17 ms·

“I Helped 8 People Die”

166 points by kitbrennan 11y ago

whack 11y ago
It is insane that we make people huddle into dark alleys and underground societies, simply to have agency over their own lives. I know and understand the main arguments against assisted suicide. The idea that it would pressure people into taking their own lives, in order to please others. With respect, such arguments are nonsensical. People feel external pressures every day to do things that they may not want to do. Pursue careers they may not enjoy. Get married when they may not want to. Have kids even if they don't want to. Should the government step in every time and ban the activity entirely, simply to ensure that no one ever gives in to peer pressure? Of course not. We recognize that freedom, liberty and individual agency, trumps any concerns about peer pressure. We recognize that our life decisions should be in our own hands, and not in the hands of big brother. It's time we allowed people full control to end their lives on their own terms, and not on the terms forced upon them.
- JackFr 11y ago
  And yet we have suicide prevention hotlines. Go figure.
  - detaro 11y ago
    Asking for help is a form of personal agency, especially (or maybe even only) if there actually is someone available to ask.
  - XorNot 11y ago
    There's a big difference between emotional teenagers doing something impulsive, people with mental illness (treatable) doing something out of desperation and people with terminal illnesses or dementia choosing to avoid unpreventable suffering or losing everything they are. The biggest problem is most of the conditions which wipe people out take your rational agency as their first action.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
  - vacri 11y ago
    We have gambling addiction hotlines too, but don't blanket-ban gambling.
  - PhasmaFelis 11y ago
    Many people think that abortion is a bad choice, but one that women should be allowed to make. Saying you shouldn't do something is not the same as saying you shouldn't be allowed to do it.
    - JackFr 11y ago
      The point is that people have always had, and will always have the ability to take their own lives. The prohibition under consideration here is that of taking someone else's life. Stated differently, assisted suicide is simply killing another person who has expressed a desire to die. I think it's reasonable to say someone shouldn't kill another person. The crux of the issue is the desire to die. Traditionally, the desire to die has been considered always to be a disordered desire, that is, a desire which though authentically felt, is best not acted upon. The cultural change that the assisted suicide movement is trying to make is that sometimes the desire to die is not disordered, that in fact for a class of people life literally is not worth living.
  - superuser2 11y ago
    The very act of calling a suicide prevention hotline is solid evidence that the caller does not truly want to die. The point isn't that people should die, it's that they should choose. Compelling someone else's continued consciousness is absurd and, depending on the subjective experiencing of being inside that person's head, can be among the cruelest forms of torture. Just as it would be to fail to help someone who wants to stay alive.
    - DanBC 11y ago
      > The very act of calling a suicide prevention hotline is solid evidence that the caller does not truly want to die. This sentence is proof that you do not understand suicide and have not read modern information about suicide. Since your misinformation is dangerous I urge you to do some reading before talking about something that you clearly know little about. Suicidality is complex, but "calling a hotline is solid evidence someone doesn't want to truly die" falls into several of the myths people spread about suicide: http://www.samaritans.org/how-we-can-help-you/myths-about-suicide http://www.samaritans.org/how-we-can-help-you/myths-about-su... Myth: People who talk about suicide aren’t serious and won’t go through with it. Myth: People who threaten suicide are just attention seeking and shouldn’t be taken seriously. Myth: People who are suicidal want to die. Myth: If a person is serious about killing themselves then there is nothing you can do.
      - superuser2 11y ago
        Taking steps to avoid death is trivially a signal that in some way a person wishes to avoid death; whether that side of their internal conflict will prevail is another matter and, of course, not at all certain. But it is 100% within the bounds of respecting their agency (and, I'd argue, a duty) to help someone who is fighting to stay alive do so. The argument is that suicide hotlines don't imply a paternalistic "all citizens must keep breathing at all costs" ideology because they require the voluntary step of asking for help, and someone who asks for help can be meaningfully said to want it. >Myth: People who are suicidal want to die. I agree that this is not true in general, but to say that it is never true is more of a philosophical position (the topic of this thread) than the measurable science fact you're making it out to be. > something that you clearly know little about. I can find many responses to this, but none of them civil.
- paulddraper 11y ago
  "our life decisions should be in our own hands" On the scale of things, that's probably one of the least intrusive ways that big brother helps. I mean, we outlaw people working for too little money, and a hundred other things before we get to something as self-detrimental as death itself. I appreciate the libertarianism; I just wanted to point out that this is very, very far from the most egregious big-brother-helping policy.
  - meric 11y ago
