I am a proponent of assisted suicide. We euthanise our pets when they are in pain and don’t have long to live. Why don’t we do that as people? Surely the right to life comes with the right to a peaceful and pain-free death?
Why is there such a stigma attached to death? We’re all going to die. It’s a fact. But we all pretend like it’s not going to happen and let someone who is terminally ill and in great pain carry on for months or weeks, just waiting for the inevitable.
Why is it against the law to assist someone to die a dignified death?
Perhaps the most understandable reason is fear of the slippery slope. If we permit assisted suicide, we run the risk of legalizing deaths where the suicide wasn’t really what the decedent wanted.
Suicide, too, is often itself the result of impulses that would pass, given time. I remember reading the first-person account of one of the few people to survive jumping off San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge. He said something like, “I had all these problems that convinced me they were insoluble and I had no choices left, so I jumped… and the moment after I jumped I realized a great truth: I had only one real insoluble problem, and that was that I had just jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge.”
When we think of suicide, we tend to be concerned that a suicidal impulse does not represent a genuine decision to end one’s life undertaken by a rational thought process, and so we seek to place barriers in the way of its legality.
Sure, we can euthanize our pets - and some people do it not because the pet is old or in pain but because said pet is no longer convenient. I don’t want to see that happen to people.
Not all dying people are in agony, either - my own mother’s final months could easily be kept pain free and she died at home, at peace. I see no moral good in the idea of hastening that death. It wasn’t justifiable. I’m not convinced we truly do all that is possible to ease the suffering of the dying short of outright killing them, and until we do I fear euthanasia as the easy way to get rid of those “inconvenient” people.
Ok I understand that reasoning but at the same time, when you’re terminally ill and in pain and/or have no quality of life, this is where assisted suicide comes along. Reading the article states that the organisations in Switzerland that carry out the AS check their patients carefully and are certain that this is the right choice for that patient. The most they have in the US is a DNR but the patient still has to wait for nature to take its course - in the meantime they and their family have to suffer.
Euthanasia and assisted suicide are two different concepts IMO. I am not suggesting we get rid of ‘inconvenient’ people by euthanising them. I am talking about someone who is terminally ill, has full brain function and no quality of life. They want to end their own suffering (and their families’). It is a personal choice not one that should be made by the family.
who is going to evaluate the “full brain function” and “no quality of life” bits? Who is going to evaluate whether or not it was “personal choice”?
Just because all the justification paperwork is in order it doesn’t mean that in reality things were the way they are claimed in the documents. And, conveniently enough, in this case if there is fraud then the only person who could testify to it is now dead from morphine overdose and subsequently cremated. In effect you just give the doctors the unchecked power of life and death over patients, as long as they fill out the papers the right way.
You are correct, assisted suicide is a different, though related, issue. I’m not terribly enthused about that one, either, although I could see it being the lesser of two evils in some cases.
That’s called “murder” and I don’t think that will ever be legalized. There’s no slippery slope, at least not a realistic one. If people want to die, they will make it known and there won’t be an issue on what they really wanted. Besides, once they are dead, they aren’t around to regret their decision, so their last thoughts would be of themselves making the right choice
They’ll never live to regret it
They already have that power. They could easily botch a surgery or not suggest a treatment that would give the best chance of survival. I see no problems allowing doctors, who already have this power, to be allowed to help the family come to a conclusion. And that’s the crux of the objection: people like you think that a bunch of doctors could go around signing people’s lives away for termination, a made up belief that’s about as real as the supposed “death panels”. In fact, in real life doctors consult the family and the patient, and they make recommendations and tell them the chance of survival and the families come to a conclusion.
Seriously, just how many people with no family and no ability to communicate their wishes and no written wishes do you think exist in our hospitals today?
My problem with the current state of dying in America is that it is cruel. My brother died of stomach cancer. He was not allowed the meds necessary to ease his pain because that might hasten his death. However, he was allowed to decline food, supplements and hydration. He died, according to the will of the Godly folk of the US, in pain, of dehydration. Thanks a lot.
