421–430 of 655 posts
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He’d be dead either way, the question is if having those three years were a net improvement to his life
3 years living vs dying is a 3 year net improvement on life. Such silly statement. By your logic we should kill everyone at their peak.
We're opening up tremendous abuses of power by allowing the state to kill people for non-criminal behavior.
Sure the first iteration is presented as "voluntary", but the next edition will be for the greater good. And how about sinister / malevolent abuses of "voluntary" suicide -- similar to abuses over guardianship.
at least with guardianship the person can be set free, because they are still alive.
I had an old teacher who died almost a year ago. Great guy, very sociable, knew everyone in the little town he lived in. Kept in touch with a lot of students. Good neighbour, friendly guy who'd talk to everyone. He got Alzheimers. He started forgetting stuff, and it frustrated him. He got caught driving dangerously, and cursed the doctor who took away his license. He argued with me about the state of some chicken he…
Yeah but if you are in that state, you probably don’t give a shit and everybody else seems to be the problem. So how do you solve this? When dementia isn’t too far progressed, your life seems to be still worthwhile to live and once the dementia gets worse, it’s too late to realize this.
You don’t. You try to take care of yourself before you’re gone. If you miss that opportunity, you and your loved ones suffer. Same as it is for everyone now.
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Or they'll treat you with a daily oil bath and feed you tender coconut water ... until few days later your kidney's blow out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalaikoothal
I think people tend to underestimate the risks in allowing suicide —- here’s a blurb from the linked article: However, social acceptance may lead to more egregious abuses: the issue gained a higher profile in early 2010, when an 80-year-old man escaped after discovering his intended fate and heard his family members discussing how they were going to "share" his lands, and took refuge in a relative's home.
People obsess over this risk. It—and religious opposition—are the reason it’s only an option for those who can travel to and hospice in Switzerland.
> social acceptance may lead to more egregious abuses
Do we have any evidence societies that have tolerated suicide had higher rates of murder? Switzerland doesn’t strike me as a hotbed of senior murder, for example.
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In a similar vein India also has/had Thalaikoothal, which is more of a traditional method of homicide than suicide. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalaikoothal
"They are given an oil bath and made to drink glasses of coconut water" I'm surprised that someone can be killed in this way. Is it the electrolyte imbalance? There's a lot of potassium in coconut water.
Apparently you can (almost) do it unintentionally if you play tennis in the heat—though 88oz (2.6L) seems like a lot!
Here’s a case report:
Hakimian, J., Goldbarg, S. H., Park, C. H., & Kerwin, T. C. (2014). Death by Coconut. Circulation: Arrhythmia and Electrophysiology, 7(1), 180–181. https://doi.org/10.1161/circep.113.000941
I'm surprised and fascinated that this is apparently legal in Switzerland. The Netherlands, famous for allowing assisted suicide, has pretty strict criteria for this[1]. In particular, the physician must "be satisfied that the patient’s suffering is unbearable, with no prospect of improvement", which from this article sounds far from the case here. [1] https://www.government.nl/topics/euthanasia/is-euthanasia-al...
1. Administer the medication yourself
2. Be of "sane" mind at the time you do it.
3. Have a doctor certify that at the time you choose to do it, you are in unbearable pain/suffering, and there is no realistic relief from it.
This rules out dementia (especially item 2). So people here who are in early stages of Alzheimers go to Switzerland as well.
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Right. It's a not-so-well-kept secret that hospice care is actually assisted suicide in disguise. It's done with a wink and a nudge, hiding behind the principle of double effect, but it's a mercy everyone knows is happening. It's sad that it has to be done covertly.
Which is highly illegal, especially as a form of monetizing pain and lack of agency from elders incapable of decision making but flush with money and inheritors
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MAID being inappropriately offered to people who haven't expressed interest in it, and also being extended widely to people without terminal illness, has certainly become a controversy in Canada. https://archive.is/bd0PV https://thewalrus.ca/assisted-dying/ https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/article/doesnt-line-up-mps-c...
Why should only terminally ill people get this choice? A 16 year old can decide who to kill in the army but apparently they (and we) aren't competent to choose whether to take one's own life.
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Dementia and Alzheimer is not something that can simply be managed throught treatment. It is an inexorable descent into suffering for both the person and its entourage with absolutely zero hope of getting better. At best in the last stages you get very short glimpses of normality within hours of confusions, frustrations, anger and pain. If I am ever diagnosed with one of those, I absolutely want the chance to end my…
I’ve had a lot of people suffer in my life from health conditions, ranging from mental illness, heart disease, and cancer. And I’ve had to take care of them all at different times. Did I consider this a burden or a gift? Oh, it was hard, but does that mean it’s a burden? If you think you’ll be a burden on your loved ones can we really say they’re your loved ones? This is a serious question. If you’re thinking that yo…
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> I am really pro assisted suicide as a way of shortening suffering You don't consider years of mental trauma on the individual and years burden and stress on loved ones to be suffering?
That's the issue with assisted suicide. A lot of old people bring burden and stress on loved ones at some point. How many old people will be guilt tripped into an assisted suicide because of this philosophy?