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Assisted dying now accounts for one in 20 Canada deaths

bbc.com

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

#731

Post by tpm »

addicted wrote: post #674
TexanFeller wrote: post #622

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The entire reason why the mental illness discussion is complicated is because with mental illness it’s not clear it is a choice. And this isn’t even something made up for the particular case of assisted suicide. The idea that someone with mental illness cannot make legitimate choice has been around in the legal system for a while, with mental illness leading to reduced sentences, and even being the basis of acquittal…

> The idea that someone with mental illness cannot make legitimate choice has been around in the legal system for a while

There is mental illness and then there is competence, they are related but not the same. Complicating things further in this case would be things like reactive mental states (grieving etc) which might for a time manifest like mental illness but tend to be not diagnosed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competence_(law)

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

#732

Post by TomK32 »

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…

Health care can do a lot these days and extend a persons life by a lot, but with this the question about the quality of life arises. Assisted dying is one answer to this. Personally, half-way through life, I plan to avoid it by keeping myself fit with exercises, cycling and running.

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

#733

Post by rich_sasha »

okaram wrote: post #163
rich_sasha wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To my mind the main obstacle is kind of orthogonal: how do you protect the people who don't want to go, being pressured or manipulated. I agree that if someone is really, independently and committedly deciding to go, you shouldn't stop them. But how do you express that test in a bureaucratic, legalistic framework? In a friend's family, there was a big rift as one family member in direct line of inheritance was accuse…

The way most countries who have it (including Canada) have solved it is to add waiting periods, and layers of reviews. In Canada, you need two different doctors to sign off on it. If you're not actively dying, you also have a 90-day period of reflection. And you have to be of sound mind. This seems to me like good enough safeguards, don't you think?

My ultimate point is that old people, especially those not very well, are very vulnerable to being forced to do this, and I saw ~first hand how easy and undetectable it was. You can add bureaucratic constraints but it's fundamentally a human problem. While expressing utmost sympathy to critically ill and unwell people, I don't know how you make this without endangering many more people than those would benefit from such changes.

How do you even measure if it's working "well" in Canada? They have a process. There is no way to question the people who went through with it whether, on reflection, it was their own free will.

But of course looking at how others do it is a good starting place for further analysis and I'll go now and educate myself.

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

#734

Post by robertlagrant »

Lewton wrote: post #701
DanHulton wrote: post #643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are sufficiently mentally ill and determined enough to die that you get through the MAID screening, counselling, information sessions, etc, then you are determined enough to die by other, messier, likely more painful, certainly more traumatizing to the people around you methods. As well, mental illness is not just a state of mind. Sure, there are stories where a failed suicide attempt was the catalyst for some…

> Where they can't afford the medication, or no medication seems to work, or they have an addiction problem and there just isn't any way for them to get into a treatment program I would consider two of these absolutely monstrous reasons to assist someone in killing themselves. A broken society opting into killing its citizens because it can’t be arsed with fixing itself is next level evil

> A broken society

I don't think this is necessarily broken by any reasonable standard. If no medication exists, that's not "broken society". Nor is there not being money to give a bespoke treatment to everyone, no matter how expensive it is. If that's broken, no society in history has ever not been broken. Which is just a poor definition.

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

#735

Post by TomK32 »

Recently I listened to a 25 year old episode of Melvyn Bragg's In Our Time on the BBC (fantastic series btw, still going). Medical Ethics and back then, amongst other topics, the option of assisted death did already crop up. Unless medical treatment not only prolongs a life but also maintains, or towards the end of a long life realistically it has to improve, the quality of life, the idea of an early death will enter the mind of a lot of people.

Christiaan Barnard gets quoted with "The prime goal is to alleviate suffering, and not to prolong life. And if your treatment does not alleviate suffering, but only prolongs life, that treatment should be stopped."

The relevant part starts at 24:40 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p005465c

The program also mentions doctors limits in regards to genetic conditions which not only affect their patient but might also affect the patients relatives. I don't see that discussion ever, even though it turns out to be relevant for my ADHD.

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

#737

Post by xboxnolifes »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #670
nicoburns wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not at all surprising to me! I fully expect to want to euthanise myself once I'm done with life (and I'm going to be pretty upset if it's not an option for me when it gets to that point). People tell me I'll change my mind (perhaps similarly to how people treat people who say they don't want kids). But I doubt I will. I've seen lot's of older people (and people who's lives are not good) still want this when it c…

It’s always an option. It’s just not always an option to force someone to help you, which is what maid is.

I guarantee you that enough people would take on the profession without being forced to if it wasn't illegal to do so.

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

#738

Post by 71bw »

ben30 wrote: post #13

Fifteen years ago, flying into Vancouver, a local told me charities would give homeless people one-way bus tickets there from colder regions of Canada to prevent winter deaths. No return tickets in spring. Calls into question what we consider "charitable" when the solution is just moving vulnerable people elsewhere. Worrying parallel: will euthanasia become another "solution" for those who can't afford proper care an…

>harities would give homeless people one-way bus tickets there from colder regions of Canada to prevent winter deaths. No return tickets in spring

This, as far as I'm aware, still happens in the US nowadays[1].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=048BUjNWZa8

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

#739

Post by xboxnolifes »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #284
spiralganglion wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've felt since I was young that I'd like to choose when and how I will die. I'm perfectly comfortable with the thought. I'm in my 30s and have a lovely life and family. I'm in no rush to end things. But when I'm old and the scales tip, I'd like to be the one to decide that it's time. I might not ever get there, but I want the option.

I've been hearing young and healthy people say this for my entire, fairly long, life. But I have never personally known an elderly or disabled person to kill themselves over it. If you find life worth living despite its hardships now, it's likely that you always will even as those hardships increase.

At some point it may be more than just hardship. 80+, paralyzed from the waist down, bedridden, bed sores, muscles atrophying, all of your enjoyments gone, your friends dead, dying, or lost most of their mental facilities, and you're completely miserable.

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

#740

Post by kstenerud »

jamal-kumar wrote: post #699
kstenerud wrote: post #698

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife helped a friend die in Germany 10 years ago. He'd acquired some cyanide, which resulted in a long, protracted death because he took too much and vomited most of it up. It was messy, painful and traumatic, but she sat with him until the end. When someone is determined enough to die, they find a way.

That's wild, because in my understanding it's an indictable offence to aid and abet someone to end their own lives in Canada. Like more than 10 years jail https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/c-46/section-241.ht... Counselling or aiding suicide 241 (1) Everyone is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term of not more than 14 years who, whether suicide ensues or not, (a) counsels a pers…

She didn't care, and she got away with it. And if she were still alive today, I wouldn't be talking about it since the statute of limitations is not passed.

Also this was in Germany, but still just as illegal.

She was the most amazing and remarkable woman I ever met. There will be an Arte documentary about her early next year (not about this; about her work in Ukraine).

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