisions should be made solely between the patient or their caregiver and their doctor. What pisses me off mightily is when busybodies, usually motivated by religious beliefs, meddle in these profoundly personal and difficult decisions by convincing governments to enact draconian laws against things like abortion and euthanasia that often have horrifically cruel consequences.
This doesn’t mean that decisions about euthanasia should be made lightly. It means that keeping the government out of these things and relegating it to a doctor-patient collaboration is a hallmark of a civil and compassionate society.
@wolfpup, I think we’re probably in agreement. What I meant was to criticize the idea that allowing or helping someone to die is interference with God’s will, while keeping them alive by the use of modern medical technology somehow isn’t also such interference. I didn’t mean to criticize either the use of the technology for extending life or for easing its ending, either of which I think may be appropriate in specific cases, but only to point out what appears to me to be a contradiction in logic.
I agree that the choice should be made by the patient if capable and if they’re not by relevant caregivers and doctors. This isn’t always going to be ideal, but handing control to anybody else seems likely to be worse. Some legal control over the decision process, if very carefully written, may be wise. In the particular case being discussed, that seems to have existed.
Pretty clear your wife understands these things fully. @Kent_Clark
But allowing death and actively making death happen are two different things. IMO
If the child had a swallowing disorder, odds are they were already receiving nutrition from a feeding tube.
Disconnecting the feeding tube was one of the options presented to us when my father had a massive stroke with no hope of recovery. Is that any different for an almost 2-year old vs. an 81-year old man?
No. It’s not different. Exactly the same.
Withdrawal of food or fluids is an active decision..someone has to turn it off.
Allowing death to happen is not what this is about. IMHO.
But it was legal 30 years ago here in the U.S. when “euthenasia” was not legal in any state. If someone has to turn off the respitrator or remove the feeding tube to allow someone to die, does that action count as euthenasia?
Translating the report cited in the OP, I see that physicians increased the dose of painkillers administered to the child, with a final dose of propofol and thiopental to induce a coma, from which the child did not wake up.
I don’t believe in active euthanasia, or physician-assisted suicide, for people who cannot fully consent, but in this case, that ship has sailed. I’ve definitely seen MANY, MANY cases where the person and/or their family wanted this or that treatment stopped, or never started in the first place.
The Oregon program, and the Illinois program that will be initiated soon, requires multiple doctors to attest that the person has a life expectancy of <6 months, and it cannot be done on minors or anyone who cannot actively participate in the process, from start to finish. Most of the people who are approved in Oregon don’t go through with it; about half of them never fill the prescriptions, and of those who do, about half don’t use them. The most common reason is that they died naturally prior to their chosen date and time, but lots of people arrive there, say “I’m not ready to do this yet,” and this must be respected.
And that’s all I’m going to say for now.
ok, I guess I’ll be the one dissenter saying I’m not ok with this. It’s the state saying your life is not worth living, you are not worth caring for. It’s one thing for a terminally ill adult to choose euthanasia, forgive me if I’m skeptical of the all-knowing state making that decision for me.
There is also the slippery slope that you might want to think about. If the state can make that decision for a child, why not for an adult? I don’t think that a state should be able to terminate the life of someone who cannot consent.
Did the state make the decision? I was under the impression the decision was made by physicians and the parents.
Every option sucks here. Your concerns are valid, I share them as well, but the current reality is that we continue to allow people to live in agony, lingering until they receive the sweet relief of death which strikes me as cruel. It’s just a cruelty we’re accustomed to and it doesn’t require any affirmative action on our part so it’s psychologically easier for us to deal with.
No, it’s the exact opposite of that. In a civilized society, at least, the state offers its full support under the provisions of universal health care for all patients, regardless of cost, while at the same time removing legal restrictions on well-justified euthaniasia, as in the MAID legislation (Medical Assistance In Dying) in Canada:
As of March 17, 2021, persons who wish to receive MAID must meet the following eligibility criteria:
- be 18 years of age or older and have decision-making capacity
- be eligible for publicly funded health care services
- make a voluntary request that is not the result of external pressure
- give informed consent to receive MAID, meaning that the person has consented to receiving MAID after they have received all information needed to make this decision
- have a serious and incurable illness, disease or disability (excluding a mental illness until March 17, 2027)
- be in an advanced state of irreversible decline in capability
- have enduring and intolerable physical or psychological suffering that cannot be alleviated under conditions the person considers acceptable
Continuing to provide food or fluids is also an active decision, in such a case. Someone has to keep refilling the equipment.
That legislation, if that’s the only thing considered applicable, would have required them to keep torturing that child.
Well yes. This is what I mean.
I’m not against it. If the family and docs have decided. I would not judge them.
Euthanasia is an act with direct consequences. Letting some one expire without attempts to stop it is another.
As a person actively dying of an incurable disease I’ve thought about this alot.
I definitely don’t want another person making this decision for me. I’ve signed DNRs many times because not providing resusitation I can feel comfortable with. I don’t think I could make this decision for any loved one.
I’m not gonna think bad about someone who can.
This particular family have thought about it for a long time. I feel sad for them. Must be difficult.
That’s a very contrarian way of putting it. The reality is that the majority of the US – 37 states – has no provision whatsoever for compassionate euthanasia under any circumstances. Even those that do have vastly more restrictive requirements than the conditions for MAID as legislated in Canada, such as the requirement for self-administration (if you can’t administer the dose yourself, you’re out of luck) and the requirement for a prognosis of no more than six-month life expectancy. MAID has none of those conditions.
You’re correct, however, that the MAID legislation doesn’t specifically address minors or babies. All I’m saying is that I support a culture where, if such an unusual case were taken to court, merciful euthanasia would likely be approved, as opposed to a culture dominated by religious nut-jobs. Considerable precedence to the right to die has been established by previous rulings such as Carter v. Canada (2015) and Truchon v. Canada (2019).
the difference, and the source of my concern, is who is making the request. It’s not the minor in this instance
you’re right of course, it was physicians and (I believe) the parents. But it was the state that empowered them to make that decision in the first place, so I consider them a proxy for the state, at least in the sense that it was not the patient themselves making the decision
Oh yes, I agree that that’s better than most places have.
Umm, who’s giving this power to the state again? Because every other time it’s the parents that are, almost, always the proxy for their minor children. You considering them a proxy for the state in no way changes that.
That’s some wacky bass-ackward thinking.
The people have the natural right to make those decisions. The state is the one that has taken that right away with all manner of restrictions on suicide and euthanasia. It’s just that folks have lived with the government withholding those rights for so long that they forgot / forget freedom is the default.
The recent moves towards freedom for suicide and euthanasia are not the state taking over. They are the state taking baby steps to get its boot off the basic human right of self-determination.
I think we’ll just have to disagree here, at least with respect to this particular situation. I agree with you when it’s a mentally capable individual making that determination for themself, i.e. the right to die. I disagree when the decision to end life is made for someone who doesn’t or can’t consent. That is the state saying we will (or more accurately empower others) to make that decision for you. That is the opposite of self-determination.