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Assisted dying now accounts for one in 20 Canada deaths

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Re: Assisted dying now accounts for one in 20 Canada deaths

#251

Post by wruza »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #132
afh1 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no "we". There are people and their bodies and their wishes. And authoritarians who want a say on it. Doesn't matter if nice sounding words like law and democracy are used to describe the tyranny.

Reality is much messier than "There are people and their bodies and their wishes." There are whole categories of people who we consider not well enough to make good choices about their bodies and lives, for a variety of reasons Children are not emotionally mature or responsible enough to make such choices Mentally ill people are sometimes in an altered state of mind where they are not making good decisions that are c…

It is pro-social if you can separate objectively. And even then, who is that “social” to decide it? Some people aren’t social.

If the separation line gets drawn across questionable cases, then it’s authoritarian for them. As usual, any scalable implementation will look like a very jagged asterisk-shaped circle and some financial or political interest around it, acting far away from the real needs of people. And those who pick edge cases on its less certain side will push the whole setup further until it stops making sense. Systems like this are inherently vague, which is prone to “oh, we had another case, must regulate more”.

I’ll rephrase myself from the previous thread about suicides: the “society” keeps a blind eye on the fact that it is it who drives people to end their life and then puts a big “dying is prohibited and offensive” sign at the end of this road. If “society” wants to keep “healthy but confused” (subjectively to it) people from leaving, it should look to the root of the problem, not put a barrier at the end.

Ofc teens should be kept away from this for obvious biological reasons.

Re: Assisted dying now accounts for one in 20 Canada deaths

#252

Post by gnfargbl »

eru wrote: post #187
gnfargbl wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Negative QALY values do appear possible, according to https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S10983015106004... (via Wikipedia).

I'm not sure a link will contribute much? It's just the basic question whether some years (or days or whatever) are so awful that you are better off being dead. In any case, the linked article says 'States worse than dead can exist and they would have a negative value and subtract from the number of QALYs.'

Yes, it's a fairly obvious point. The link was in the context of whether negative QALYs are a concept used by the medical profession.

Re: Assisted dying now accounts for one in 20 Canada deaths

#253

Post by jl6 »

caseyohara wrote: post #186
darth_avocado wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would’ve expected at least a waiting period longer than a week after a traumatic event. Of course I don’t know all the circumstances around it.

Who decides on the duration of the waiting period? Why can’t people be in charge of their own lives? Especially people in their 80s, they have earned the right to agency. It reminds me of OB/GYN providers that deny childless women sterilization procedures – even when they are in their 30s – ostensibly on the risk that the woman might change their mind about having children. Some people know things for certain and the…

> Yes, irreversible decisions warrant deep consideration.

I think you’ve answered your own question there. Deep consideration is not usually something done quickly, and arguably depth of consideration improves when others are involved to provide additional perspectives.

“People should be in charge of their own lives” sounds superficially like an appealing principle, and in an abstract sense is a worthy one - but reality is messy at the edges, and we know that the concept of informed consent has nuances. There are many circumstances where it would be unethical to grant someone’s request even if they swear blind that it’s what they really want.

Re: Assisted dying now accounts for one in 20 Canada deaths

#254

Post by munchler »

Mikhail_Edoshin wrote: post #169

M. Scott Peck wrote a book about euthanasia long ago. I wonder if people still read Peck. “Denial of the soul,” that was the title. The foundational belief for euthanasia must be that there is no soul.

As someone who just had to put down a beloved pet to prevent unspeakable suffering, I find that claim both stupid and insulting. If souls are real, I very much look forward to a reunion upon my own death.

Re: Assisted dying now accounts for one in 20 Canada deaths

#255

Post by steve_adams_86 »

nashashmi wrote: post #154
guyzero wrote: post #131

My Canadian parents are in their 80's so naturally a lot of their friends of the same age are dying. And two of them have been via MAID. In one case, which was surprising to me, a man who had survived cancer - he was not terminal but certainly wasn't getting any better - elected to die via MAID after his wife died. She passed, he called his doctor and less than a week later he was also dead. He got a chance to visit…

This! People feel like they cannot live alone or they cannot want that someone else be caused hardship (time or money) because of their difficulty. I feel like I will get downvoted to oblivion just because people vehemently disagree, but THIS CANNOT be the meaning and choice behind death. It is simply immature, arrogant, and selfish. But more plainly, it is suicidal / self-relentment.

I'm well-aligned with Seneca, the Stoic philosopher who said death is an open door. If you want to die, do it. However, if you choose not to go through that door, your must live your life with purpose and conviction. There's no shame in going through that door if you no longer have the capacity to live purposefully, though.

In these cases, I'm not sure these people had the agency and capacity to continue living in a way that makes sense as human beings.