My granny died of bladder cancer at the age of 92, sobbing, in pain, because she might get addicted to pain meds if they were administered. Oh and she wasn’t allowed to have ice cream, the only thing she wanted to eat, because it might increase her cholesterol levels.
Dying in America is almost worse than living here anymore.
We’ve had assisted suicide in Oregon for more than a decade. It was controversial at the time, but now it’s a total non-issue and a 1997 attempt to repeal it was roundly defeated. Applicants need to provide a whole host of assurances that it’s truly voluntary, and I’ve never heard of an instance of abuse. It’s only available to those with terminal illnesses, and doctors must agree that the patient has less than six months to live. Personally, I know one woman who took advantage of it to end her own suffering and to make her family’s life easier (the family stress ended up with her son in jail). It was absolutely the right choice for her.
Assisted suicide needs to be carefully managed to prevent abuses, just like every other medical decision that a patient makes. But because it has potential to be a positive thing, we should not eliminate the possibility.
I’m guessing you have never had a loved one die in agony from cancer - a slow and lingering death with minimal pain intervention - eventually even I wished my grandmother would die because it turned her into a horrible person. She wanted and wished to die, she knew she was dying and became incredibly bitter, lashing out at everyone who loved her. She was a lovely woman in life but it’s really hard for me to remember her like that. All I remember is this horrible, bitter old woman who every day begged to die. Lingering death is not pretty.
I know that if I was ever in that position I would take my own life. That is why i am a proponent of assisted suicide. I would hate for my daughter to find me dead. At least with AS I still have control and there is no messy aftereffects.
I think this is the most awful story I have ever read. If I was dying and the doctor said I couldn’t have ice cream cos it might increase my cholesterol I would fire my doctor.
And this is why we need better hospice care, and less fear of hospice.
My father-in-law died of bone cancer at home. Because he had good hospice care he was able to get ample pain medication. It couldn’t eliminate all of his pain, but it did bring it down to levels he found bearable, and when it got really bad he could ask for enough to knock him out if that’s what was needed.
Likewise, my sister, who is an assistant director at a hospice in Buffalo, is constantly battling the BS like “they might get addicted to pain medication” or “it might raise their cholesterol levels” for her terminal patients. State of the art hospice care provides the level of pain medication to relieve pain even if that hastens death. Slightly earlier death is seen as a side effect to the primary goal of relieving suffering in the dying.
That’s a major difference between regular medicine and end-of-life care. Regular medicine is focused on preserving life above all else. And for most of us, if a treatment causes suffering but will lead to a restoration of health and function we’ll accept that. With the terminal, though, they won’t get better so the focus needs to change to relieving suffering and not life at all cost. The cancer expert intent on curing as many patients as possible is not necessarily the best doc to have when you’re definitely terminal and haven’t long to live.
Likewise, if someone is near death and wants ice cream you give 'em ice cream and screw their cholesterol levels. My sister had a patient who had been diabetic for decades and wasn’t expected to live long - sure, let him have all the cake and ice cream he wants, it’s the only pleasure left and won’t appreciably change his life expectancy.
That’s exactly what I met when I said US medicine is crap at end-of-life care and we are NOT doing enough to alleviate the suffering that makes people want to kill themselves.
I also think we need to get away from the focus on “six months to live”. It’s not a bad benchmark, but it isn’t applicable in all cases. My father-in-law, for instance, lived with terminal bone cancer for about 5 years. When he was diagnosed it was his third go-round with cancer, his second with bone cancer, he was in his 70’s, and realistically he was going to die from it. Proper care focused not on curing his cancer (which wasn’t going to happen) but rather maximizing his quality of life enabled him to continue to live his live for about 4 and half years. The last six months weren’t pretty, but as noted, he pain was controlled if not eliminated and he was lucid and able to interact with people up until two weeks before he died in his own home, in bed, as he wanted. He was lucky, in that he could keep reminding his doctors that the emphasis in his case was quality of life and not a cure, and he had doctors who would listen to that. Not everyone is that good at speaking on their own behalf. Really, in a case like that palliative care should come into play long before the “six months to live” mark. Which, by the way, is horseshit - most hospice patients in the US only live a few weeks after entering hospice, they’re entering much later than necessary and it’s only causing further suffering. The discussion of what NOT to do as well as what should be done should start when someone is known to be terminal, or at high risk of it, and not at some arbitrary point which, experience shows, we’re pretty crap at estimating.
