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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

#301

Post by wpietri »

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…

Yeah, I get that. Once you've accepted death is inevitable, you start to think carefully about what kind of death you want.

My parents both died of glioblastomas, a particularly aggressive form of brain cancer. As the surgeon explained after the biopsy, "This is what you will die from." 3 months from diagnosis to death for my mom, a year and change for my dad. Seeing that process up close made very clear to me what I wanted for myself.

All of this was reinforced for me by the experience of Brittany Maynard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittany_Maynard

She was diagnosed with a glioblastoma and was given 6 months to live. She moved from California to Oregon so she could die in a controlled and humane manner. She wrote about that here: https://www.cnn.com/2014/10/07/opinion/maynard-assisted-suic...

I get the thought of medically-assisted suicide wigs some people out, and we have to be careful to make sure the urge isn't just a temporary distortion of mood and thought. But having seen it up close, I am very much not interested in spending months dying slowly and dragging my family through hell just to make sure random people not involved don't have to think about hard things or deal with their feelings about death.

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

#302

Post by tivert »

TylerE wrote: post #260
tivert wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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

I think you're mistaken, I didn't trivialize anything.

If anything's being trivialized, it was the value of quadriplegic people, who some internet rando blithely declared as all being incapable of having a "fulfilling life."

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

#303

Post by jtbayly »

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…

Should the doctor have control over his life? Or just his patients?

And how exactly is the doctor supposed to distinguish between those who have a “0%” chance of changing their mind and those who have a 1% or 5% or 10% chance of changing their mind?

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

#304

Post by christina97 »

toasterlovin wrote: post #238
caseyohara wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Why can’t people be in charge of their own lives? I think the obvious counterpoint is that MAID is about people enlisting others to help kill them, which is no longer merely "being in charge of their own lives".

The others are really not necessary from a technical pov, could have suicide pill vending machines around the place.

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

#305

Post by diddid »

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…

Grown adults are prevented from making decisions all the time. Wearing a seat belt for example. Why should it be OK to force someone to wear a seat belt all of the time, but not OK to have a waiting period if someone decides they want to die?

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

#306

Post by guyzero »

giarc wrote: post #294
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…

In your first example, I suspect there was probably other things present you weren't made aware of. Currently the requirements in Canada include (only copy those relevant to your example). -have a serious and incurable illness, disease or disability (excluding a mental illness until March 17, 2027) -be in an advanced state of irreversible decline in capability -have enduring and intolerable physical or psychological…

Yes, I know very little other than that he was a cancer "survivor" - he wasn't about to die of cancer imminently but I think he had some sort of long-term ongoing health issues. But he was apparently well enough to drive a car!

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

#307

Post by Baeocystin »

pinkmuffinere wrote: post #269
karencarits wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate you sharing your perspective. I wondered, when you described feeling "really sad" and the sense that people "might as well have been dead," I'm wondering if you're speaking about your own emotional response or trying to convey how the individuals themselves felt about their situation? Edited to sound less harsh

(I’m not op) The full quote is > At the end, while technically alive, so little of who they were as persons remained, they might as well have been dead. It sounds like there was some severe mental decline. When undergoing this kind of mental decline, does anybody remain happy? That’s meant as a genuine question, not rhetorical. Of course I’ve heard of the cases where people are constantly scared, feel unsafe, confuse…

My mother passed from Alzheimer's. There was a few-month period in the middle-end phase where she no longer had the capacity for long-term fear or existential dread, but was still able to eat food and listen to music. What remained of her was reasonably content until things progressed. Happy? No, not really. But it was a lull in the storm of pain that preceded and followed. A silver lining to the mushroom cloud.

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

#308

Post by buildsjets »

Martinussen wrote: post #103
philistine wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If an individual in a difficult life situation comes to the state for help as a last resort, and there is a chance the representative they are assigned would recommend they should consider just dying as their last resort, the state has already failed Medical assistance in dying is a medical act, reserved to doctors. Just like a car salesman can't legally recommend you an abortion. No one in the government has the l…

Yes, my point was that that person having a position where they are able to do that is already wrong. If a car salesman was telling every woman that came in they should get an abortion, there are places that person should be, and none of them are a car dealer's.

The Supreme Court then?

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

#309

Post by flkiwi »

RandomThoughts3 wrote: post #138
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…

To be honest, my grand parents both died in their nineties and their last two years were really sad. It was not so much the physical decline but the mental one. At the end, while technically alive, so little of who they were as persons remained, they might as well have been dead. I fully understand someone in their 80s knowing the end is near choosing to leave on their own term.

My bio father (he was not a part of my life, which is important to note when you get to the end of this comment) lived to 89, for certain values of "lived". He had long ago exhausted his ability to support himself financially, he was blind, deaf, unable to get around town on his own, had substantial age-related mental health issues, as well as a litany of small but significant health issues. I cannot speak for him, but I'd like to think that if I came anywhere close to that existence and I had the option available, I would opt for an end on my terms that respected my dignity and that of my family. As an American, however, I expect to die like he did: poor, mostly alone, and in pain.

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

#310

Post by [deleted] »

anon291 wrote: post #272
JohnBooty wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it because obvious that euthanasia happens in the US all the time [...] So the hospital withheld IV hydration and provided a morphine drip and he was gone in 36 hours I had a family member with late-stage terminal COPD opt out of further treatment. They were in respiratory crisis and were going to be intubated for the nth time with no real hope of recovery, and so they said "fuck it" and delined further intervention.…

We're in a weird spot where the secular world asks us to simultaneously cause death (the euthanasia folks) while also asking us to evade it altogether (the Brian Johnson types). Catholicism embraces natural death, which is what your family member (RIP) chose. Interventions that hasten death are fine. Just can't cause it.

[deleted]
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