If a man decides to stop eating and taking necessary medications in order to die, is that suicide? If family members stand by and “allow” it is that assisted suicide? If a doctor approves it, is it not suicide? If the man is over 90 is he simply helping nature along? What if he was 80? 70? 40?
Are you asking about the law, or asking for opinions?
Yes, if someone stops eating, and maintains that for long enough, it’s suicide.
Cutting off necessary medications is suicidal. It’s like driving too fast with no seat-belts. It might not lead to death, but it increases the odds. There aren’t many medications that are absolutely life-and-death, but if someone were taking those, and stopped, and died from it, that would be suicide.
(The word can’t really be used proactively. It’s only really “suicide” once there is a death. Jumping off a bridge isn’t suicide; hitting the ground and dying is.)
In my opinion, it should be legal. Assistance should be legal too, but carefully regulated to prevent abuses. The principal should be required to demonstrate full mental competence, and any indications of pressure should be investigated.
Opinions. Thanks.
My opinion: if I don’t want to eat or take medications, that’s my business. There’s worse things than dying.
From an “opinion” point of view rather than a legal one, it seems to me that assisted suicide must be an active action, not simply inaction. So, letting someone starve themselves to death or letting them stop taking insulin (for a type 1 diabetic) is not assisted suicide because both of those don’t require any action on the part of the observer. Both of those would, however, be suicide on the part of the person wanting to die. I don’t believe age is relevant to the question (although it could be relevant to the coroner deciding whether to tell a “little white lie” about the circumstances of the death).
So long as the individual in question is “in his right mind” there isn’t much that anyone can do. The whole insulin question brings up the problem of what happens when the individual becomes unconscious. Don’t call for an ambulance and wait? How long?
Just how sick is the person before the lack of food and medicine? A week or so without water will do the trick even for the healthiest of us.
A friend of my wife’s was in a state where she just felt lousy all the time and just couldn’t continue. She was near 90 I think. She told her husband and her called her son (who lived in another town and came) and then she stopped eating. Two weeks later she died. It can’t have been that pleasant and an assist would have been nice, but perhaps she was past feeling much.
I guess it is a form of suicide, but not a form that would bring in an intrusion from the law. Me, I’d like to go out on a diet of vanilla ice cream and double chocolate brownies.
Yeah, I was more worried about a “bigger” law, but that’s another thread…
Reminds me of something that was not unheard of in rural Spain many decades ago: The “Jicarazo” (a “jícara” is a pottery vessel traditionally used to drink chocolate; the rather thick and very rich version we take in Spain – “Jicarazo” may be understood as “the act of hitting somebody forcefully with a jícara”).
The thing was --when an elderly person began to deteriorate, his or her family would begin to feed them really heavy stuff in as big a quantity as possible; lots of calories, fat and carbs; and (traditionally) a lot of very sweet, very thick chocolate after meals (hence the term “Jicarazo”). The idea being to overfeed them, possibly increase their blood pressure a lot and end up inducing a stroke or a heart attack or something.
Going out with a bang, as it were. Nice to leave this world after a lot of banquets, ¿no? 
Bigger law is this: it’s wrong to force your wishes on someone else. Even if you wish they weren’t dying.
My late wife (she posted here for a short time as barracuda) was dying from multiple sclerosis, living in a nursing home and losing her ability to walk and going blind. She finally requested to receive no food, no medicine except painkillers and no physical therapy. She died within a few days of making those decisions.
Was her decision suicide? Of course it was, and she had no qualms about it. After seeing what she was going through, neither did I.
FWIW, she was an atheist, so one potential roadblock was not existant.