    Central banks are discussing outlawing cash, so that when the time comes and they want to impose negative rates, they won't be limited by a lower bound - they can be as financially repressive as they like. Outlawing suicide is the same - if the state is overly oppressive, people would rather suicide than to live under the oppression, and when they suicide they are no longer productive. Removing the possibility of suicide removes the lower bound of how oppressive the state can be. See force feeding in Guantanamo bay for example. By stopping deaths from hunger strikes, the state can treat it's prisoners as badly as it wants.
    - daodedickinson 11y ago
      Consider that suicide removes the limit on how awful a society can be by allowing it to kill off anyone who doesn't fit in instead of helping to find a way to improve their situation. Our communities should focus on healing mental suffering so that the despairing are allowed to see that the lens of depression is not the only way to see their situation. In one Netherlands case in 2014, a 35 year old woman was killed by a Dutch doctor for her depression symptoms. The first two doctors she approached referred her to treatment options, but she kept shopping around until she found a doctor who evaluated her for only two weeks, then killed her two days later. As someone who had terrible depression for years, and has been depression free for years, I know how cruelly murderous this is. It is no better than when cries for help on the internet are met with bullying and end in suicide. Actually, it is worse because the doctors are administering the coup de grace. cite for this woman's story: http://alexschadenberg.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-netherlands-euthanasia-law-is.html http://alexschadenberg.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-netherlands-... Another example of a medical system not supplying a human person with the community and loving support he needed: "In one highly publicized example last year, the clinic helped a 63-year-old man with severe psychiatric problems to end his life. After a very active career working for government, the patient in question could not face his upcoming retirement. In an interview with the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad the clinic’s psychiatrist, Gerty Casteelen said the man 'managed to convince me that it was impossible for him to go on. He was all alone in the world. He’d never had a partner. He did have family but he was not in touch with them. It was almost like he’d never developed as a person. He felt like he didn’t have the right to live. His self-hatred was all consuming.'" http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/02/03/the-dutch-debate-doctor-assisted-suicide-for-depression.html http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/02/03/the-dutch-d...
- DanBC 11y ago
  I'm in favour of assisted dying. (Please don't call it assisted suicide - we want to prevent suicide. It's useful to keep the word suicide for something we want to stop). > With respect, such arguments are nonsensical. Elder abuse is rampant. It's easy to imagine that the victim of such abuse may be more willing to die. But assisted death may help this - there would (should) be considerable professional involvement to make sure there's no coersion or abuse. When we look at places that have assisted dying we find some cases of people who probably died for the wrong reasons. Those cases are always waved around - but people against assisted dying need to come up with some numbers.
  - startling 11y ago
    From the article: “I don’t mind a bit being labelled a suicide.”
    - DanBC 11y ago
      That person doesn't mind being labled a suicide, but people campaigning for assisted dying have to spend time and money talking about the difference between suicide (generally something we want to avoid) and assisted dying (something we want to provide). By continuing to use the word suicide for people who chose assisted death you make it harder for people to get assisted death legalised.
      - gknoy 11y ago
        How is "suicide" different from "assisted dying"? I don't understand how they are different, and why one is good and one is not.
        DanBC 11y ago
        Suicide is when you kill your self. Assissted dying is when you ask a doctor to kill you, or to help you kill yourself. It's useful to seperate out people who want to control their death when they have an incurable illness from people who want to die when they have a treatable mental illness. It's especially useful if you want assisted death to become legal. It makes it a bit clearer that you're not trying to make it easier for people with mental illness to die.
- random_upvoter 11y ago
  Where I live people can, and do, get euthanasia for psychological suffering. Now, research has shown that a rather large percentage of the elderly are suffering from depression. Part of the reason is, of course, that getting old can be very painful. But another part of the reason is that in today's society many old people are almost criminally neglected. The only right solution to this problem is that society begins to take better care of old people. But now we begin to offer an alternative "solution" which consist of helping these people to kill themselves. And look, now there's extra budget to take care of the old people that remain. Did you see what just happened? Assisted suicide has, sneakily, become a means to control the cost of elderly care and to avoid addressing the real problem -- while thinking ourselves very enlightened and progressive as a bonus.
  - Omniusaspirer 11y ago
    Aging is the real problem, and suicide by suffering elderly is unlikely to make young researchers turn their backs on the search for the fountain of youth.
  - GunboatDiplomat 11y ago
    Society is not obligated to take care of the elderly. They had 60+ years to prepare for being old, and if they didn't, the burden doesn't fall on me.
  - klibertp 11y ago
