7 ms·

To me, the only thing more ‘disturbing’ than a system which routinely fails its most vulnerable people by failing to provide adequate care and support for a goo

To me, the only thing more ‘disturbing’ than a system which routinely fails its most vulnerable people by failing to provide adequate care and support for a good quality-of-life is a system which fails its most vulnerable people in that way and then also forces them to continue to suffer indefinitely. I agree that we should not accept a system that does not provide everyone a good chance at a decent quality of life. I also believe strongly we should do everything we can to develop better treatments and cures. At the same time, it is cruel to allow hubris or sentiment to blind us to the reality that, today, even the most well-allocated resources are finite, and our medical knowledge isn’t advanced enough to effectively treat—let alone cure—a huge number of non-fatal quality-of-life diseases. Maybe Canada’s system needs more safeguards, maybe it doesn’t. It’s impossible to tell by reading this article, which is heavy on innuendo and light on data.

O__________O 4y ago
Systems will always have suboptimal outcomes regardless of how they are structured, advances that are made, etc. Everything has a cost, regardless of if you acknowledge it, see it, etc. Generally speaking, vast majority of current negative health impacts are self inflicted and require no major breakthroughs; for example, diet and exercise.
actually_a_dog 4y ago
I would phrase this somewhat differently to express the same sentiment: I object to a system in which my dog is practically guaranteed a better end than I am.
- ksaj 4y ago
  Exactly this. When we do it for our beloved pets, it is compassionate. When we do it for someone who specifically asked for it, under entirely similar conditions? Where is the difference?
  - toomuchtodo 4y ago
    People are getting hung up on their own issues around mortality, death, and autonomy around euthanasia and projecting onto others. Safeguards are mandatory but so is free will.
  - AzzieElbab 4y ago
    Your dog doesn’t have the capacity to enjoy life by simply reading a book or watching grandchildren play.
    - jpambrun 4y ago
      This is not something I would like. I want to be able to choose, for myself, when the enjoyment I get out of life is outweighed by the suffering of illness or other afflictions.
      - AzzieElbab 4y ago
        Me too but what we have here in Canada is the situation where healthcare is denied and delayed. 1500 died in Ontario while waiting for surgeries in 2021 for example. Keep this course until euthanasia becomes preferable option?
        jpambrun 4y ago
        Euthanasia can be favorable from both the individual and from society's perspective. I see no problem with that. We keep expanding life expectancy without asking ourselves if it's a good or desirable thing. I certainly wasn't asked and would like the option to opt out. I also don't want lack a ressources be put forward as a justification to limit desired euthanasia making forced living even more unbearable..
        LorenPechtel 4y ago
        Yeah, this is the problem. Euthanasia should be an option when treatment has failed, but the treatment should be tried first. This isn't a problem with euthanasia, it's a problem with the medical system. UHC systems remain popular so long as most people are happy--but most people don't need the expensive, ongoing care and thus it can become pretty poor for the patients that actually need it.
- blooalien 4y ago
  > "I object to a system in which my dog is practically guaranteed a better end than I am." I would upvote this statement a million times if I could.
bambax 4y ago
Yes, this is a poor and politically charged article; we don't have to read far to get to a beautiful application of Godwin's law: > Tim Stainton, director of the Canadian Institute for Inclusion and Citizenship at the University of British Columbia, described Canada’s law as “probably the biggest existential threat to disabled people since the Nazis’ program in Germany in the 1930s.” Euthanasia and assisted suicide is not murder. It's helping people who feel they don't have any other option.
- bolangi 4y ago
  What do you call assisted suicide that is not assented to by the subject?
  - oleander73 4y ago
    A contradictio in terminis.
  - bambax 4y ago
    An impossibility. If there is no consent there is no "suicide", assisted or otherwise.
    - ben_w 4y ago
      The term for what is done to pets and research animals is "euthanasia" — is that consensual? Or even "assented" or "acquiesced" to, if you want to side-step the question of how informed one has to be for it to count as "consent".
      - mberger 4y ago
        Pets are not people and cannot consent. Euthanasia is not assisted dying. There is no 'assistance' when one party doesn't share the goal. Straw man.
        ben_w 4y ago
ksaj 4y ago
Absolutely everyone dies. I would argue that part of a respectable quality of life should include a respectable quality of death. There is so little dignity in death as it is. But when death is immediately inevitable, and hastening it is comforting to the one experiencing it's immediate inevitability, it is not "selfishness" as one comment maintained, but perhaps "fright" over that level of compassion. It might feel like you're begrudging someone of a life, but you just might be begrudging them a death that they've already come to terms with. That thought process makes it acceptable to keep a brain dead patient "alive" for decades. Is it common for them to come back after all that time of being clinically dead, and then enjoy life until the next time they die? The argument I'm seeing in the threads about minor ailments such as hearing impairment are just silly because nobody is proposing such a thing. The article talks about his long term state of mind. There's a weird kind of alarmism that always jumps to really specific details, at the expense of the whole, that supposedly show a gap in the logic, but actually are the gap in that logic.
slavik81 4y ago
