Euthanasia

If I may interject –

Tab, when a person gets to a point where they would consider something like euthanasia, they’re probably already dying slowly. One would think that a person would push it off until the last possible lucid moment, but eventually the quality of life of a person in that situation goes to zero, and how is it any more painful for family for the person to then decide to end their life than it is to watch a person they love die slowly, and more than likely with some amount of pain?

My aunt is a nurse, and she used to do in-home care. She worked for a woman who, at the age of 70, was in excellent shape, went jogging every day – until the day she was jogging and got hit by a car. She spent the next 10+ years of her life lying in a bed unable to move, being taken care of by a bevy of nurses, until the day she just gave up. She didn’t want to be alive anymore, so she quit eating. Her family and all the nurses who had worked with her for so long and grew to love her got to watch her kill herself over the course of a week and a half, and it was torturous. They contemplated force-feeding her, hooking her up to some tubes and pumping liquid nutrients into her, but that would’ve been downright cruel and they knew it. How much more peaceful and easy could the process have been for everyone involved if she had been able to request a shot that would send her to sleep to never wake up again?

Okay so it seems like you guys are pretty focussed on voluntary euthanasia.

Whilst I may not agree with everything I was arguing, this point picked up by tentative is something I have always been genuinely quite passionate about.

So, as I was drumming home in the debate, depending on what is in the best interests. I have to say that there is close link of suicide to euthanasia, but I think that both the allowing of euthanasia to go ahead (Tab’s idea of a headtrip then suicide) and actual assisted suicide by applying the injection to stop their suffereing are two different types of euthanasia. But euthanasia at that, imo.

Blurred, do a vote!

Death is never desirable of its own accord, happy, healthy people don’t go and shoot themselves in the head. As such neither suicide nor euthanasia are things to be wished for. Both result in the death of the sufferer, but which causes more suffering, is what I’m after with you JT.

You seem to be okay with letting the family in on your death, as long as apparently, they ‘respect your decision’ and ‘keep out of the way’.

But exactly what would you think of a family like that…? “Yeah sure Dad, you go 'head if that’s what you want. We’ll keep out of the bathroom for an hour or two, okay…? Will that be enough…? Hey Mum, do we have enough Ajax and brillo-pads to scrape Dad’s corpse outta the tub or y’wanna I make a run to the store…?”

Seems… Somehow callous to me.

The opposite is mayhem. The family will call interventions, put you on suicide watch, whatever, they love you, want you around. And always will, because if you have enough braincells left to sit down with them and articulate your designs for a quiet dignified death, then you are still enough ‘you’ for them to discount the acceptability of your suicide. Do you get this…? While you remain functional and complis-mentis enough to initiate this kind of dialogue with your family they will automatically seek to circumvent your desire. The only point where they will agree that you’re no longer worth having around is when you’re not, and by that time you will be so fogged and disabilitized that you won’t be able to do the job yourself.

The only sane way to do it, to spare both sides, is, if and when you decide, simply to put your affairs quietly in order, write or otherwise record your goodbyes, and disappear.

You can’t have it both ways, cannot have your death-cake and eat it. You die isolate and with dignity, or die in company like a dog.

Why didn’t anyone just smother her with a pillow at some point during that week of starvation…?

Horrible question I know. But apt. It was obvious the old lady wished to kill herself, and yet no-one helped her to. Why not…?

Really? Because it seems even more callous to me to sit around watching your loved one in agony, left with no hope for recovery, but no immediate end to the suffering in sight.

Perfect example:

Why not indeed - it all boils down to legalities, doesn’ it? Therein lies the rub - the gap between what a living will legally covers and what often happens in reality. A living will is all well and fine as far as it goes - you can elect to have no extraordinary measures taken to keep you alive - but that doesn’t help much if you’re suffering but live on even without any extraordinary measures.

Which is why this doesn’t make any sense to me:

Your family would normally seek to circumvent your desire if you invoke it while still in good health. But that is what I’d consider the fine distinction between assisted suicide and euthanasia: one turns into the other only at the point at which there is no hope for recovery.

Once that line has been crossed, would your family really want to circumvent your wishes? That, to me, is what would be callous.

Because to do so would’ve put whoever helped her in prison.

Look, let me see if I’m understanding what you three are saying. Because I’m struggling.

For simplicity’s sake - yes/no.

You don’t want to have to suffer pain before you die, if there is no hope for your recovery, and the life you are leading has become unbearable.

Rather than that, you’d like someone, a family member, ie. your children to take responsibility for either killing you, or having you killed.

To this effect, as a guard against being too crazy or otherwise incommunicado to request it, you’ll leave a document saying “in the event of x, y and z, I hereby authorize the bearer of this document to end my life.”