    > The only right solution to this problem is that society begins to take better care of old people. What about another issue of incurable, terminally ill patients who descend into a years-long hell of losing themselves to the pain, to the illness; who day by day see their brains becoming less and less capable? Are you sure we're even qualified to really "take care" of such people? It's not about elderly; it's about suffering. If you can't cure or ease someone's pain, step aside. You're in no position to tell such person what to do because you failed them already. If a suffering person decides it's enough, you have no right to tell them - to make them! - to suffer anymore. Assisted suicide is a way out of hell you can't picture fully without going there yourself. It's easy to say that "we need to take better care of someone", but this makes those who don't want to be taken care of left with nothing. And to repeat, there are people that we don't know how to help and the only thing we can offer them is to prolong their suffering.
gkya 11y ago
As medicine developed, we got a chance to live, to the point that we sort of lost our chance to die. I'm too young to really worry about prolonged terminal illnesses, but I sometimes think about this nowadays, as my father passed away very recently, from lung cancer, discovered very very late, at terminal stage. He was a strong, dynamic man in his fifties, and in two months he passed away. I recall my grandfather's terminal stage which dured some five, six years, until 2010. He had many illnesses, and he was too weak to walk in his last two-three years. Comparing the two, I do not really know what to think, but in this context, after lightly reading the article linked too, I guess everybody should have the right to renounce their lives, with assistance from someone who'll guarantee a peaceful and certain death: an ignorant, solo attempt might result in getting into a state where suicide is physically impossible and pain is greater. And I sometimes think the state is way too much intertwined into people's lifes, but that's another topic.
daodedickinson 11y ago
I consider myself very lucky that no one tried to kill me when I was suicidal. It's going to get a lot more dangerous now that able-bodied young people are getting social and medical "support" that kills them for their possibly temporary depression or nihilism. Suffering can always be made meaningful and abolition of pain is not a goal for society but a enervation unto death. Just now in Canada, doctors and nurses are being forced to choose between their professions and holding to a religion that forbids murder. These are their options: "They can keep their heads down and pray they are never asked to kill a patient. They can surrender and become part of the death machine—at the risk of the eternal consequences that their faith beliefs portend. They can give up their careers and hand the keys of what are now religious medical institutions to secular ownership (or, move to the United States where, at least for now, doctors and nurses enjoy conscience protections). Finally, the difficult but most righteous course would be to engage in a policy of total non-cooperation with the culture of death, forcing the national and provincial governments and medical colleges either to turn a blind eye or to inflict unjust punishments on doctors for refusing to kill. Perhaps such draconian measures would bring the country to its senses." https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2016/03/canada-declares-war-on-christian-doctors-and-nurses https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2016/03/canada-de...
- daodedickinson 11y ago
  http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=193281 http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=193281 In this survey, a small proportion of terminally ill patients seriously considered euthanasia or PAS for themselves. Over a few months, half the patients changed their minds. Patients with depressive symptoms were more likely to change their minds about desiring euthanasia or PAS.... contrary to general perceptions, depression and hopelessness, rather than pain, seem to be the primary factors motivating patients' interest in euthanasia or PAS.... because euthanasia and PAS are irreversible actions, longitudinal assessments of patients' attitudes and preferences are important.
- yuzi 11y ago
  Every legit news source is reporting doctors will have the right to NOT participate. Everything else is opinionated propaganda. Right now the community is debating if they should require that doctors provide information on where/whom they can go to in order to get the assistance/advice patients need; In the end even that is unlikely. "It's expected that no doctors will be forced to help a patient die." http://www.ctvnews.ca/health/canadian-doctors-express-mixed-opinions-on-assisted-dying-1.2715008 http://www.ctvnews.ca/health/canadian-doctors-express-mixed-...
moistgorilla 11y ago
When I was 20 I wanted to kill myself. Thank whomever that assisted suicide isn't a socially acceptable practice because I could have easily gone into some clinic and had someone kill me without my family knowing.
- bronson 11y ago
  How would you fake the terminal illness? That seems very difficult, especially at age 20.
- el_benhameen 11y ago
  That's just patently untrue. There's an enormous gap between the situations in which the author advocates for (and laws in various states and countries permit) assisted suicide and a society that allows you to walk into a clinic and kill yourself for any reason. The laws in California [0], Washington, Oregon, and Vermont [1], for example, require that the patient is mentally competent and is terminally ill with less than six months to live as certified by two doctors. A suicidal person won't meet the first requirement, much less the second. [0] http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/10/05/446107800/california-governor-signs-landmark-right-to-die-law http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/10/05/44610780... [1] https://www.deathwithdignity.org/learn/access/ https://www.deathwithdignity.org/learn/access/