That seems to be the position of the Supreme Court of Canada, who ruled in 2015 that it would be cruel for the government to prevent Gloria Taylor (and others like her) to seek assistance ending her suffering (Carter v Canada). As part of their unanimous decision, they stated: > It is a crime in Canada to assist another person in ending her own life. As a result, people who are grievously and irremediably ill cannot seek a physician's assistance in dying and may be condemned to a life of severe and intolerable suffering. A person facing this prospect has two options: she can take her own life prematurely, often by violent or dangerous means, or she can suffer until she dies from natural causes. The choice is cruel. Wikipedia summarizes: > the Supreme Court held that the current legislation was overbroad in that it prohibits "physician-assisted death for a competent adult person who (1) clearly consents to the termination of life and (2) has a grievous and irremediable medical condition (including an illness, disease or disability) that causes enduring suffering that is intolerable to the individual in the circumstances of his or her condition. > After a lengthy delay, the House of Commons passed a Bill (C-14) in mid-June 2016 that would allow for doctor-assisted suicide in the case of a terminal illness. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carter_v_Canada_(AG) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carter_v_Canada_(AG) The law was further amended by Bill C-7 (43) after another court case in 2019 (Truchon v Canada). The Superior Court of Quebec struck down the clause that restricted MAID to patients whose death was reasonably forseeable. From an unofficial translation of the decision: > [The plaintiffs] claim that the reasonably foreseeable natural death requirement is tantamount to a prohibition of medical assistance in dying for any person who, like them, is not at the end of life. In this sense, it forces some of these individuals to take charge of their own destiny and take hasty steps to end their lives prematurely out of fear that they will no longer be physically able to do so once their suffering becomes intolerable. Consequently, they claim that the reasonably foreseeable natural death requirement exposes them to a heightened risk of death and, therefore, infringes on their Charter right to life. The legislative background for C-14 (42): https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/other-autre/ad-am/p2.html https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/other-autre/ad-am/p2.htm... The legislative background for C-7 (43) https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/csj-sjc/pl/ad-am/c7/p1.html https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/csj-sjc/pl/ad-am/c7/p1.html The current text of the law: https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-46/section-241.2.html https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-46/section-241.2....
verisimi 4y ago
What you need is a government equation to help. There should be a well thought out form, with simple answers that can allow someone who has undertaken the prerequisite amount of training to complete the form. With the right information, it would really be very simple, programmable even, to work out what one should do with the person.
sacrosancty 4y ago
The whole point of the article is that Canada's system needs safeguards. Other countries have them. This is not a black and white pro- or anti- assisted suicide article. Killing someone for having depression and deafness is not the same as for having terminal cancer and constant pain and being bedridden. This is really not a decision for the individual patients to have freedom in. I know multiple young people who have been suicidal and attempted it. Most survived but more could be dead if they were able to simply ask the doctor for it and it was all easy and painless.
- csnover 4y ago
  > The whole point of the article is that Canada's system needs safeguards. If this were truly the point of the article, it would have spent less time trying to make emotional pleas and implying that assisted suicide for non-terminal patients is somehow immoral and/or a direct road to eugenics. Canada’s system does have safeguards, and whether or not they are good enough is not actually answered by a couple anecdotes and some comparisons to other countries. > Killing someone for having depression and deafness is not the same as for having terminal cancer and constant pain and being bedridden. This is really not a decision for the individual patients to have freedom in. There are conditions that don’t bother me at all that others would suffer with immensely, and there are many people living happy lives with conditions that I would absolutely want to kill myself over. It is incredibly paternalistic to believe that you (or I) can decide whether or not someone else’s suffering is ‘enough’. > I know multiple young people who have been suicidal and attempted it. Most survived but more could be dead if they were able to simply ask the doctor for it and it was all easy and painless. I am genuinely sorry to hear that you have had those experiences and I can tell that they have had an impact on you. However, it is not possible for someone to just walk into a doctor’s office in Canada and get wheeled into the morgue an hour later, and as far as I am aware no one is suggesting that it should be so. I would encourage you to shift perspectives here and start thinking about how creating a safe, legal, and painless way to end one’s life could reduce the sorts of impulsive suicides it sounds like you’ve seen. For some, just knowing that the option is available makes hard times in life feel much more bearable. For others, the guarantee of an easy and painless assisted death makes the idea of trying to kill themselves on their own a risky and unpalatable alternative. The more that suicidal people believe that going to see a professional is a better idea than taking things into their own hands, the more people will be able to have their quality of life improved by interventions other than death. And for those who are beyond improvement with today’s resources and technology, at least they too will be able to stop needlessly suffering.
rnd0 4y ago
In short; if we can't take care of them we ought to be able to at least off them?
- JellyBeanThief 4y ago
  In short; if they decide we can't take care of them and they wish to off themselves, we ought to honor that decision.
  - imtringued 4y ago
    Yes and in response we should abandon more people so they voluntarily choose to off themselves. It is consent all the way down.