I gauge much of my value and purpose in life based on how I can serve my family and community. I don't really exist for me in a sense, and I can't exist without other people. I'm part of something a lot bigger than I am. If at any point it comes to be that I'm not serving a purpose in this great network, well, I'm not sure I'd see a point in carrying on. I may still be breathing, blood still pumping, but I'd be functionally dead as a part of a community.

Re: Assisted dying now accounts for one in 20 Canada deaths

#256

Post by tivert »

kspacewalk2 wrote: post #127
thedman9052 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the last line of the linked article: "Canadian news outlets have also reported on cases where people with disabilities have considered assisted dying due to lack of housing or disability benefits."

Okay, they have considered assisted dying. People consider things all the time. That's a very far cry from getting anywhere close to approved for assisted dying.

This woman was approved: https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/woman-with-chemical-sensitivit...

Edit: fixed link, was looking at two very similar ones and got them mixed up.

Re: Assisted dying now accounts for one in 20 Canada deaths

#257

Post by Miraste »

caseyohara wrote: post #186
darth_avocado wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would’ve expected at least a waiting period longer than a week after a traumatic event. Of course I don’t know all the circumstances around it.

Who decides on the duration of the waiting period? Why can’t people be in charge of their own lives? Especially people in their 80s, they have earned the right to agency. It reminds me of OB/GYN providers that deny childless women sterilization procedures – even when they are in their 30s – ostensibly on the risk that the woman might change their mind about having children. Some people know things for certain and the…

The same reason that pills come in blister packs and bridges have nets-if you add a delay to methods for ending one's life, a significant portion of people change their minds.

Re: Assisted dying now accounts for one in 20 Canada deaths

#258

Post by pc86 »

caseyohara wrote: post #186
darth_avocado wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would’ve expected at least a waiting period longer than a week after a traumatic event. Of course I don’t know all the circumstances around it.

Who decides on the duration of the waiting period? Why can’t people be in charge of their own lives? Especially people in their 80s, they have earned the right to agency. It reminds me of OB/GYN providers that deny childless women sterilization procedures – even when they are in their 30s – ostensibly on the risk that the woman might change their mind about having children. Some people know things for certain and the…

Making sure someone has actually done the deep consideration necessary for an informed decision of a certain magnitude is not cruel, authoritarian, or denying anyone their agency. It's simply making sure they're actually using their agency.

Requiring someone be of sound mind before making permanent decisions is reasonable and pretending it's not only makes it possible for people to make permanent -- and in this case, deadly -- mistakes because you don't want to inconvenience someone else.

Like you said, if you're 100% clear headed and you know you want to die, you'll be able to do it in two weeks just the same as you could in one. If you're going to have euthanasia it's more important to me that it be absolutely clear the people doing it are capable of making that decision in that moment than making it as easy and quick as possible. If you're not of clear mind to make the decision in the first place, you're not of clear mind to make the decision not to. Whether you said six months or a year ago that you want to die when your wife dies is irrelevant, you don't have the mental faculties at that moment to confirm you want to do it.

And this isn't choosing to end your life in isolation, this is asking someone else to kill you. They have the right to know that there is as little chance as possible you would regret this a week, month, or year from now if given the opportunity.

Re: Assisted dying now accounts for one in 20 Canada deaths

#259

Post by joshfee »

taylorius wrote: post #230
shkkmo wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm partially with you, in that I do see tragedy in these choices. I see tragedy that we lack the cultural and economic institutions to support peope towards the end of life in ways (especially ones that don't make them feel like a burden.) However, I don't think the solution to that tragedy to to make people suffer through. I think the solution is more and better institutions that reduce that suffering so fewer peop…

Forgive me, but your last sentence seems like a platitude. What would such institutions look like, and how might they reduce the suffering of someone with, say, advanced dementia? I'm not trying to have a go btw - it genuinely seems an intractable problem to me.

I think the idea is that there are many factors that might motivate somebody's decision that their life is not worth living any longer. Each individual will have a different threshold for that, but if there are institutions that can alleviate the reasons for the people on the fringe, then there will be net fewer people that choose death when they otherwise may have.

Someone with advanced dementia may be too far from that threshold to change the decision for them, but that doesn't mean that better institutions wouldn't move the needle.

Re: Assisted dying now accounts for one in 20 Canada deaths

#260

Post by TylerE »

tivert wrote: post #86
deepburner wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck helping somebody paralyzed from the neck down live a fulfilling life.

> Good luck helping somebody paralyzed from the neck down live a fulfilling life. Honestly, you seem to suffer from a lack of imagination. There are famous examples of people profoundly paralyzed who most likely lived fulfilling lives (e.g. Stephen Hawking), and I believe there's research the people's happiness tends to return to baseline after both very good and very bad events .

Please don't trivialize peoples stuggles by offering pithy anecdotes.
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