- DanBC 11y ago
  > easily No, not easily. And if you want to die there are very many ways that are as easy or easier. Assisted dying has should have some safeguards built in - "does this person have mental ill health?", "has this person had access to a variety of good quality MH treatment?" If anything the delays built in (waiting for an appointment) are somewhat protective.
- Confusion 11y ago
  You may want to actually read the article. The options aren't "no euthanasia at all" or "anyone can request euthanasia at any time and get it immediately". If some line of reasoning leads you to conclude that the Swiss are insane, well, then maybe you should consider the option that you're the problem, not the majority of Swiss that support their legislation.
Keverw 11y ago
It's interesting how they can do assisted suicide, yet many states have trouble carrying out executions. Strange, is the stuff doctors use any better or are they're botched assisted suicides also? Do they get to use somthing better than the prisons have?
- dorfsmay 11y ago
  My understanding is that companies won't sell the products that are used in assisted suicide to states which carry execution.
- chillydawg 11y ago
  The suppliers take a moral view that execution is wrong and decline to do business with the executioners. Executioners thus have to find alternative suppliers of the various drugs they need, which gets harder and harder in well regulated places like the US.
mjh2539 11y ago
This is vile, putrid shit. All lives are worth living.
- junto 11y ago
  I believe that you were facing the reality of living the 6 months of an agonising slow death in a cancer hospice, you might change your narrow minded opinion.
  - htns 11y ago
    Or he might demand better painkillers from the doctors.
    - orf 11y ago
      Oh, so dying a slow, slightly less painful agonising death whilst being doped up all day is so much better?
    - klibertp 11y ago
      Which he would be denied, of course, because the best painkillers are "narcotics" and so tightly regulated that it's hard to get them even if you really, really need them. That's a whole another story, to be sure, but relevant in practice.
      - DanBC 11y ago
        I believe it happens, but do you have any sourcing for how often it happens that cancer patients in hospices are denied opiates? In England opiates used to be under-prescribed for this kind of end of life care. National guidelines were changed to make it easier for doctors to prescribe strong pain relief. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-18169840 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-18169840 (But note: "The NICE guidance is not specifically about end-of-life care but rather patients living day-to-day with chronic pain" generally trying other things before opiates is a good idea for people with long term pain. Exercise and diet and pain clinics are useful.) And, in this situation: Shouldn't the main focus be on changing hospice care to provide adequate pain relief, rather than changing the law to allow people in pain to be killed by doctors? (Again, I'm in favour of changing the law to allow assisted death)
gkya 11y ago
And instead they spend them sixty years to prepare you to adulthood. And they didn't care that their children might grow up to be unworthy of such effort, like you are.
- tomjen3 11y ago
  Please do not attack other posters. HN frowns on this.
  - gkya 11y ago
    I do not consider my post an attack. The elderly raise the youth, and the youth has to help the elderly to gracefully pass away. And who says I don't bother, is unworthy of being raised, which is a work of incredible effort, and of lenghty years. Saying that someone does not merit sth. is not an attack, or an insult.
    - chr1 11y ago
      I think the original comment was talking about elderly that didn't raise their own youth well. Because the ones who did it successfully do not depend on whole society that much, and can rely on their own children.
      - gkya 11y ago
        The whole of the youth depend on the whole of the elderly, and vice versa. That's society. If we only rely on our parents and our offspring, than that's a tribal system, there's no society.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - dang 11y ago
      The comment was trollish and inhumane, but yours was still a personal attack, and those are not allowed here, regardless of what you're responding to. Please don't do it again.
tim333 11y ago
I sometimes thing you could combine avoiding suffering through euthanasia with the desire to preserve life by doing cryonics.
- driverdan 11y ago
  Except cryonics doesn't preserve life. It doesn't work. It's more or less a scam.
  - tangled_zans 11y ago
    No cryonics company has yet claimed that it "works". They're quite up front about the fact that they have no idea how to bring anyone back. People choose to get cryo-preserved despite that because, as far as some people see it, it beats being buried underground or burned to ash. Marvin Minsky who passed away recently was on the board of Alcor (one of the main cryonics companies in the US). Does he seem like a scammer to you? Please research your claims before accusing people of "scams" left and right.
  - tim333 11y ago
    I'd say that was unproven either way.
Kenji 11y ago
If you've seen a family member suffer from terminal cancer for years, rotting away while still being alive and suffering from such horrible pain that no amount of medication can reduce it, there is just no way you are against assisted suicide, trust me on that. We treat our dogs better than that. We kill them to spare them from such a fate.
known 11y ago
Die with dignity; http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/rest-of-world/Ageing-indebted-Japan-debates-right-to-die-with-dignity/articleshow/51276408.cms http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/rest-of-world/Agein...

