can't have the little people thinking they control their own lives, can we?
Experts troubled by Canada’s euthanasia laws
181–190 of 247 posts
Re: Experts troubled by Canada’s euthanasia laws
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
Dangerous to the people who would impulsively choose to be euthanized?
Canada has a 90-day assessment/waiting period for those whose deaths are not reasonably foreseeable. They won't euthanize you unless you seem capable of making the decision and have thought through it for an extended length of time. It's not an impulsive thing.
And yet, "Within a month, Nichols submitted a request to be euthanized and he was killed" which is pretty quick considering median waiting time of 25.6 weeks between referral from a general practitioner and receipt of treatment[1]
[1]https://www.fraserinstitute.org/studies/waiting-your-turn-wa...
Re: Experts troubled by Canada’s euthanasia laws
#183This is all very disturbing: price people out of care and convince them to consent to die. I think if someone wants to end their life, they can just stop eating and drinking. If you just stop eating it will take longer, but will still work. Someone with grave health problems will often have little appetite. A friend who nearly died with a running car engine in a closed garage says it's an easy way to go. The main con…
We made the difficult decision to euthanize our dog last summer. Sure, we could have just stopped feeding her or additionally stopped allowing her water to drink. If we’d done that instead, how would we be judged? How much of that judgment would result directly from the idea that, despite there being a more humane and compassionate alternate, we chose to prolong her suffering needlessly?
The operative word you've used is "euthanize" which is definitively different than "suicide" or even "assisted suicide". You're conflating the method of ending life with the person doing the ending. OP is talking about suicide and methods in which an individual may do it, you're talking about euthanasia trying to draw comparisons between a person deciding and committing suicide and you deciding to euthanize your dog. They are not the same.
Re: Experts troubled by Canada’s euthanasia laws
#184> prompting doctors and health workers to suggest the procedure to those who might not otherwise consider it. Please tell me there isn't a financial incentive behind this. The only thing worse than doctors suggesting opioids to those who might not otherwise consider it is doctors suggesting death to those who might not otherwise consider it.
A hospital administrator might be under pressure from a Provincial government to improve “efficiency” and keep beds available, but your average doctor/nurse likely isn’t incentivized for that sort of outcome. Canadian elections are generally won in suburbs, so Provincial governments are generally hesitant to increase quality of care via tax revenues. This usually results in discussions of federal funding to improve c…
So if we let hospital administrators pressure people into assisted suicide all's good?
Re: Experts troubled by Canada’s euthanasia laws
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
An impossibility. If there is no consent there is no "suicide", assisted or otherwise.
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".
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.
Re: Experts troubled by Canada’s euthanasia laws
#186To 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.…
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 i…
Any reference to Nazis is not in itself an example of Godwins law. This is a discussion about state-run eugenics programs, so the reference isn't fallacious. Even Reductio ad Hitlerum acknowledges this[1]
Re: Experts troubled by Canada’s euthanasia laws
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Instead they can end their life inhumanely anyways That's an option that always exists. I simply have a (much) higher threshold than you in regards to a state killing its own citizens.
It's not the state that kills, it's the patients that request to have their life ended to avoid interminable suffering. This sort of framing is not helping the discussion at all.
No post body was provided.
Re: Experts troubled by Canada’s euthanasia laws
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
What if they've sought "professional help" and been turned away / denied due to lack of cash on hand? What if they also have physical medical issues that could get solved except for that whole pesky "cash on hand" thing? What if they've suffered for many years and now just want to give up and end the suffering?
I believe it should be their choice to make. The case in which I'd be skeptical is if someone were just beginning to experience mental illness. The onset of mental illness can be very difficult, confusing and disturbing. People often don't know what's happening to them and they don't know what treatment may be able to do for them. To allow them to choose suicide in an dark early moment of their disease which may stab…
The whole point is that they are unable to make that choice. A substantial decision made in sound mind implies rationality, which mental disease, by definition, diminishes.
If you equate a person's rational choices with everything that comes out of their mouth, then you will euthanize a whole lot of mentally troubled or people.
Re: Experts troubled by Canada’s euthanasia laws
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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?
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.
Re: Experts troubled by Canada’s euthanasia laws
#190My uncle just 'chose to die'. And rightly so. He suffered from a very bad case of cancer that caused him incredible pain. Physically he could have probably lived on for another three to six months but it would have been three to six months in hell. He was quite literally screaming from the pain, even through the heaviest sedatives, the only thing that would have stopped that would have been an artificial coma. Euthan…
Very sorry for your loss.