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Post by UberCranky on Oct 19, 2014 20:07:02 GMT -5
I'm hardly a fence sitter on most subjects but on this one, wow.....it's a endless battle between empathy, logic, conscious and soul.
Someone should never have to suffer immensely when death is only a matter of an inevitable and very short time away...
But.....how can one be sure that....
We not killing someone whose who are mentally unstable?
Or misdiagnosis?
Or bad advice?
Or to get at an inheritance will?
Or criminal intent?
When is it the right time? Is there such a thing?
How much suffering is too much?
Are they or we helping them manage their pain?
Can those who make those decisions live with themselves?
Anybody have any answers?
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Post by franko on Oct 20, 2014 8:13:57 GMT -5
had a fantastic answer er . . . comment for you but it disappeared *poop* on me. a comment, because I think that anyone who purports to have "the answer" has an ego bigger than PK. I'll just say that more should be done wrt palliative care, that the "slippery slope" may be legitimate (but may also just be a straw man) regarding right to die becoming responsible to die (and alleviate pressure on the health care system), and that I wonder if once "the door" is open a crack how can it not be thrown wide open (I anticipate a constitutional/Supreme Court challenge asking why some people are allowed assisted suicide and not others: see this National Post article -- "Last year, a 63-year-old man opted to take his own life, with the help of the state, when faced with the prospect of life after retirement. All he had to live for was his work; he had family, but they were estranged. His request was granted." no answers, HA, but I have a whole lot more questions . . . and this from a "sanctity of life" kinda guy (who is well aware of and often deals with pain and suffering).
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Post by BadCompany on Oct 20, 2014 8:34:10 GMT -5
It's such a messy issue that I'm really not sure there is a clean solution to it. Of course it's easy to say that grandma, 88 years old, wasting away from an incurable and horribly painful disease, should be allowed to die with dignity. There isn't anybody in the world who wants to spend the last few months of their lives in agony and humiliation, unable to perform even the most basic human functions. But what about the slippery slope? What if Grandma isn't actually dying, but just in pain? Or vice versa, she isn't in pain, but is dying? What if she is not a grandma, but a mother of three? What if she's in her early twenties and not actually dying? What if she's in her early twenties and suffers from chronic depression? Late last year two Belgian twin brothers were euthanized at the ages of 45, at their own request, because they were both born deaf and they had learned that they were going blind. Now blind AND deaf is certainly not an ideal life, but people have lived like that, AND neither one of them was blind at the time they were given lethal injections. www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/01/14/deaf-belgian-twins-going-blind-euthanized/1834199/To me, while I sympathize with their plight, it just seems "off". Sure, maybe being blind and deaf would suck... but they weren't dying nor in pain. What if advances in medical technology 20 years from now would cure their blindness and/or deafness? They'd only be 65, with arguably decades left in their life. Is waiting 20 years too long? Is 20 years of suffering too much? What about 15? Ten? Five? We of course don't know when that medical breakthrough is going to occur, so who knows how long they would have had to live that way. Is one day too much? But the slipperly slope continues. The article states that Belgian law allows for assisted suicide as follows: To make a legitimate euthanasia request, the patient must be an adult, must be conscious and legally competent at the moment of making the request, and must be in a condition of constant and unbearable physical or psychological suffering resulting from a serious and incurable disorder caused by illness or accident, for which medical treatment is futile and there is no possibility of improvement.Wait... psychological suffering?? Isn't that a little broad? How many doors get opened with THAT one? But it continues still. Also from the article: Days after the brothers' deaths, the ruling Socialists in Belgium's Parliament tabled a proposal to expand euthanasia to adults suffering from dementia or Alzheimer's and to children 17 and younger...Wow. I don't know. Again, the ten year old with incurable cancer who is wasting away, and in incredible pain, okay an argument can be made... but even then is the "child" making the decision, or the parents? Does that matter? What about "just" blind and deaf? What about "just" suffering psychologically? And then there is the issue of health care. It costs money to keep somebody alive. To give them pain killers, and palliative care rooms, and around-the-clock treatment. I'm not going to look at it from a societal, we-need-our-governments-to-be-debt-free point of things, but from a family point of view. Say you're a dad, with severe lung cancer, with a diagnosis of six to twelve months to