In my mother’s case, as soon as was diagnosed terminal (and refused further medical care, backed up by my father who had power of attorney) the first thing done was to reduce her daily medications from about 40 pills to 5 - the other stuff was no longer necessary. For her, anxiety and fear was more an issue than pain, but there is medication for that, too. This didn’t mean doping her unconscious, either. All the eating restrictions were taken off, but as it turned out she just didn’t want to eat (which is not uncommon for the terminal elderly). Fine, she wasn’t forced to. When she expressed a desire to eat she was given food. If she didn’t feel like eating she didn’t have to. It was all about her and what she wanted. Which is as it should be.
In both cases good hospice care AND clear medical directives made a huge difference. Towards the end my mother stopped communicating but because she had made her preferences known years prior, in writing, we didn’t have to guess what she wanted. Too many people are afraid to write down what they want and don’t want. The doctors can’t follow your wishes if they don’t know what they are.
You must live in a different country. Not only could both my parents get all the pain medication they wanted the Hospice nurse forced a drugstore to hand deliver them to my mother’s house after they screwed up the order.
waah! waah! Think of the children! Think of the dying! Think of the suffering! Think of the dubious anecdotal claims of people not given enough morphine!
Just don’t think of the potential for legalized murder. That would just never happen because we all know how wonderful all the doctors, nurses and the entire medical profession is.
If a doctor messes things up and people die like flies on his watch, that ends up in the stats for his performance and hospital performance. So maybe he will be held liable. Maybe… But if he is allowed to fill out a euthanasia checklist, falsify the patient signature on it and then inject the poison even while the patient is screaming to make him stop - that’s something else entirely.
Then again, think of the data mining possibilities here. Once they legalize euthanasia, maybe the Hyper-supe-freakonomists will start finding exciting new patterns involving inexplicably common desire of elderly of certain ethnic groups to commit suicide while in the care of doctors with political views reminiscent of our good old friend BrainGlutton.
That fucking sucks. Sorry for the language, but there’s really no other way to say it. Can I ask when this happened? There was a big concern about the addictive properties of pain killers in the 80s and 90s, thanks to the War on Drugs, but that’s mostly (not entirely, but mostly) gone now, especially in palliative/hospice care. So that part is getting better, I’m happy to report.
Absolutely. And I’d add that we’ve got to get control of medical lawsuits (and the related costs of malpractice insurance) if we’re going to see real change. The most likely reason they won’t “let” a patient have ice cream because of her cholesterol level is that some grieving family may bring a malpractice case against a doctor or nurse who gives Grandma ice cream and she dies with a further elevated cholesterol level. And even if the court finds them not guilty or the insurance just pays the claim without trial, that takes time and money and raises insurance rates. So medical professionals, being only human, can be frustratingly conservative to protect themselves. We need to seriously reevaluate a system which treats litigation as a proper grief response.
Maybe not a different country, but a different time or different area. Some hospice nurses are better than others.
IME, nurses are quite often discussing amongst themselves the futility of further treatment, but out of sight of the patients and their family. We need to be better advocates and educators, but we’re scared to. Say the wrong thing, and you open yourself up not only to lawsuits, but actual assault and battery. Safer to keep mum until the patient or family brings it up.
Just sort of a reply to all. My Granny died in the 80’s and we did smuggle in ice cream to her every day;). My brother died in a suburb of Chicago (I think that’s still in America) in 2002 while he was supposedly in hospice care in the hospital. I now have doubts it was true hospice care. But that’s what they called it.:mad:
