We already have the right to die in pain and suffering, by refusing medical treatments because our health guru/pastor/cult leader/quack celebrity says that lemon oil/apple cider vinegar/prayer are the best cure for our malady. We can also, in many cases, choose such awful deaths for our children based on our faulty beliefs. So I agree, the right to choose the manner and time of our deaths to reduce suffering should be inalienable.
I’ve never heard of someone losing the right to execute a will, sign a contract, or have sex because they are really depressed.
Don’t fight the hypo. This person isn’t just “really depressed.” He or she has exhibited traits that show that he/she is not competent to make basic decisions like executing a will or signing a contract. Should that person be permitted to ask and receive lethal medication?
You have not presented me with a realistic hypo. The question of competence is a legal one, not a medical one. When you throw in contracts and wills and having sex, you aren’t dealing with medical decisions but legal ones.
Saying “Don’t fight the hypo” when the hypo makes no sense is not the way to reasonable debate.
ETA: I also don’t think anyone can ever say “Oh, that’s the mental illness talking.” We are our brains. There is no mind/brain duality.
I am trying to make it simple. The patient at issue is simply bat shit crazy. We all know what that means, and for the purposes of the hypo lets assume that we agree that the patient is bat shit crazy. That’s not a legal or medical term, but we would all agree that bat shit crazy people’s constitutional rights are restricted for their own protection and society’s protection.
Although that person cannot enter a contract, execute a will, or have sex, would you propose that notwithstanding all of the above, that we allow doctors to hand that person lethal medication? Even if everyone involved agreed that they could be treated with other medication that would allow them to enjoy a normal life?
And there is a mind/brain duality. My grandmother was not the pitiful person sobbing about Pearl Harbor being bombed and thinking that her husband was her son. She was the woman that rapped my knuckles when grabbing the food that was meant for others, and otherwise teaching me life lessons. Her later mental illness did not represent in any meaningful way her desires about her future. She had absolutely no ability to recognize where she was or who she was talking to.
I think society should protect people who are in that unfortunate situation instead of simply killing them.
Begging the question. I do not think, remotely, that “we all know what that means.”
I also do not know what you mean by bat-shit crazy.
When did we start talking about society killing anyone?
I’ve been depressed my entire existence. I can’t recall ever wanting to be alive. I believe in the “right” to suicide, and I guess the access to obtain the means to do so. I don’t necessarily believe in the rights of someone to assist in your death.
Here’s one for discussion:
You have a painful, degenerative disease for which there is no cure.
It suddenly accelerates and the MD (several, actually) assure you that, in 3 months, you will become bedridden and unable to move.
What are your plans?
Do you take the precaution of assuring that you will be able to kill yourself even with little mobility?
Do you just tidy things up a check out before it gets that bad?
Or do you decide that your suffering is the plan of some deity and suck it up until pneumonia catches up with you?
Why the assumption that it’s better to be dead than crippled?
I don’t find being bedridden to be automatically incompatible with wanting to live. For some people it is. Other people would try to find a way to live as long as possible.
For maybe the last 30 years I have kept a cache of drugs for just the situation.
Maybe a bit morbid, but I have band aids in case of a minor injury, peptobismol in case of diarrhea, so why not a barbiturate od in case of whatever?
You can’t make it simple. If you could make it simple, then, yes, a public policy one-size-fits-simple would be practical and possible. But it’s never simple, which is why it should remain an individual right.
Most confined to a bed have a lot more problems than the confinement. There are bodily function problems. Hygiene problems. Dermatological problems. There may be psychological problems. There may be cost problems.
But even chickens are supposed to be ‘‘free range’’! The part that annoys me is that many persons will lobby for better treatment of chickens than for me.
There was me, walking along, deeply depressed … nothing was going right in my life. Then a word appeared in my mind - “suicide”. Five minutes later all my worries had left me. For a week I happily researched how to kill myself. I read that 20 aspirins would kill me '- so I took a 100. That saved my life - 20 would have probably killed me.
Be careful about online suicide (and any other toxin) dosages.
A 10 second google shows an oral ld50 of 200 mg/kg for rats. Huge difference in absorption rates between oral, subQ, IM, and IV.
The moderators here are nervous about how-to’s on sensitive subjects, so I’ll leave it at that.