live. Your insurance has run out. It's bleeding your family dry to keep you alive for those remaining six months. Of course you don't want your family to suffer because of your illness, especially not financially, but... you don't want to die. For whatever reasons, you don't want to die. Maybe you want to see your kids sixth birthday, your parents' 50th anniversary, the Giants in the World Series. Doesn't matter what your reasons are... You... don't... want... to... die. But you also don't want to ruin your family either. So you decide that you HAVE to die. That you HAVE to go the assisted suicide route. For the good of your family you are going to fall on your sword and die, even though you really aren't ready to. Is that okay? What if it's not six to twelve months of lung cancer, but Dementia, which you could live with for a decade or more. Maybe "you" aren't there mentally, but that doesn't necessarily mean you want to die either. Do you end it even if you don't want to? As a friend do you try to convince somebody with early dementia to end it before if gets too bad, because of what they will become and the unbearable pain and suffering and financial burden it is going to cause their family? As a DOCTOR do you do that? Oh my, a doctor trying to convince people that they should die... Is THAT the spirit of the law? Where people feel like they HAVE to die, or where others try to convince you that you SHOULD die? Now having said that, the flip side is the horrible and cruel deaths that some people have to live because they are NOT given the ability to die with dignity. We've all seen it, most of us with close family members. I would not wish that on anyone, and if there were any way I could take away that suffering... So what do you do? How do you give people the right to die with dignity, which is what we ALL want in the end, without sliding down the slippery slope? Assisted suicide became legal in Belgium in 2002. It took them three years before they first proposed extending it to children. Once you get on that slope...
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Post by BadCompany on Oct 20, 2014 8:39:43 GMT -5
Or, you know, what franko said in three thousand less words.
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Post by Polarice on Oct 20, 2014 9:08:38 GMT -5
It's a tough question, I've had friends that decided to take their lives due to illnesses. They didn't want their families see them suffering so they ended it. I can see their logic, I'm not sure I wouldn't do the same thing if faced with something like that.
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Post by Skilly on Oct 20, 2014 9:35:13 GMT -5
It's a hard topic ... but why can't it be the person's personal choice? Why does church (moral issues) and state (legal issues) have to be involved at all? I don't have any statistics, but I wonder how many of these individuals commit suicide anyway?
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Post by franko on Oct 20, 2014 9:45:12 GMT -5
Why does . . . state (legal issues) have to be involved at all? if it is doctor assisted, then the state is involved. if it is a botched attempt, then the state is involved. if there is the possibility of some coercion, then the state must be involved.
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Post by franko on Oct 20, 2014 9:56:17 GMT -5
Why does church (moral issues) . . . have to be involved at all? this one is dicey. morality should entail respect -- and in this issue, respect for life and support for the dying. if life is sacred (obviously a position that the church should hold -- don't get me going on the death penalty), then then we do not prematurely intentionally end it. enter palliative care. however I am well aware of pain and suffering -- real and perceived. cancer -- deal with often. ALS -- horrific . . . and I deal with both the ongoing hopelessness of those diagnosed and with those who sit with family members as the disease takes its toll and with the pain and suffering of those left behind when someone at early onset takes measures (how's that for a euphemism) so that they will not go through the 2-5 years of debilitating suffering. I do not have an answer.
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Post by UberCranky on Oct 20, 2014 19:04:20 GMT -5
I lost three family members to cancer, three too many to that effen curse, if I had to make the decisions based on reaching the very end of every moral and reasonable argument I could possibly agonize over, I think I could make that decision.......but I don't think I can live a normal life if I had to make it for my wife.
Moral center? Or moral expediency? Moral quantifying? It's easy to want all the Bernardo and ISIS garbage to suffer a slow death......and as the sickle of death swoops closer to those who we love, I (we?) spin to the other side of the moral compass.
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Post by UberCranky on Oct 20, 2014 19:23:20 GMT -5
My horribly heartless libertarian moral pigmy asks.....
Isn't it one of the fundamantal right free will and self determination?
Why should social mores determine and/or overarch a fundamantal right?
Why is taking a lifeform growing in a womans body socially aceptable but taking ones own life a moral quaqmire?