166 points by kitbrennan 11y ago

whack 11y ago

It is insane that we make people huddle into dark alleys and underground societies, simply to have agency over their own lives. I know and understand the main arguments against assisted suicide. The idea that it would pressure people into taking their own lives, in order to please others. With respect, such arguments are nonsensical. People feel external pressures every day to do things that they may not want to do. Pursue careers they may not enjoy. Get married when they may not want to. Have kids even if they don't want to. Should the government step in every time and ban the activity entirely, simply to ensure that no one ever gives in to peer pressure? Of course not. We recognize that freedom, liberty and individual agency, trumps any concerns about peer pressure. We recognize that our life decisions should be in our own hands, and not in the hands of big brother. It's time we allowed people full control to end their lives on their own terms, and not on the terms forced upon them.

JackFr 11y ago
And yet we have suicide prevention hotlines. Go figure.
- detaro 11y ago
  Asking for help is a form of personal agency, especially (or maybe even only) if there actually is someone available to ask.
- XorNot 11y ago
  There's a big difference between emotional teenagers doing something impulsive, people with mental illness (treatable) doing something out of desperation and people with terminal illnesses or dementia choosing to avoid unpreventable suffering or losing everything they are. The biggest problem is most of the conditions which wipe people out take your rational agency as their first action.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- vacri 11y ago
  We have gambling addiction hotlines too, but don't blanket-ban gambling.
- PhasmaFelis 11y ago
  Many people think that abortion is a bad choice, but one that women should be allowed to make. Saying you shouldn't do something is not the same as saying you shouldn't be allowed to do it.
  - JackFr 11y ago
    The point is that people have always had, and will always have the ability to take their own lives. The prohibition under consideration here is that of taking someone else's life. Stated differently, assisted suicide is simply killing another person who has expressed a desire to die. I think it's reasonable to say someone shouldn't kill another person. The crux of the issue is the desire to die. Traditionally, the desire to die has been considered always to be a disordered desire, that is, a desire which though authentically felt, is best not acted upon. The cultural change that the assisted suicide movement is trying to make is that sometimes the desire to die is not disordered, that in fact for a class of people life literally is not worth living.
- superuser2 11y ago
  The very act of calling a suicide prevention hotline is solid evidence that the caller does not truly want to die. The point isn't that people should die, it's that they should choose. Compelling someone else's continued consciousness is absurd and, depending on the subjective experiencing of being inside that person's head, can be among the cruelest forms of torture. Just as it would be to fail to help someone who wants to stay alive.
  - DanBC 11y ago
    > The very act of calling a suicide prevention hotline is solid evidence that the caller does not truly want to die. This sentence is proof that you do not understand suicide and have not read modern information about suicide. Since your misinformation is dangerous I urge you to do some reading before talking about something that you clearly know little about. Suicidality is complex, but "calling a hotline is solid evidence someone doesn't want to truly die" falls into several of the myths people spread about suicide: http://www.samaritans.org/how-we-can-help-you/myths-about-suicide http://www.samaritans.org/how-we-can-help-you/myths-about-su... Myth: People who talk about suicide aren’t serious and won’t go through with it. Myth: People who threaten suicide are just attention seeking and shouldn’t be taken seriously. Myth: People who are suicidal want to die. Myth: If a person is serious about killing themselves then there is nothing you can do.
    - superuser2 11y ago
      Taking steps to avoid death is trivially a signal that in some way a person wishes to avoid death; whether that side of their internal conflict will prevail is another matter and, of course, not at all certain. But it is 100% within the bounds of respecting their agency (and, I'd argue, a duty) to help someone who is fighting to stay alive do so. The argument is that suicide hotlines don't imply a paternalistic "all citizens must keep breathing at all costs" ideology because they require the voluntary step of asking for help, and someone who asks for help can be meaningfully said to want it. >Myth: People who are suicidal want to die. I agree that this is not true in general, but to say that it is never true is more of a philosophical position (the topic of this thread) than the measurable science fact you're making it out to be. > something that you clearly know little about. I can find many responses to this, but none of them civil.
paulddraper 11y ago
"our life decisions should be in our own hands" On the scale of things, that's probably one of the least intrusive ways that big brother helps. I mean, we outlaw people working for too little money, and a hundred other things before we get to something as self-detrimental as death itself. I appreciate the libertarianism; I just wanted to point out that this is very, very far from the most egregious big-brother-helping policy.
- meric 11y ago
  Central banks are discussing outlawing cash, so that when the time comes and they want to impose negative rates, they won't be limited by a lower bound - they can be as financially repressive as they like. Outlawing suicide is the same - if the state is overly oppressive, people would rather suicide than to live under the oppression, and when they suicide they are no longer productive. Removing the possibility of suicide removes the lower bound of how oppressive the state can be. See force feeding in Guantanamo bay for example. By stopping deaths from hunger strikes, the state can treat it's prisoners as badly as it wants.
  - daodedickinson 11y ago
