The Euthanasia That Wasn’t

I also remember the story of a guy killing his family after a divorce, hoping to be together with his children again in the afterlife.

Lies can kill...

Things like scientific research, roads, health care (in many developed countries outside the US), education, the BBC in the UK and ABC in Australia. Yes, the government funds it.

We can tie this in with a desire to do something about underemployment, by job-guarantee type government programs. On the minimum wage perhaps, but that's better than some people get now.

I'm in sympathy with the OP's post (the one with the DFW quote). The post I was responding to, seemed to suggest that people who are suicidal should generally not be taken seriously - that they arrived to their ideations by delusion - without acknowledging the other possibility.

I'm positing a counter-claim that not all people that are suicidal are also irrational, and I provided one example that I don't think so extreme, that was referenced in the OP's post. Robin William's case is another example though his decision was spurred by physical ailment[0]. Keith Flint (singer of the Prodigy) is a better example, he claimed his own death to be 'a positive thing'[1] (have no special love for the band, just a good example)

These examples could be outliers, I don't deny the possibility, but I must at least acknowledge that they exist - which was my whole point. I'd go further to say that we under-estimate how many people are both suicidal and rational.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/nov/03/robin-williams-... [1] https://metro.co.uk/2019/03/04/im-done-kill-keith-flints-bru...

edit - mistaken claim about post/grammar

Her having to kill herself by refusing nutrition, dying of thirst and starvation, because society decided it knows better than her whether she should live or not, that's truly horrifying.

To me it sounds like she was a terminally ill person: they tried everything for years to "fix" her problem, but failed completely and the condition even worsened.

She wasn't out of her mind and had a temporarily crisis, got help and regretted her previous suicide attempts; she had the goal of ending her suffering by ending her life for a long time, after having seen all the "help" others offered not working at all, she regretted the previous attempts failed, and was determined to try again and again until it worked.

And for a long time, she had to live in agony, just like a terminal cancer patient in countries without assisted suicide (most of them), was denied a way out repeatedly (not just the petition for euthanasia, but her failed suicide attempts that probably failed because of intervention of other people), and ultimately killed herself using one of the worst, horrifying, agonizing suicide methods imaginable, because that's what was available to her with other better options having been taken away already. The thirst and hunger, and feeling your body slowly break down, over days, must have been excruciating, and yet she thought that was better than continuing to live her life in the constant dread and agony she was in.

There certainly are a huge number of suicidal (at one point) people who are in temporary crisis, or have conditions that can be managed and improved (e.g. bipolar people often report that medication does help), but this wasn't that. This was us telling the cancer patient that they gonna suffer and wither and eventually die, with no hope for things to change, but no you cannot just end it now because it would make us feel bad about ourselves somehow, fuck you for even suggesting that.

I have relatives who are doctors and perform legal euthanasia as part of their job. I've heard their stories and they are without exception a combination of very sad and heart warming. This is not exactly the most popular part of their job and it usually comes at the end of a very long process. To give you the context, euthanasia is legal but it comes with a lot of strings attached. Basically it's only legal if a very strict protocol is followed. It's at their discretion to say no and not a right but a privilege for the patient. There are always second opinions involved. This protocol exists to both protect the doctors involved and the patients involved. It's biased towards a "no, unless". Not following it can land you in court with murder charges or lose you your medical license.

I also have relatives and friends who have died after volunteering to die this way; and I've had the conversation with my parents about their wishes when this becomes a topic for them. They are both healthy and fine now but well aware that this can change. They regularly attend funerals of people they know where the person died after euthanasia. This stuff is completely normal for several decades now and there is no political support whatsoever for rolling back the rules around this. Even moderate christian parties have pretty much given up on this topic as lots of their own members would choose this option. Most people don't actually like the prospect of a long painful death.

Simply put, euthanasia is a popular choice among patients and less so for the doctors that help them who are biased towards addressing the suffering. People actually notarize their decisions to agree to euthanasia and people like my parents have a lot of anxiety about ending up in situation where they'd want this but it would no longer be possible due to their degraded mental state.

Euthanasia is actually quite common elsewhere but you might be thinking of it in terms of the traditional euphemisms that exist to protect the doctor and relatives involved. More traditional ways of euthanasia that are common in other countries involve sedation, stopping treatment, or simply "allowing someone to die", which is a euphemism for drugging them into a coma and then deliberately not feeding them. Also there's the ever popular morphine overdose and a few other options where somebody puts their finger on the scale. It all amounts to deliberate acts that result in the patient dying. As this is highly illegal nobody talks about this openly. For the same reason it's hard to get solid numbers on this. But considering that everyone dies and that several of the leading causes of death are quite nasty towards the end, you can make some deductions.

What happened in my country was recognizing that this kind of thing was quite common and exposed the doctors involved legally in a way that felt very wrong and unreasonable as basically all they were doing was respecting the patients wishes. So, we fixed it to ensure it gets done properly or not at all.