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This is such a conflict of interest. How are you supposed to trust organizations and people who, when you ask for help, might be motivated to take advantage of your vulnerability?
> The Canadian Association of MAID Assessors and Providers, the leading organization of Canadian euthanasia providers, has sat on credible evidence by its own members that people are being driven to euthanasia by credit card debt, poor housing, and difficulties getting medical care. Did I miss the actual concrete evidence this is being purposefully being used to reduce certain populations?
Not sure if I understand, but the article gives a number of examples, such as: > Mary knows that she could control her pain if she could take vitamin pills, eat a special diet, and go to physiotherapy. She can’t afford it. “Mary identifies poverty as the driver of her MAID request,” Gibb-Carsley writes on a slide accompanying her talk, emphasizing the. “She does not want to die, but she’s suffering terribly and she’s…
This is a weird article to me. It seems to criticize the program for not failing to adequately force people to live in a society that makes them want to die. It even quotes someone pointing out that a high usage rate by people driven to give up on life by out of control housing and cost of living prices without sufficient income, or those unable to afford other treatments could be a leverage for arguing for better de…
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Would you please stop posting ideological flamewar comments to HN, regardless of how right you are or feel you are? You're welcome to be on either side of this issue, but your comments are standing out in this thread as particularly inflammatory and battle-modey. That's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: we've had to warn you about this alrea…
A statement like "if they don't want to commit suicide, then suggesting it won't have an effect" does not deserve "curious" conversation.
I have attempted to use HN for curious discussion. A perusal of my most recent comments includes the AVR-GCC compiler, carrier override of cellphone settings, Montessori schools, ChatGPT, content moderation, failures of renewable energy, and humanity's propensity for counting in 1,000's.
Admittedly, the content moderation and failures of renewable energy were not received well, and were slightly contentious. But I do not see this as primarily using HN for ideological flamewars.
You are correct that my comments here are "battle mode-y". Frankly, because HN has become swamped with things that aren't about tech and curiosity, given the sisemic political shifts in the country. Daily there are topics about assisted suicide being wonderful, calls to play Russian roulette with psychoactive substances, ministries of Truth being the greatest thing ever, and Google flagging "black owned business" being a marvelous idea, and anyone who thinks otherwise is a bigot.
These ideas herald the end of society. They receive accolades from the userbase, and attempts at serious discussion are downvoted without so much as a reply. In short, there is already an invisible ideological battle occurring, for which there are no repercussions.
Must I feign curiosity? Must I simply ignore it?
The whole argument against MAID feels ridiculously like the anti-abortion position. The other option to providing it is having them end their life in a way that might be risky or fail to succeed in a way that leaves them painfully scarred for life or suffering more than they had to. Why are people forced to live if they don't want to?
> Why are people forced to live if they don't want to? Because we live in a society , not some libertarian utopia of sovereign citizens. Your life doesn’t belong only to yourself, but it belongs to all of us. Your parents, your kids, your friends, your acquaintances. We are all affected by what you do to yourself and, concomitantly, get a say in it.
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> Why are people forced to live if they don't want to? As with abortion, why must I cheerfully pay taxes for policy affecting individuals that's morally objectionable?
I have bad news for you. You will never gain the ability to pick and choose what your taxes fund, and the other people paying taxes have entirely different sets of important things that they wish to fund, and different sets of things that they are horrified that their taxes are supporting.
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I don't have a problem with people getting MAID, but I do have a problem with medical practitioners pushing it on people who want to live but can't get basic resources to deal with very manageable disabilities.
>"but I do have a problem with medical practitioners pushing it on people who want to live but can't get basic resources" Same here. This fucking abomination of a doctor should be screaming bloody hell and knocking on government doors to have them address the problem. Here we are: rich developed democratic country basically telling our poor to go fuck themselves and die.
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I don't know if people view euthanasia as being more compassionate towards their pets. I think many people view it as being selfish. Killing the pet to avoid the hassle of dealing with it's illness and avoid the expense of it's medical care. I don't particularly agree, I think it can be compassionate but also understand where this view comes from.
I have literally never heard of someone who killed their pet to avoid the hassle of dealing with illness. I have heard of multiple people that kept the pet alive and kept pumping in more and more expensive treatments because they could not let go. Killing a pet that is practically family and has been part of your life for 10+ years is not something people do to avoid responsibility.
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I suggest you do a little reading. I'm Canadian and it's alarming. It's already apparently 2.5% of deaths in Canada. https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/medical-assi... We have credible reports of a person aged 23 who was approved for medically assisted death because they were diabetic and depressed. https://www.thefp.com/p/scheduled-to-die-the-rise-of-canadas The top 1% of patients use approximately 30%…
> I suggest you do a little reading You're of course welcome to be on either side of this issue, but please edit swipes like that out of your comments here. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html . (Your comment would be fine without that bit.)
Sorry about that. I meant it neutrally but that didn't come across. I won't post again anything that suggests snark.
Thanks, Will