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Medically assisted deaths constituted 4.1 per cent of all deaths in Canada
- dadjoker 3y agoWhen life has no value, it is easily discarded.
- completelylegit 3y agoYou must first master fear, or fear will be your master.
- Skunkleton 3y agoHe who questions training only trains himself at asking questions.
- jancsika 3y agoIf early-21st-century ethos teaches us anything, it's the opposite. When life has no value, we can finally iterate effectively to achieve enlightenment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DRJ-Wwj6_A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DRJ-Wwj6_A NB: This guy beats all four bosses a second time! And why? Just to find out if there's a special ending for beating them all during the same run.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- bhouston 3y agoThis appears to be the same for the Netherlands which is around 5%. Although like Canada, the Netherlands is seeing an increase in a yearly basis. It isn’t clear when this plateaus. I am not an expert in end of life care but I think it is messy for a lot of people (eg dementia) so it may become quite a high number eventually.
- TeeMassive 3y agoThey're expanding it to more and more, notably drug addicts. This will keep increasing. The government has a strong incentive to do this.
- bhouston 3y agoEnd of life care is incredibly expensive. With an aging population this because a major issue. It makes sense.
- TeeMassive 3y agoAt least you're being honest.
- klyrs 3y agoI've known 3 people of my grandparents' generation to survive over a decade after their dementia had progressed to the point that they couldn't recognize their children, their spouse, etc., and life was a confusing, terrifying existence without being medicated into further oblivion. They were all highly religious and would not have considered MAID when they were lucid enough to do so. Folks of my parents' generation have seen enough similar cases, they don't want to put their children through that. So yes, I do believe the rate of MAID will continue to grow as the Silent Generation dies out and Boomers enter their twilight years.
- hotpotamus 3y ago> life was a confusing, terrifying existence without being medicated into further oblivion I thought that was just life already. I feel like most people don't pay enough attention.
- 0xDEAFBEAD 3y ago>To access MAID, an individual must have a serious illness, disease or disability which causes irreversible decline and unbearable suffering that "cannot be relieved under conditions [the patient considers] acceptable," says the federal government. >"We should be ensuring that we never get to that point because we have better care available," Vachon said. This seems like wishful thinking. Ultimately until we have regenerative medicine (SENS etc.) people are gonna get old and die. Trying to keep them alive even when they have terrible quality of life is not necessarily a humane option: https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/07/17/who-by-very-slow-decay/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/07/17/who-by-very-slow-decay... Sometimes I fantasize about replacing end-of-life care with a cryopreservation option. Given how expensive medicine is, with economies of scale, I could imagine cryonics being cheaper than current end-of-life care. And it actually delivers on the promise of possibly giving people a meaningful extension on life, depending how medical technology develops in the future. I'd be especially excited about replacing my current health insurance with a cheaper health insurance option that aggressively cryopreserves me (instead of taking care of me 'til the end) if I get a terminal illness.
- User23 3y agoFun fact: there are north of a million cryopreserved persons in the USA alone right now.
- tommsy64 3y agoCan you provide a source for this claim?
- bhouston 3y agoI can not believe it is that high? Really? I understand that the ice crystals created in current processes basically further destroy the tissue so that rranimation is likely impossible.
- User23 3y agoIt is. Here[1] is one source. [1] https://www.elle.com/culture/a12445676/the-leftover-embryo-crisis/ https://www.elle.com/culture/a12445676/the-leftover-embryo-c...
- vehementi 3y agoIdeally medically assisted deaths should be 100% of all deaths right?
- Skunkleton 3y agoLots of people get unlucky and die. That doesn't mean they should not take the risk in the first place.
- noman-land 3y agoPerhaps OP is saying that in an ideal world no one would die by accident.
- Skunkleton 3y agoThat's not an ideal world. That's a fantasy world.
- asimovfan 3y agoAn ideal world is a fantasy world.
- Skunkleton 3y agoThere's more than accidental deaths too. For example, surgeries carry risk.
- xboxnolifes 3y agoThat's still accidental.