    Consider that suicide removes the limit on how awful a society can be by allowing it to kill off anyone who doesn't fit in instead of helping to find a way to improve their situation. Our communities should focus on healing mental suffering so that the despairing are allowed to see that the lens of depression is not the only way to see their situation. In one Netherlands case in 2014, a 35 year old woman was killed by a Dutch doctor for her depression symptoms. The first two doctors she approached referred her to treatment options, but she kept shopping around until she found a doctor who evaluated her for only two weeks, then killed her two days later. As someone who had terrible depression for years, and has been depression free for years, I know how cruelly murderous this is. It is no better than when cries for help on the internet are met with bullying and end in suicide. Actually, it is worse because the doctors are administering the coup de grace. cite for this woman's story: http://alexschadenberg.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-netherlands-euthanasia-law-is.html http://alexschadenberg.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-netherlands-... Another example of a medical system not supplying a human person with the community and loving support he needed: "In one highly publicized example last year, the clinic helped a 63-year-old man with severe psychiatric problems to end his life. After a very active career working for government, the patient in question could not face his upcoming retirement. In an interview with the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad the clinic’s psychiatrist, Gerty Casteelen said the man 'managed to convince me that it was impossible for him to go on. He was all alone in the world. He’d never had a partner. He did have family but he was not in touch with them. It was almost like he’d never developed as a person. He felt like he didn’t have the right to live. His self-hatred was all consuming.'" http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/02/03/the-dutch-debate-doctor-assisted-suicide-for-depression.html http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/02/03/the-dutch-d...
DanBC 11y ago
I'm in favour of assisted dying. (Please don't call it assisted suicide - we want to prevent suicide. It's useful to keep the word suicide for something we want to stop). > With respect, such arguments are nonsensical. Elder abuse is rampant. It's easy to imagine that the victim of such abuse may be more willing to die. But assisted death may help this - there would (should) be considerable professional involvement to make sure there's no coersion or abuse. When we look at places that have assisted dying we find some cases of people who probably died for the wrong reasons. Those cases are always waved around - but people against assisted dying need to come up with some numbers.
- startling 11y ago
  From the article: “I don’t mind a bit being labelled a suicide.”
  - DanBC 11y ago
    That person doesn't mind being labled a suicide, but people campaigning for assisted dying have to spend time and money talking about the difference between suicide (generally something we want to avoid) and assisted dying (something we want to provide). By continuing to use the word suicide for people who chose assisted death you make it harder for people to get assisted death legalised.
    - gknoy 11y ago
      How is "suicide" different from "assisted dying"? I don't understand how they are different, and why one is good and one is not.
      - DanBC 11y ago
        Suicide is when you kill your self. Assissted dying is when you ask a doctor to kill you, or to help you kill yourself. It's useful to seperate out people who want to control their death when they have an incurable illness from people who want to die when they have a treatable mental illness. It's especially useful if you want assisted death to become legal. It makes it a bit clearer that you're not trying to make it easier for people with mental illness to die.
random_upvoter 11y ago
Where I live people can, and do, get euthanasia for psychological suffering. Now, research has shown that a rather large percentage of the elderly are suffering from depression. Part of the reason is, of course, that getting old can be very painful. But another part of the reason is that in today's society many old people are almost criminally neglected. The only right solution to this problem is that society begins to take better care of old people. But now we begin to offer an alternative "solution" which consist of helping these people to kill themselves. And look, now there's extra budget to take care of the old people that remain. Did you see what just happened? Assisted suicide has, sneakily, become a means to control the cost of elderly care and to avoid addressing the real problem -- while thinking ourselves very enlightened and progressive as a bonus.
- Omniusaspirer 11y ago
  Aging is the real problem, and suicide by suffering elderly is unlikely to make young researchers turn their backs on the search for the fountain of youth.
- GunboatDiplomat 11y ago
  Society is not obligated to take care of the elderly. They had 60+ years to prepare for being old, and if they didn't, the burden doesn't fall on me.
- klibertp 11y ago
  > The only right solution to this problem is that society begins to take better care of old people. What about another issue of incurable, terminally ill patients who descend into a years-long hell of losing themselves to the pain, to the illness; who day by day see their brains becoming less and less capable? Are you sure we're even qualified to really "take care" of such people? It's not about elderly; it's about suffering. If you can't cure or ease someone's pain, step aside. You're in no position to tell such person what to do because you failed them already. If a suffering person decides it's enough, you have no right to tell them - to make them! - to suffer anymore. Assisted suicide is a way out of hell you can't picture fully without going there yourself. It's easy to say that "we need to take better care of someone", but this makes those who don't want to be taken care of left with nothing. And to repeat, there are people that we don't know how to help and the only thing we can offer them is to prolong their suffering.

