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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

#201

Post by eru »

reverendsteveii wrote: post #194
eru wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that actually true? Are people who choose MAID poorer than the average? The article suggests that they are whiter than the average Canadian. Make of that what you will.

I mean, it's plainly evident that mental illness is associated with poverty, which is itself associated with homelessness. Here ( https://care.org.uk/news/2024/10/poor-lonely-and-homeless-op... ) is an article that references a report that says that people are opting for MAID for non-terminal illnesses and that those who do so are disproportionately likely to be from poorer areas. It also mentions at least one person…

Thanks for digging that up.

It's a big country, so I suspect you'll find individual examples of just about anything.

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

#202

Post by mjevans »

7thpower wrote: post #184
dogman1050 wrote: post #119

After watching my father die with COPD, it because obvious that euthanasia happens in the US all the time. He opted out of lung-reduction surgery and was ready to die. So the hospital withheld IV hydration and provided a morphine drip and he was gone in 36 hours. How long can one live without water, a few days max? So that's what killed him. My sister-in-law who's a physician told me that's how it's typically done. I…

Yes, I think that is not well understood. When my father-in-law passed, in a rural assisted living facility, we found they had stopped feeding him despite saying they were and our requests that they continue. We were stuck in this uncomfortable position of not being able to move him somewhere else, being completely blindsided by his (bone and bladder) cancer and how quickly it progressed, and not knowing what standar…

The setup for 'Living Wills' and directives to doctors, at least in the US as recently as ~4-5 years ago, suck. I remember thinking at the time that I saw what family was filling out that they failed to express the nuance that I would like for my own directives.

Generally if there's still hope for recovery to a not-shitty life then I'd prefer to proceed towards that. Even as extreme as E.G. that Leadale anime's setup where the protag's broken from the neck down but can live in a VR gameworld (deeper immersion so they can still move, taste, etc). If there's still real hope for reaching that, it might be worth toughing it out and waiting.

However that sort of nebulous criteria that requires a human to evaluate isn't present. I can't empower the doctors with such vague goals and say 'make your best call as a HUMAN doctor with that vague goal'.

If that good route isn't an option, then I wouldn't want to stick around either... and the lack of a clear legal euthanasia option in much of the US pushes people to roundabout failures for lack of food / water intake, or just giving in to inevitable statistics when a cold or stressed body complication like a heart attack happen. Heck, if my brain's the part that's fraying apart and I want to die anyway, please harvest the working organs as my method of death so someone else can live better.

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

#203

Post by GordonS »

gnfargbl wrote: post #41

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 because of financial reasons.

I say this as someone who will be in pain for the rest of my life, and euthanasia has been on my mind at times. As much as I might "benefit" from such a law in the future, I don't believe it should be passed until we have a stable society with good services and safety nets.

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

#204

Post by kerkeslager »

nashashmi wrote: post #154
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…

This! People feel like they cannot live alone or they cannot want that someone else be caused hardship (time or money) because of their difficulty. I feel like I will get downvoted to oblivion just because people vehemently disagree, but THIS CANNOT be the meaning and choice behind death. It is simply immature, arrogant, and selfish. But more plainly, it is suicidal / self-relentment.

Immature, arrogant, and selfish is a good description of a person who demands other people stay alive despite immense suffering, just so you can feel morally superior and not have to experience loss.

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

#205

Post by shkkmo »

nashashmi wrote: post #154
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…

This! People feel like they cannot live alone or they cannot want that someone else be caused hardship (time or money) because of their difficulty. I feel like I will get downvoted to oblivion just because people vehemently disagree, but THIS CANNOT be the meaning and choice behind death. It is simply immature, arrogant, and selfish. But more plainly, it is suicidal / self-relentment.

I'm partially with you, in that I do see tragedy in these choices. I see tragedy that we lack the cultural and economic institutions to support peope towards the end of life in ways (especially ones that don't make them feel like a burden.)

However, I don't think the solution to that tragedy to to make people suffer through. I think the solution is more and better institutions that reduce that suffering so fewer people are pushed to make the choice to end it.

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

#206

Post by potato3732842 »

resoluteteeth wrote: post #125
mensetmanusman wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Authoritarians that want to force doctors to provide death as a service?

There are concerns about assisted suicide being pushed on marginalized people who don't have terminal illnesses in Canada. I don't know if that is being driven by "authoritarians" but implying that the issue is just doctors providing death as a service (i.e. to people who are specifically requesting it unprompted) may not be completely accurate.

I'm not worried about anyone "pushing" it. I'm worried about groups being put at the back of the line for other forms of care because the decision makers know that "worst case" more of them will off themselves and find that to be a fine outcome.

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

#207

Post by xyzzyz »

I support assisted suicide for people who are not capable of doing it without assistance (because dying moments of many people are really not pretty, as many stories in this thread attest to), but I think that the cases of medical and legal industries killing physically healthy young people due to mental issues are sick and wrong.

Physically healthy and young people do not need assistance in committing suicide if they actually want to do it. When they request it, what they are actually asking for is for “experts” and “professionals” to make the decision for them. They want the system to give them a stamp of approval, so that they don’t have to take responsibility.

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

#208

Post by snakeyjake »

imtringued wrote: post #157
snakeyjake wrote: post #26

In an ideal world 100% of all deaths would be by euthanasia. Instead there are accidents, which kill prematurely. Homicides, which steal life. And diseases, which cripple and degrade. I've watched three of my four grandparents suffocate to death as their organs failed, blasted out of their minds on morphine, nothing more than a collection of organs with a slowly stopping metabolism. Two of them wanted to end it, but…

>I suppose the only accident, homicide, and disease that cannot be defeated given enough luck, research, and effort is the eventual tiring, erosion, and destruction of one's mind I don't really see how you arrive at this. If someone has a disease that erodes their mind, they didn't die voluntarily, even if they choose euthanasia. In fact, you could say this about all euthanasia. Why choose to die? The HN answer is "b…

>Notice something? That's a can of worms that society is not ready for yet.

That's what people who think that others are too stupid to determine the course of their own lives think.

Anyone and everyone who thinks that I am not ready or able to determine the duration of my life can go fuck themselves.

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

#209

Post by Spivak »

Jimmc414 wrote: post #190
darth_avocado wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn’t call someone dealing with cancer and the loss of his wife sound of mind within one week of the loss.

Agreed, but requiring one's psychology be stabilized before they can die of despair seems to miss the point

This happens with transgender individuals looking to start hrt stuck in a basically the same catch-22.

It's an uphill legal battle to get people to understand that laws saying you have to get the patient's depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation completely under control before they're allowed to start hrt when that's the source of those problems is untenable. Because while there are reasonable and empathetic folks there's faction who is pushing these laws as a means of soft-outlawing the treatment all together.

Ahh local politics, truly nothing else like it.

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

#210

Post by kerkeslager »

rich_sasha wrote: post #40
dathos wrote: post #30

My grandma always told me when she couldn’t go on her walks anymore she didn’t consider life worth living. When she got dementia she was placed in a closed hospice, to “protect her”. Now she only walks when I visit, and I only see a shell of the woman she was. Anecdotal of course, but why do people think it’s an ethics question when society is individualistic as can be? There is no choice in being born, why don’t we…

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…

> 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.

How often does this actually happen?

EDIT: To be clear, I'm not saying this doesn't happen, I'm really asking.

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