O__________O 4y ago

Systems will always have suboptimal outcomes regardless of how they are structured, advances that are made, etc. Everything has a cost, regardless of if you acknowledge it, see it, etc. Generally speaking, vast majority of current negative health impacts are self inflicted and require no major breakthroughs; for example, diet and exercise.

actually_a_dog 4y ago

I would phrase this somewhat differently to express the same sentiment: I object to a system in which my dog is practically guaranteed a better end than I am.

ksaj 4y ago
Exactly this. When we do it for our beloved pets, it is compassionate. When we do it for someone who specifically asked for it, under entirely similar conditions? Where is the difference?
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  People are getting hung up on their own issues around mortality, death, and autonomy around euthanasia and projecting onto others. Safeguards are mandatory but so is free will.
- AzzieElbab 4y ago
  Your dog doesn’t have the capacity to enjoy life by simply reading a book or watching grandchildren play.
  - jpambrun 4y ago
    This is not something I would like. I want to be able to choose, for myself, when the enjoyment I get out of life is outweighed by the suffering of illness or other afflictions.
    - AzzieElbab 4y ago
      Me too but what we have here in Canada is the situation where healthcare is denied and delayed. 1500 died in Ontario while waiting for surgeries in 2021 for example. Keep this course until euthanasia becomes preferable option?
      - jpambrun 4y ago
        Euthanasia can be favorable from both the individual and from society's perspective. I see no problem with that. We keep expanding life expectancy without asking ourselves if it's a good or desirable thing. I certainly wasn't asked and would like the option to opt out. I also don't want lack a ressources be put forward as a justification to limit desired euthanasia making forced living even more unbearable..
      - LorenPechtel 4y ago
        Yeah, this is the problem. Euthanasia should be an option when treatment has failed, but the treatment should be tried first. This isn't a problem with euthanasia, it's a problem with the medical system. UHC systems remain popular so long as most people are happy--but most people don't need the expensive, ongoing care and thus it can become pretty poor for the patients that actually need it.
blooalien 4y ago
> "I object to a system in which my dog is practically guaranteed a better end than I am." I would upvote this statement a million times if I could.

bambax 4y ago

Yes, this is a poor and politically charged article; we don't have to read far to get to a beautiful application of Godwin's law: > Tim Stainton, director of the Canadian Institute for Inclusion and Citizenship at the University of British Columbia, described Canada’s law as “probably the biggest existential threat to disabled people since the Nazis’ program in Germany in the 1930s.” Euthanasia and assisted suicide is not murder. It's helping people who feel they don't have any other option.

bolangi 4y ago
What do you call assisted suicide that is not assented to by the subject?
- oleander73 4y ago
  A contradictio in terminis.
- bambax 4y ago
  An impossibility. If there is no consent there is no "suicide", assisted or otherwise.
  - ben_w 4y ago
    The term for what is done to pets and research animals is "euthanasia" — is that consensual? Or even "assented" or "acquiesced" to, if you want to side-step the question of how informed one has to be for it to count as "consent".
    - mberger 4y ago
      Pets are not people and cannot consent. Euthanasia is not assisted dying. There is no 'assistance' when one party doesn't share the goal. Straw man.
      - ben_w 4y ago

ksaj 4y ago

Absolutely everyone dies. I would argue that part of a respectable quality of life should include a respectable quality of death. There is so little dignity in death as it is. But when death is immediately inevitable, and hastening it is comforting to the one experiencing it's immediate inevitability, it is not "selfishness" as one comment maintained, but perhaps "fright" over that level of compassion. It might feel like you're begrudging someone of a life, but you just might be begrudging them a death that they've already come to terms with. That thought process makes it acceptable to keep a brain dead patient "alive" for decades. Is it common for them to come back after all that time of being clinically dead, and then enjoy life until the next time they die? The argument I'm seeing in the threads about minor ailments such as hearing impairment are just silly because nobody is proposing such a thing. The article talks about his long term state of mind. There's a weird kind of alarmism that always jumps to really specific details, at the expense of the whole, that supposedly show a gap in the logic, but actually are the gap in that logic.