gkya 11y ago

As medicine developed, we got a chance to live, to the point that we sort of lost our chance to die. I'm too young to really worry about prolonged terminal illnesses, but I sometimes think about this nowadays, as my father passed away very recently, from lung cancer, discovered very very late, at terminal stage. He was a strong, dynamic man in his fifties, and in two months he passed away. I recall my grandfather's terminal stage which dured some five, six years, until 2010. He had many illnesses, and he was too weak to walk in his last two-three years. Comparing the two, I do not really know what to think, but in this context, after lightly reading the article linked too, I guess everybody should have the right to renounce their lives, with assistance from someone who'll guarantee a peaceful and certain death: an ignorant, solo attempt might result in getting into a state where suicide is physically impossible and pain is greater. And I sometimes think the state is way too much intertwined into people's lifes, but that's another topic.

daodedickinson 11y ago

I consider myself very lucky that no one tried to kill me when I was suicidal. It's going to get a lot more dangerous now that able-bodied young people are getting social and medical "support" that kills them for their possibly temporary depression or nihilism. Suffering can always be made meaningful and abolition of pain is not a goal for society but a enervation unto death. Just now in Canada, doctors and nurses are being forced to choose between their professions and holding to a religion that forbids murder. These are their options: "They can keep their heads down and pray they are never asked to kill a patient. They can surrender and become part of the death machine—at the risk of the eternal consequences that their faith beliefs portend. They can give up their careers and hand the keys of what are now religious medical institutions to secular ownership (or, move to the United States where, at least for now, doctors and nurses enjoy conscience protections). Finally, the difficult but most righteous course would be to engage in a policy of total non-cooperation with the culture of death, forcing the national and provincial governments and medical colleges either to turn a blind eye or to inflict unjust punishments on doctors for refusing to kill. Perhaps such draconian measures would bring the country to its senses." https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2016/03/canada-declares-war-on-christian-doctors-and-nurses https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2016/03/canada-de...

daodedickinson 11y ago
http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=193281 http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=193281 In this survey, a small proportion of terminally ill patients seriously considered euthanasia or PAS for themselves. Over a few months, half the patients changed their minds. Patients with depressive symptoms were more likely to change their minds about desiring euthanasia or PAS.... contrary to general perceptions, depression and hopelessness, rather than pain, seem to be the primary factors motivating patients' interest in euthanasia or PAS.... because euthanasia and PAS are irreversible actions, longitudinal assessments of patients' attitudes and preferences are important.
yuzi 11y ago
Every legit news source is reporting doctors will have the right to NOT participate. Everything else is opinionated propaganda. Right now the community is debating if they should require that doctors provide information on where/whom they can go to in order to get the assistance/advice patients need; In the end even that is unlikely. "It's expected that no doctors will be forced to help a patient die." http://www.ctvnews.ca/health/canadian-doctors-express-mixed-opinions-on-assisted-dying-1.2715008 http://www.ctvnews.ca/health/canadian-doctors-express-mixed-...

moistgorilla 11y ago

When I was 20 I wanted to kill myself. Thank whomever that assisted suicide isn't a socially acceptable practice because I could have easily gone into some clinic and had someone kill me without my family knowing.

bronson 11y ago
How would you fake the terminal illness? That seems very difficult, especially at age 20.
el_benhameen 11y ago
That's just patently untrue. There's an enormous gap between the situations in which the author advocates for (and laws in various states and countries permit) assisted suicide and a society that allows you to walk into a clinic and kill yourself for any reason. The laws in California [0], Washington, Oregon, and Vermont [1], for example, require that the patient is mentally competent and is terminally ill with less than six months to live as certified by two doctors. A suicidal person won't meet the first requirement, much less the second. [0] http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/10/05/446107800/california-governor-signs-landmark-right-to-die-law http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/10/05/44610780... [1] https://www.deathwithdignity.org/learn/access/ https://www.deathwithdignity.org/learn/access/
DanBC 11y ago
> easily No, not easily. And if you want to die there are very many ways that are as easy or easier. Assisted dying has should have some safeguards built in - "does this person have mental ill health?", "has this person had access to a variety of good quality MH treatment?" If anything the delays built in (waiting for an appointment) are somewhat protective.
Confusion 11y ago
You may want to actually read the article. The options aren't "no euthanasia at all" or "anyone can request euthanasia at any time and get it immediately". If some line of reasoning leads you to conclude that the Swiss are insane, well, then maybe you should consider the option that you're the problem, not the majority of Swiss that support their legislation.