Would you agree, that most of the time, you will actually have some notice of impending drastic life-standard change - for example end-stage terminal cancer doesn’t just hit on an unexpected Tuesday. ie I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine, BHAM!!! I have end-stage terminal cancer and am too weak to put myself out of my agony.

If it is your turn to take out the trash, your responsibility, would you leave that trash until it got to the point where it was really stinking your house up and even then tell one of your kids to take it out for you…?

Tab,

No one is suggesting ending life on a whim. I’ll go back to quality of life. My family knows how I would choose to live, and the lower limits of those choices. They would never wish for me to have to give up those minimum choices just to keep breathing. Quite frankly, sad as it might be, they would be relieved if I made the decision as opposed to forcing them to make it for me. In short, because they know me, they would support any decision I make. I recently had an old friend do exactly what Blurred described. He simply decided to stop eating. His family regretted his decision, but they honored it, as did his close friends. Every effort was made to keep him from having pain and all of us took turns standing “watch”. It wasn’t fun, but we honored his decision. It may be that you aren’t trusting family and friends to know you well enough to allow you to make the decision out in the open in front of the whole world, but some of us would prefer no secrecy, nothing but facing reality. There is nothing wrong with transparency and there are very few who aren’t aware that sometimes, life is over before the body gives up. It’s about making informed obvious choices. Whether we call it suicide or euthenasia the important thing remains having the ability to make the decision. Is everyone happy happy? No. But don’t sell people short on their ability to understand that only the individual has the right to make that decision.

Yeah, thanks for that one.

You just don’t see that I want my family and friends to have no part in what to me is a distasteful business. You want to put those you love through the experience of watching you slide toward death like a bag full of pus then that is your choice.

Frankly, this is too personal a matter right now for me to discuss without losing my sense of perspective, and obviously already too late for my sense of humour. Let’s call it cultural and aesthetic differences and leave it.

If this is the only way you’re able to view the situation, Tab, well, I think that’s an extremely narrow view. Couldn’t you also look at it as allowing a loved one to give an invaluable gift? If you had a dying child, a dying parent, suffering excruciating pain with no hope of improvement, wouldn’t you be willing to do just about anything to give them the gift of peace? Wouldn’t you want to do anything in your power to save them from their misery? If I were ever in that position, I sure wouldn’t see it as “taking out the trash.”

I realize this issue is so complex, and it’s relatively easy to argue against the extremes; in reality there are so many gray areas. I just know that if someone I loved deeply was spending their final days in intense pain, I would gladly bear the burden of guilt if I could relieve any amount of their suffering.

edit: sorry, I just now read your most recent post. no need to respond, as it wasn’t my intent to make things harder on you.

My mother is still with us at 87 and you’re right. There is nothing humourous about it. Done and done.

What JT…? Shall we play “who’s parents are more fucking pitiful…?” Is that what we shall do…? Then whoever’s ma or pa is the bigger fucking trainwreck can have the last goddamn word.

I said done is done. Leave it lay.

I see that for a few of you guys euthanasia and matters of death are very close to you at the moment, I wish you all the best for that. I didn’t want to address any personal issues because I knew that’s how it can get (you’ll notice in the debate too I did everything hypothetically…Tab’s more personal approach was also very effective!).

But we still have to settle this debate. So bloody well do a vote. Base it on the power of argument mainly, try not to be biased in your approach folks, read it as if you’re a teacher!

I make it 1-0 to myself so far I think, but it’s first to 10 so…

[size=200]VOTE![/size]

http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=174254

Interesting debate, and good points on both sides. What I missed was any discussion about the systems as they are already implemented - in Holland and Switzerland, at least, it’s possible to arrange it with the necessary safeguards.

I disagree with cheegster insofar as trusting state appointees with the power of life and death over citizens. And I disagree with Tab that no child should have to choose to kill their parent. Well, not with that, but with the converse; that nobody should have the right to end their loved ones’ suffering under any circumstance.

The current state of affairs in the UK and most of the US is that a veterinarian would be prosecuted and struck off for cruelty if found keeping an animal alive in the conditions that a doctor is legally obliged to keep a human alive. There’s something there that doesn’t seem right. On the other hand, I think personal choice over one’s own living is a fundamental ingredient to a good life, and neither of the positions seemed to back that. So I’d have to split my vote down the middle, or withhold it altogether.

Awesome, yeah a trick was missed with the vetenarian, it’s a good clear analogy - particularly when I was fighting solely for the reduction of suffering.

Cheers OH, Your comments appreciated as always.

Cheers OH.

Medical students in most parts of the world no longer take the Hippocratic Oath since, amongst other things, it forbids surgery.

Could that be construed as a tacit vote for myself? Hmmm… :-k

Last chance to vote before this (so far) sham of a ballot ceases guys. Any input? Whatsoever?