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Post by Disgruntled70sHab on Oct 20, 2014 19:51:43 GMT -5
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Post by franko on Oct 20, 2014 19:56:55 GMT -5
Isn't it one of the fundamantal right free will and self determination? yes it is, except that we are social creatures, dependent on one another, and while it may develop into mostly an emotional attachment, there still is an attachment (otherwise, why hold a wake/funeral/remembrance). I would go further than social mores and say that it is societal mores that ebb and flow. in ancient Rome and Greece (among other cultures) infanticide by abandonment was prevalent -- if the child was illegitimate, unhealthy or deformed, the wrong sex, or just too great a burden on the family "measures were taken". that practice ended, although sex selection has returned/is returning. ebb and flow . . . that is changing with this debate, isn't it? a foetus . . . a choice. a pain-filled life . . . a choice to make. a person on life support in a vegetative state is not the same as a person with cancer that may be in pain while undergoing treatment and just want to give up because it hurts so much. in either case the extended family is in emotional pain . . . and there will be guilt when the plug is pulled or the plunger is pushed. could it be that modern medicine is a problem . . . we extend life beyond what it should be? (oh boy, another question to try to find an answer for).
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Post by UberCranky on Oct 20, 2014 23:25:13 GMT -5
. . that is changing with this debate, isn't it? a foetus . . . a choice. a pain-filled life . . . a choice to make. a person on life support in a vegetative state is not the same as a person with cancer that may be in pain while undergoing treatment and just want to give up because it hurts so much. in either case the extended family is in emotional pain . . . and there will be guilt when the plug is pulled or the plunger is pushed. could it be that modern medicine is a problem . . . we extend life beyond what it should be? (oh boy, another question to try to find an answer for). I'm framing a differrent argument. When it comes to woman, the majority view is that it's her body and NOBODY has a right to tell her what to do if she wants an abortion. Particularly the state. When it comes to sick people, they don't have the same level of "ownership". Particularly by the state. Why the hypocrisy? The argument takes another greater level of hypocrisy if it's framed in terms of "life". One is to be secured and comforted and the other disposable? Why? (Full disclosure, I'm pro choice, mostly because I don't want a revival of the coathanger industry.)
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Post by Doc Holliday on Oct 21, 2014 11:49:43 GMT -5
So what do you do? How do you give people the right to die with dignity, which is what we ALL want in the end, without sliding down the slippery slope? Assisted suicide became legal in Belgium in 2002. It took them three years before they first proposed extending it to children. Once you get on that slope... We all want to die in our sleep without any suffering... we all want to avoid great tragedies that could send us in almost unbearable psychological suffering and we all want the same thing for our loved ones... but that is just not the way it goes. It's a door that I don't think should be open at all. I guess I am the only one who isn't ambiguous on the question: While I have a lot of compassion for people suffering, to me dispensing death should not be a human "choice". There are plenty of examples of people with horrible handicap, disease or who went through tremendous human tragedy who eventually ended up doing amazing things…
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Post by franko on Oct 21, 2014 13:07:17 GMT -5
I guess I am the only one who isn't ambiguous on the question: While I have a lot of compassion for people suffering, to me dispensing death should not be a human "choice". no, I don't think you're the only one ambiguous . . . the question is "how do we show compassion to those who have no (or feel there is no) hope?". fact is, we all head toward dying the day we are born. it's a great debate, and a great question . . . and you'll get various answers depending on how you frame the question. what about capital punishment? no way! would you kill another person? no, never. what if he deserved to die? who can decide that? what if he asked you to kill him . . . ? "doctor assisted" . . . what would Lady MacBeth say?