Keverw 11y ago

It's interesting how they can do assisted suicide, yet many states have trouble carrying out executions. Strange, is the stuff doctors use any better or are they're botched assisted suicides also? Do they get to use somthing better than the prisons have?

dorfsmay 11y ago
My understanding is that companies won't sell the products that are used in assisted suicide to states which carry execution.
chillydawg 11y ago
The suppliers take a moral view that execution is wrong and decline to do business with the executioners. Executioners thus have to find alternative suppliers of the various drugs they need, which gets harder and harder in well regulated places like the US.

mjh2539 11y ago

This is vile, putrid shit. All lives are worth living.

junto 11y ago
I believe that you were facing the reality of living the 6 months of an agonising slow death in a cancer hospice, you might change your narrow minded opinion.
- htns 11y ago
  Or he might demand better painkillers from the doctors.
  - orf 11y ago
    Oh, so dying a slow, slightly less painful agonising death whilst being doped up all day is so much better?
  - klibertp 11y ago
    Which he would be denied, of course, because the best painkillers are "narcotics" and so tightly regulated that it's hard to get them even if you really, really need them. That's a whole another story, to be sure, but relevant in practice.
    - DanBC 11y ago
      I believe it happens, but do you have any sourcing for how often it happens that cancer patients in hospices are denied opiates? In England opiates used to be under-prescribed for this kind of end of life care. National guidelines were changed to make it easier for doctors to prescribe strong pain relief. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-18169840 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-18169840 (But note: "The NICE guidance is not specifically about end-of-life care but rather patients living day-to-day with chronic pain" generally trying other things before opiates is a good idea for people with long term pain. Exercise and diet and pain clinics are useful.) And, in this situation: Shouldn't the main focus be on changing hospice care to provide adequate pain relief, rather than changing the law to allow people in pain to be killed by doctors? (Again, I'm in favour of changing the law to allow assisted death)

gkya 11y ago

And instead they spend them sixty years to prepare you to adulthood. And they didn't care that their children might grow up to be unworthy of such effort, like you are.

tomjen3 11y ago
Please do not attack other posters. HN frowns on this.
- gkya 11y ago
  I do not consider my post an attack. The elderly raise the youth, and the youth has to help the elderly to gracefully pass away. And who says I don't bother, is unworthy of being raised, which is a work of incredible effort, and of lenghty years. Saying that someone does not merit sth. is not an attack, or an insult.
  - chr1 11y ago
    I think the original comment was talking about elderly that didn't raise their own youth well. Because the ones who did it successfully do not depend on whole society that much, and can rely on their own children.
    - gkya 11y ago
      The whole of the youth depend on the whole of the elderly, and vice versa. That's society. If we only rely on our parents and our offspring, than that's a tribal system, there's no society.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - dang 11y ago
    The comment was trollish and inhumane, but yours was still a personal attack, and those are not allowed here, regardless of what you're responding to. Please don't do it again.

tim333 11y ago

I sometimes thing you could combine avoiding suffering through euthanasia with the desire to preserve life by doing cryonics.

driverdan 11y ago
Except cryonics doesn't preserve life. It doesn't work. It's more or less a scam.
- tangled_zans 11y ago
  No cryonics company has yet claimed that it "works". They're quite up front about the fact that they have no idea how to bring anyone back. People choose to get cryo-preserved despite that because, as far as some people see it, it beats being buried underground or burned to ash. Marvin Minsky who passed away recently was on the board of Alcor (one of the main cryonics companies in the US). Does he seem like a scammer to you? Please research your claims before accusing people of "scams" left and right.
- tim333 11y ago
  I'd say that was unproven either way.

Kenji 11y ago

If you've seen a family member suffer from terminal cancer for years, rotting away while still being alive and suffering from such horrible pain that no amount of medication can reduce it, there is just no way you are against assisted suicide, trust me on that. We treat our dogs better than that. We kill them to spare them from such a fate.

known 11y ago

Die with dignity; http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/rest-of-world/Ageing-indebted-Japan-debates-right-to-die-with-dignity/articleshow/51276408.cms http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/rest-of-world/Agein...