>Of course I don’t know all the circumstances around it. And that's the point. The person expressing the wish (and expressing it before the death) did. People make choices. We should let them, wherever possible. Yes, there are consequences - but we also let people fly wingsuits and base jump, and those have known consequences as well. Would you also enjoin people from doing that after a traumatic event? What about mo…
Flying a wingsuit out of an airplane as part of a skydive is not particularly dangerous. It's the base jumping, wingsuit or no, that is extremely dangerous.
AFIAK you don't have a reserve when you're using a wingsuit.
My dad (age 75) got diagnosed with ALS and within a month of the diagnosis opted for MAID. He had only just lost control of one leg, but he knew what was coming. As much as we begged him for more time, he didn't want any of it. Till his dying breath he kept repeating how thankful he was that he lived in a country that didn't force him to live on when he didn't want to. He was a clear Track 1 case, and I realize Track…
These are all excellent examples of how MAID should be used, I think the concerning thing is the widening of the eligibility criteria - especially when things like mental illness start to make you eligible. Like... If your illness makes you suicidal... Is offering assisted suicide REALLY the best we can do? That starts to feel a lot like "eghh you're too hard for society to care about... We'll just let you die". As h…
Suicide is the ultimate “my body, my choice” issue, even more than abortion is. It’s monstrous to force someone with severe mental health problems to live if they don’t want to. I live an incredible life now that people envy, but I’ve had been through torturous mental health problems in the past. If I knew I had to face a year or two of my dark times again and I’d have 50 more years of my great life afterward I’m not sure if I’d choose to live.
Anyone who has worked at a hospital can tell you how many people die in needless pain and suffering when nothing more can really be done for them. They just wait out the clock in pain or do increasingly horrible procedures that give them a little more time with terrible quality of life. 5% is probably an underestimate of that number. Nurses/doctors don't like to speak up about that part and people don't want to confr…
I volunteered (and then worked) at a Federal hospital in the 90s, up until ~2002. Oncologists were notoriously underrepresented in the oncology department as patients . Instead, then tended to do whatever they wanted and then get dosed up to the gills with Morphine until dead, a few hours later. It was a very different way to run out the clock.
Yeah, I've heard similar things many times. The people with the best understanding of what's going to happen are the least likely to want it--extremely telling to me.
> Denying this assistance isn't really "tyranny" Actively preventing someone from providing assistance is. There’s a big difference between not doing something yourself and actively preventing someone else from providing assistance.
> Actively preventing someone from providing assistance is. Sure, but this happens with legalization, too. Only licensed physicians can assist in suicide. Other attempts to assist will result in state violence. Most people trying to provide assistance won't be licensed physicians. Which is a completely different effort than the one intended to execute those undesirable to the market. God forbid we support people with…
Providing assistance isn’t limited to handing someone pills, making the appropriate calls is assistance and a tough moral choice for many. Also, as a purely practical matter physicians can provide both humane options and a clearer separation between direct assistance and murder.
Though obviously there’s other possibilities, it’s a tricker issue than it might at first appear.
These are all excellent examples of how MAID should be used, I think the concerning thing is the widening of the eligibility criteria - especially when things like mental illness start to make you eligible. Like... If your illness makes you suicidal... Is offering assisted suicide REALLY the best we can do? That starts to feel a lot like "eghh you're too hard for society to care about... We'll just let you die". As h…
I'm with @navane, you're concerned about what is very much a minority edge case. Still, I'll bite - it's a good thing. Why? Well an official path to suicide, as per the arrangements already in place, comes with layers of professional guidance and counselling. It's not a dispassionate "wave 'em through" treadmill of corpse creation. The best thing for young people with suicidal affixations is to talk to them and take…
During the recent debate around the Assisted Dying Bill in the UK, I listened to a radio phone-in in which a palliative care doctor explained that it wasn't possible to relieve all suffering for all patients. They relayed an example of a person who had spent their last days vomiting fully-formed faeces. If we can prevent five, ten or perhaps twenty percent of people having gruesome deaths, then not doing so feels lik…
Right, but there's a problem - the UK is in a real mess! Social services, medical services, all the services are underfunded and crumbling. There is a cost of living crisis as wages have barely moved in 15 years, food banks are everywhere, and now "multibanks" are popping up. Our country first needs to ensure that people can choose to live , and if needed be cared for; nobody should feel pushed into assisted dying be…
What was supposed to be done?
Such vomiting isn't due to any medical failing, it's due to the bowels being completely blocked. It's not going out the other end, eventually it comes back up. The only fix is to go in there surgically and fix the blockage--but in a case like what you're replying to obviously that wasn't an option.
Per my understanding, some deaths could have been avoided if not for the collapsed medical system in Canada. So if the person reaches the stage of advanced cancer because lack of care and is offered MAID first before getting cancer treatment, was it avoidable?
Just exactly which medical system has collapsed? Things need improvement but perhaps you aren't aware there's like 12 different medical systems up here...
Doesn't matter, one country with multiple barely functioning systems. Median wait time of 30 weeks from referral to seeing a specialist [1]?
During the recent debate around the Assisted Dying Bill in the UK, I listened to a radio phone-in in which a palliative care doctor explained that it wasn't possible to relieve all suffering for all patients. They relayed an example of a person who had spent their last days vomiting fully-formed faeces. If we can prevent five, ten or perhaps twenty percent of people having gruesome deaths, then not doing so feels lik…
A more important point is that even in a more normal palliative care situation, which previously may have involved a borderline illegal increase of drugs near the end to hasten and ease death, might now be recorded as an assisted death instead. So a more interesting stat might be the expected quality of life adjusted years that have been cut off by the assisted deaths. I'm not sure if QUALY can go negative but some m…
Whether the official measure can go negative or not on a practical level it clearly can. I saw my father near the end--the morphine robbed him of the ability to make long term memory. From when he was on that dose it was short term memory only, his world was frozen to before that point. And he was still in pain. How can that be anything but a negative quality of life?
I find it barbaric most countries don't give citizens freedom of choice over this most fundamental certainty.
What else do they give us choice over? What we put into our bodies? You can't, the government and "experts" decide in case it's a substance they don't like or which would reduce big pharma profits. Where you're allowed to roam and settle? Again, the government dictates this. Good for anyone who won the birth lottery but tough luck if you were born in North Korea or Mali. What you're allowed to speak? Most countries have laws regulating this and restricting people from saying what they really think. It's for your own good, big brother knows best.
I think a lot of it comes down to deontological logic and morality versus consequentialist morality. It is recognized that the outcome is the same. The difference lies and how you get there
I was thinking that the divide probably lines up pretty well with people who think the Trolley Problem is a great moral quandary versus people who think it’s obvious you pull the lever and don’t understand the fuss. Which is basically what you said.
I completely agree. I thought about bringing it up in the post, but opted for brevity.
Also, I am genuinely amused that my post is getting downvotes. People are fascinating