slavik81 4y ago

That seems to be the position of the Supreme Court of Canada, who ruled in 2015 that it would be cruel for the government to prevent Gloria Taylor (and others like her) to seek assistance ending her suffering (Carter v Canada). As part of their unanimous decision, they stated: > It is a crime in Canada to assist another person in ending her own life. As a result, people who are grievously and irremediably ill cannot seek a physician's assistance in dying and may be condemned to a life of severe and intolerable suffering. A person facing this prospect has two options: she can take her own life prematurely, often by violent or dangerous means, or she can suffer until she dies from natural causes. The choice is cruel. Wikipedia summarizes: > the Supreme Court held that the current legislation was overbroad in that it prohibits "physician-assisted death for a competent adult person who (1) clearly consents to the termination of life and (2) has a grievous and irremediable medical condition (including an illness, disease or disability) that causes enduring suffering that is intolerable to the individual in the circumstances of his or her condition. > After a lengthy delay, the House of Commons passed a Bill (C-14) in mid-June 2016 that would allow for doctor-assisted suicide in the case of a terminal illness. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carter_v_Canada_(AG) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carter_v_Canada_(AG) The law was further amended by Bill C-7 (43) after another court case in 2019 (Truchon v Canada). The Superior Court of Quebec struck down the clause that restricted MAID to patients whose death was reasonably forseeable. From an unofficial translation of the decision: > [The plaintiffs] claim that the reasonably foreseeable natural death requirement is tantamount to a prohibition of medical assistance in dying for any person who, like them, is not at the end of life. In this sense, it forces some of these individuals to take charge of their own destiny and take hasty steps to end their lives prematurely out of fear that they will no longer be physically able to do so once their suffering becomes intolerable. Consequently, they claim that the reasonably foreseeable natural death requirement exposes them to a heightened risk of death and, therefore, infringes on their Charter right to life. The legislative background for C-14 (42): https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/other-autre/ad-am/p2.html https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/other-autre/ad-am/p2.htm... The legislative background for C-7 (43) https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/csj-sjc/pl/ad-am/c7/p1.html https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/csj-sjc/pl/ad-am/c7/p1.html The current text of the law: https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-46/section-241.2.html https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-46/section-241.2....

verisimi 4y ago

What you need is a government equation to help. There should be a well thought out form, with simple answers that can allow someone who has undertaken the prerequisite amount of training to complete the form. With the right information, it would really be very simple, programmable even, to work out what one should do with the person.

sacrosancty 4y ago

The whole point of the article is that Canada's system needs safeguards. Other countries have them. This is not a black and white pro- or anti- assisted suicide article. Killing someone for having depression and deafness is not the same as for having terminal cancer and constant pain and being bedridden. This is really not a decision for the individual patients to have freedom in. I know multiple young people who have been suicidal and attempted it. Most survived but more could be dead if they were able to simply ask the doctor for it and it was all easy and painless.

csnover 4y ago
> The whole point of the article is that Canada's system needs safeguards. If this were truly the point of the article, it would have spent less time trying to make emotional pleas and implying that assisted suicide for non-terminal patients is somehow immoral and/or a direct road to eugenics. Canada’s system does have safeguards, and whether or not they are good enough is not actually answered by a couple anecdotes and some comparisons to other countries. > Killing someone for having depression and deafness is not the same as for having terminal cancer and constant pain and being bedridden. This is really not a decision for the individual patients to have freedom in. There are conditions that don’t bother me at all that others would suffer with immensely, and there are many people living happy lives with conditions that I would absolutely want to kill myself over. It is incredibly paternalistic to believe that you (or I) can decide whether or not someone else’s suffering is ‘enough’. > I know multiple young people who have been suicidal and attempted it. Most survived but more could be dead if they were able to simply ask the doctor for it and it was all easy and painless. I am genuinely sorry to hear that you have had those experiences and I can tell that they have had an impact on you. However, it is not possible for someone to just walk into a doctor’s office in Canada and get wheeled into the morgue an hour later, and as far as I am aware no one is suggesting that it should be so. I would encourage you to shift perspectives here and start thinking about how creating a safe, legal, and painless way to end one’s life could reduce the sorts of impulsive suicides it sounds like you’ve seen. For some, just knowing that the option is available makes hard times in life feel much more bearable. For others, the guarantee of an easy and painless assisted death makes the idea of trying to kill themselves on their own a risky and unpalatable alternative. The more that suicidal people believe that going to see a professional is a better idea than taking things into their own hands, the more people will be able to have their quality of life improved by interventions other than death. And for those who are beyond improvement with today’s resources and technology, at least they too will be able to stop needlessly suffering.

rnd0 4y ago

In short; if we can't take care of them we ought to be able to at least off them?

JellyBeanThief 4y ago
In short; if they decide we can't take care of them and they wish to off themselves, we ought to honor that decision.
- imtringued 4y ago
  Yes and in response we should abandon more people so they voluntarily choose to off themselves. It is consent all the way down.