Live data from Hacker News

Assisted dying now accounts for one in 20 Canada deaths

bbc.com

841–850 of 870 posts

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

#841
post #598

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comparing the act of people transitioning or people being given financial assistance to the act of people being killed by the state is genuinely sickening. Total inversion of reality and conflation of reversible benefits with literal death. The government has no incentive to provide better housing or disability benefits to the working class when they can instead withhold those things and watch legions of poor & despe…

> The government has no incentive to provide better housing or disability benefits to the working class when they can instead withhold those things and watch legions of poor & desperate people die. What was Canada's excuse for poor healthcare before MAID existed then?

They didn't have a good one, and people were mad at them for it and demanded better results. MAID ameliorates both some of the direct anger ("We have improved healthcare by reducing suffering, look at how severe disability is declining"), and ameliorates some of the proximate causes (killing the sick, disabled, & homeless reduces load on the healthcare system & leaves more funds for other parts of it).

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

#842

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comparing the act of people transitioning or people being given financial assistance to the act of people being killed by the state is genuinely sickening. Total inversion of reality and conflation of reversible benefits with literal death. The government has no incentive to provide better housing or disability benefits to the working class when they can instead withhold those things and watch legions of poor & despe…

I can't negotiate with people who have such a deep distrust of Government that they belie that the Government will kill it's citizens if given incentives to do so, or from pure $-based miscare. This to me feels like a very dystopian way to have a relationship with it's government, and is a uniquely american perspective amongst the developed world. The government is a proxy for society leadership. I expect human socie…

I am not American, I am Australian and have never been to America, nor do I like the country; so much for "uniquely".

On what basis do you call yourself a communist when you explicitly advocate "trust" in a bourgeois government on the topic of state killings of homeless & disabled people? Shouldn't that be one of the last topics you would ever trust them on, given their clear class interest in killing members of the proletariat who are unable to continue labouring for profit? It seems fine to trust them not to lie about easily verifiable facts that don't threaten them, like weather warnings, but you should trust them about literally everything else before trusting them to "fairly" and "consensually" carry out killings of proletarians.

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

#843

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 This is kind of one of those urban myths btw. Like yes it has technically happened before but if you chase down the stories it's not at all common and it's more of a situation of someone having some family or relationships in a province away…

No. It was 35 years ago, but it's not an urban legend. Back in '88, when he was just mayor of Calgary, Ralph Klein had the city "solve" their homeless problem for the Olympics by buying one-way bus tickets to Vancouver. It is back in the news because it's started happening again in 2s and 3s. https://edmontonsun.com/2013/03/29/remembering-ralph https://globalnews.ca/news/2567494/reports-2-homeless-men-fr...

As I said,

> Like yes it has technically happened before

So the reason it's important underline the "urban myth" status here is that while you've correctly pointed to the few concrete examples where this has occurred, in general many people casually, incorrectly throw these statements around as if this is frequent and constantly happening and this is a really toxic and bad habit that our society has. At best it's lazy innuendo, but at worst intentional misinformation.

The reason that this urban myth of the homeless from somewhere else is so toxic is that it enables people to dismiss homeless people as not really part of their community and thus enables people to not care about poverty in their community or the impacts of poverty on their neighbours. Thus people can freely disengage themselves from the issues of poverty. It's not their neighbours it's some Other People.

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

#844

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…

There is a HUGE amount of things you can criticize about MAID specifically (and should) but honestly there are only a few reason why we shouldn't let the living dead go: - it's a slippery slope - they are young, they might revive (metaphorically speaking) - you believe god will punish them with eternal suffering or something, but then a lot of religions are fine with monks willfully passing one "through meditation" i…

The week thing is a myth. Either that part is blatantly false or someone violated MAID law. It can't happen that fast legally.

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

#845

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I disagree with some of them and find some more important than others, I think that the lists cover most of the arguments and positions mentioned by people here on HN

I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone use religious arguments on here and I’ve been here since the beginning. Most of those arguments are religious. I do not consider “Euthanasia is against the word and will of God” a sensible argument, though I realize, of course, that like half of humanity would disagree with me. But nobody who has any formal training and philosophy or debate would. If the opposite of a statement is…

While it's true that the first section in the arguments against euthanasia is "Against the will of God", the others aren't. Arguments such as

    * There's no way of properly regulating euthanasia
    * Euthanasia exposes vulnerable people to pressure to end their lives
    * Voluntary euthanasia is the start of a slippery slope that leads to involuntary euthanasia and the killing of people who are thought undesirable
    * Proper palliative care makes euthanasia unnecessary
are not primarily religious and you will find them repeated several times here in various wordings. The argument "Euthanasia weakens society's respect for the sanctity of life" may be based on religious belief but I don't think it's a uniquely religious standpoint that life has some form of sanctity

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

#846

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. It was 35 years ago, but it's not an urban legend. Back in '88, when he was just mayor of Calgary, Ralph Klein had the city "solve" their homeless problem for the Olympics by buying one-way bus tickets to Vancouver. It is back in the news because it's started happening again in 2s and 3s. https://edmontonsun.com/2013/03/29/remembering-ralph https://globalnews.ca/news/2567494/reports-2-homeless-men-fr...

As I said, > Like yes it has technically happened before So the reason it's important underline the "urban myth" status here is that while you've correctly pointed to the few concrete examples where this has occurred, in general many people casually, incorrectly throw these statements around as if this is frequent and constantly happening and this is a really toxic and bad habit that our society has. At best it's laz…

I don't quite understand your point. I contradicted you because I'm old, and I'm getting tired of people calling things that I vividly remember "urban legends". Lizard people in the sewers is an urban legend. That mean old drunk giving one-way tickets to Vancouver is history.

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

#847
post #546
post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s hard to ask this in a non-confrontational way, so I’ll just come out with it: How do you square that with the modern Catholic church’s systemic support of sexual abuse of minors? I mean this in the most inquisitive way possible. An organization’s what it does; the modern Catholic Church (leaders) have supported some horrible things. How do you separate out the good bits from the bad bits?

> How do you square that with the modern Catholic church’s systemic support of sexual abuse of minors? I'm the first to criticize Catholicism given a chance, but ... I'm not sure that's actually a valid claim to make outside of the particular case of ... I think it was New York in the 1990s, which is a statistical outlier (at least in English-speaking countries). There are a lot of Catholics and therefore it's unavoi…

That’s an odd comparison to make. The ‘school system’ isn’t a monolithic system that is actively refusing to acknowledge or take action against sexual predators. Is there an example of a school district that has been shielding predators on an ongoing basis and refusing to take remedial action?

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

#848
post #291

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…

I know it's morbid to discuss but the relief of financial burden on society is also significant. Not only do they die with dignity, but they are giving back to society.

IMO the financial aspect is the strongest argument against assisted suicide. When the government can save money by encouraging you to kill youself the incentives are just really bad.

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

#849

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…

i know someone who is taking care of a parent who is bedridden and needs daiper changes every few hours. Whats suprising to me is that these parents choose to punish their kids instead of end of ending their life. selfish fucks!!

Absolutely vile how you can frame wanting to continue living as "punishing their kids".

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

#850

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Then how did the man in guyzero's anecdote do it in less than a week?

Why do you assume he did? Specifically, why do you assume he started it in response to his wife's death rather than completed it in response to his wife's death?

> why do you assume he started it in response to his wife's death rather than completed it in response to his wife's death?

Are you saying if someone buys a rope and ties a noose, then lets it sit there for at least 90 days, then they can use it to hang themself after a bad day and that's not suicide in reaction to the bad day?

Post reply on HN