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Post by franko on Oct 21, 2014 13:16:35 GMT -5
. . that is changing with this debate, isn't it? a foetus . . . a choice. a pain-filled life . . . a choice to make. a person on life support in a vegetative state is not the same as a person with cancer that may be in pain while undergoing treatment and just want to give up because it hurts so much. in either case the extended family is in emotional pain . . . and there will be guilt when the plug is pulled or the plunger is pushed. could it be that modern medicine is a problem . . . we extend life beyond what it should be? (oh boy, another question to try to find an answer for). I'm framing a differrent argument. When it comes to woman, the majority view is that it's her body and NOBODY has a right to tell her what to do if she wants an abortion. Particularly the state. When it comes to sick people, they don't have the same level of "ownership". Particularly by the state. Why the hypocrisy? The argument takes another greater level of hypocrisy if it's framed in terms of "life". One is to be secured and comforted and the other disposable? Why? (Full disclosure, I'm pro choice, mostly because I don't want a revival of the coathanger industry.) ah, I read it the other way. full disclosure: I'm pro-life (not anti-choice). I don't want a revival of the coathanger industry either . . . but I do think the blob, the mass of cells, is a growing (not potential) human . . . and because that is the case I think more should be done to help those who are inconvenienced opr worse by a pregnancy. but that's a topic for another thread [/hijack] question: at what point does one cross the line from hope to despair and should we actively deal with that rather than just say "ah well, you're right, your life isn't worth living any more/"? and what of the family that is left (which is what I deal with). it ain't all like Les invasions barbares
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Post by Doc Holliday on Oct 21, 2014 15:12:54 GMT -5
question: at what point does one cross the line from hope to despair and should we actively deal with that rather than just say "ah well, you're right, your life isn't worth living any more/"? and what of the family that is left (which is what I deal with). ...that's how I see things as well. Unfortunately the government here in Quebec has already rushed into this and adopted a project that allows legalized homicide assisted suicide ... The text of the law has yet to be written though… I hope this doesn’t catch on in other provinces… Just wait a few months you’ll see how bad we’ll screw up with it…
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Post by Disgruntled70sHab on Oct 21, 2014 17:35:22 GMT -5
question: at what point does one cross the line from hope to despair and should we actively deal with that rather than just say "ah well, you're right, your life isn't worth living any more/"? and what of the family that is left (which is what I deal with). ...that's how I see things as well. Unfortunately the government here in Quebec has already rushed into this and adopted a project that allows legalized homicide assisted suicide ... The text of the law has yet to be written though… I hope this doesn’t catch on in other provinces… Just wait a few months you’ll see how bad we’ll screw up with it… I believe that if you have faith then you have a true gift ... if you believe in God, then you have your answer ... it's not so easy when you're an agnostic or atheist ... when a loved one tells you "I'm ready" it can actually be a good thing, but it's not necessarily a green light to open the Kavorkian door ... this is on a much different level than deciding whether to pull the plug, or not ... my dilemma is that I respect freedom of choice, too ... Cheers.
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Post by Polarice on Oct 21, 2014 17:40:55 GMT -5
I'm also pro choice.....if I'm ready to go then let me go.
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Post by franko on Oct 21, 2014 17:48:52 GMT -5
...that's how I see things as well. Unfortunately the government here in Quebec has already rushed into this and adopted a project that allows legalized homicide assisted suicide ... The text of the law has yet to be written though… I hope this doesn’t catch on in other provinces… Just wait a few months you’ll see how bad we’ll screw up with it… I believe that if you have faith then you have a true gift ... if you believe in God, then you have your answer ... it's not so easy when you're an agnostic or atheist ... when a loved one tells you "I'm ready" it can actually be a good thing, but it's not necessarily a green light to open the Kavorkian door ... this is on a much different level than deciding whether to pull the plug, or not ... my dilemma is that I respect freedom of choice, too ... Cheers. belief in God is no guaranteed answer, Dis. pain and suffering and uncertainty -- and doubt -- attack us all. that family with ALS? they know what's coming. they've watched the deterioration in their loved ones. they wonder if they are next. they wonder how much they'll be able to take when it hits . . . and they wonder if they can put their family through watching them. I think that some of them are making plans so that the family will not see . . . that there will be no "assistedness". so to add to the conundrum, which is better/worse: to take a vial of pills when you are alone and have the family discover the death, or to live for a few more months and have the family gather around for the final act? (doc's third option of effective palliative care -- I've read that into his post -- is the one I hang on to).
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Post by franko on Oct 21, 2014 17:50:03 GMT -5
I'm also pro choice.....if I'm ready to go then let me go. ah, but there is a difference between "let me go" (which I say too -- no extraordinary measures should be taken) and "push me out".
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Post by Skilly on Oct 21, 2014 19:43:21 GMT -5
It should be the persons choice ... It's why we sign organ donor cards, and DNR cards. Our body's , our choice.
I've heard in this thread people don't want a coat hanger industry revival. I also don't want a hemp rope industry revival.
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Post by franko on Oct 21, 2014 20:17:10 GMT -5
It should be the persons choice ... It's why we sign organ donor cards, and DNR cards. Our body's , our choice. any limits?
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