- Skunkleton 3y agoIf you flip a coin and it lands on heads, that’s not an accident, it’s just chance. You get a risky procedure and die, well that’s chance too.
- sillywalk 3y agoSome people are uninterested in suffering for the sake of it. Why the article felt the need to give voice to a self-righteous religious organization[0] funded by the Koch Foundation, while calling them "non-partisan" is not mentioned. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardus
- codeTired 3y agoSomeone needs to find the people who are the most against it and then follow up when they get brain cancer, als, or other terminal disease that causes a lot of suffering. It’s easy to have a strong opinion against this when the last time you went to a physician was 10 years ago.
- rayiner 3y agoThis argument is similar to ones criticizing pro-lifers for sometimes getting abortions. Nobody denies that, in moments of suffering, people might depart from their moral stances. Humans are weak. But shouldn’t your moral stances be determined when you are clear-eyed, and are thinking about society as a whole rather than your personal situation? Your argument is couched in the same form as the argument: “Someone needs to find people who are in favor of criminal’s rights and follow up when their child gets raped or murdered.”
- clipsy 3y ago> But shouldn’t your moral stances be determined when you are clear-eyed, and are thinking about society as a whole rather than your personal situation? No. If your morals are conditional, they are not morals.
- onetimeuse92304 3y ago> But shouldn’t your moral stances be determined when you are clear-eyed, and are thinking about society as a whole rather than your personal situation? Have you thought that, being clear-eyed, you may not yet have the experience of being terminally ill and in pain that cannot be medicated away? The only prospect for life being permanently chained to a bed awaiting your death? How easy it is to serve these strong opinions when you are healthy. > Your argument is couched in the same form as the argument: If you have no experience of something you need a much stronger argument to prove you are not only correct, but correct to the point it overrides somebody elses freedom.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- apollo_mojave 3y agoLess disturbing than the raw percentage is the context in which some of these suicides have reportedly been carried out. People who are simply lonely, who have addictions, who don't have money, who feel they simply don't have options. In sum, not the kind of people who have a truly terminal illness and will pass away in a few weeks or months, but people who could potentially live well and flourish if resources existed to support them. IMO, a society that reaches for suicide as a solution is going to be a society that consistently fails its most vulnerable.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> people who are simply lonely, who have addictions, who don't have money...not the kind of people who have a truly terminal illness Source? According to my understanding of the Canadian law, loneliness and poverty are not eligible conditions.
- WoodenChair 3y agoThey're not eligible conditions. And yet of course when you have a law like this, some cases will slip through the cracks due to the slippery slope nature of the thing. They're not a high percentage but there are many anecdotes. Here is an AP article from the middle of last year: https://apnews.com/article/covid-science-health-toronto-7c631558a457188d2bd2b5cfd360a867 https://apnews.com/article/covid-science-health-toronto-7c63... "Equally troubling, advocates say, are instances in which people have sought to be killed because they weren’t getting adequate government support to live." What is eligible is pretty broad according to the article. "The law was later amended to allow people who are not terminally ill to choose death, significantly broadening the number of eligible people. Critics say that change removed a key safeguard aimed at protecting people with potentially years or decades of life left. Today, any adult with a serious illness, disease or disability can seek help in dying." There are many shocking anecdotes in that article, including the one it opens with. They don't all speak to "loneliness" or "money" but when I first read it last year I found it pretty shocking. Maybe you won't, but I think it's worth a read. Especially troubling to me are all of the disability advocates who disagree with the law: "Landry said she shares the “grave concern” voiced last year by three U.N. human rights experts, who wrote that Canada’s euthanasia law appeared to violate the agency’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights. They said the law had a “discriminatory impact” on disabled people and was inconsistent with Canada’s obligations to uphold international human rights standards. 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.”"
- taylodl 3y agoThere's no dignity in suffering. Not allowing people to die with dignity and forcing them to suffer till the very end is the infliction of Judeo-Christian values on the populace. We claim to have religious freedom yet we don't when the religious are able to use the force of law to impose their religion on us at the time of our death - the time we need freedom from their religious nonsense the most.