Euthanasia and the Right to Die.

[russycarps]

I do find it weird how mankind generally values the life over one living more than another. Like vegetarians that eat fish or vegans that kill insects.

[TheGayTent]

Vegetarians dont eat fish. If you eat fish you are not a vegetarian.

[worm]

Very true.

There are however, plenty of people that mistakenly claim to be vegetarian but eat fish. Or even stranger, chicken.

Nowt as queer as folk.

[Yoghurt on a Stick]

By rational, I mean lacking emotion. I think a lack of emotion is not indicative of a sound mind.

[Rufus Gwertigan]

My friend has MS and he's going to kill himself eventually. He's already signed up to that place in Sweden. I find the idea tormenting..... It's my life-long friend. He wants to die and has chosen to do so so rationally and fatalistically. He just doesn't seem of sound mind to me.

[worm]

Maybe, being a life long friend, he's deliberately not showing you his emotional side in order to spare you more mental anguish over his decision. Just a thought as it would be hard for anyone to make such a decision without having emotions. Maybe that day is so far off in the future that all the normal emotions you'd have around the decision have been put off by him / her and will actually come to the fore closer to the time. Just thinkin out loud this end really.

I know someone with MS. He didn't actually discover he had it until it was more advanced. Apparently this was because he was such a dope fiend that it's use masked all the normal early symptoms.

[worm]

That has surprised me, I would have had you as an accepting person, however it is the grieving process anyway.

[pink_triangle]

I think working regularly with palliative patients has really made me think more about euthenasia. The horific way that some people have to suffer as they approach death is completely inhumane in my opinion. However its not the same for everyone and improvements in palliative medicine mean many have a comfortable and dignified end to their life. Unfortunately in some cases improvements in medicine are a double edged sword with the treatment adding to length of life but having no impact in quality of life. I remember a nurse once saying to me that a chest infection had the potentially to be an ill persons best friend. Now regular courses of antibiotics can keep someone with no quality of life going for years. I think in some cases she has a point..

I think the key thing is treating everyone as an indivudual and take into consideration that there are many factors whether realted to religion, pain and future prognosis that effect what an indivual pericieves life can offer them. Euthenasia should be a last resort and I think there should be a system where an individual (when has capacity) can document under what circumstances they want to live and not. I would personally not want to lie in a nursing home bed, with pressure sores, unable to communicate or show signs of understanding but I respect that some people will.

I think families are always going to have a huge influence, I have seen several family memebers almost relieved to see a loved ones suffering end. However others (maybe I would be the same in the situation) struggle to accept the dieing process and try to look to any method to extend the life of their loved ones. Unfortunately consultants can at times be guilty of caving under pressure from familes and agreeing to put the patient through procedures I would almost consider inhumane. I agree the vulnerable must be protected from families looking for finanicial gain but the vulnerable also need to be protected from families who make decisions about a patients treatmenet that they would never have mad for themselves. Its such a difficutl balancing act.

[Rufus Gwertigan]

I think working regularly with palliative patients has really made me think more about euthenasia. The horific way that some people have to suffer as they approach death is completely inhumane in my opinion. However its not the same for everyone and improvements in palliative medicine mean many have a comfortable and dignified end to their life. Unfortunately in some cases improvements in medicine are a double edged sword with the treatment adding to length of life but having no impact in quality of life. I remember a nurse once saying to me that a chest infection had the potentially to be an ill persons best friend. Now regular courses of antibiotics can keep someone with no quality of life going for years. I think in some cases she has a point..

I think the key thing is treating everyone as an indivudual and take into consideration that there are many factors whether realted to religion, pain and future prognosis that effect what an indivual pericieves life can offer them. Euthenasia should be a last resort and I think there should be a system where an individual (when has capacity) can document under what circumstances they want to live and not. I would personally not want to lie in a nursing home bed, with pressure sores, unable to communicate or show signs of understanding but I respect that some people will.

I think families are always going to have a huge influence, I have seen several family memebers almost relieved to see a loved ones suffering end. However others (maybe I would be the same in the situation) struggle to accept the dieing process and try to look to any method to extend the life of their loved ones. Unfortunately consultants can at times be guilty of caving under pressure from familes and agreeing to put the patient through procedures I would almost consider inhumane. I agree the vulnerable must be protected from families looking for finanicial gain but the vulnerable also need to be protected from families who make decisions about a patients treatmenet that they would never have mad for themselves. Its such a difficutl balancing act.

[thesecretingredientiscrime]

By rational, I mean lacking emotion. I think a lack of emotion is not indicative of a sound mind.

[worm]

Really? Although emotion can be a great leveller, it's also a great distorter at the same time.

[feral chile]

I don't mean heightened emotion. I just mean emotion. We all function on emotion. Happiness, motivation, inspiration, desire, calm etc. These are all emotions and intelligence requires them to work. But when devoid of emotion, you make choices without considering the emotional effects. For example, you'd put your hand in fire because you wouldn't consider the painful outcome. That kinda thing. 'Patiency', as it's known in psychology. I studied suicide for my degree and patiency is an essential stage of suicide as an escape from the self. It's not really rational, it's just a removal of one's self as a way of coping with something harrowing. It's awful to see in my friend. I want to see him fight for his self, not give in so easily.

[feral chile]

When I trained the hospital had a ward purely for patients with Huntingtons Chorea. Its a hereditary degenerative disease with a life expectancy of 20 years from onset. The ward was one of the saddest places I have ever worked. At the time there was no test and when patients family visited the looks on the faces of patients kids was heartbreaking (its a 50% chance of the gene been passed). At the time over 30% of sufferers would attempt suicide only to then be sectioned and sent to the ward. Seriously sectioning someone because they did not want to suffer. As the disease progresses dementia sets in and motor control is lost. In the final stages the biggest cause of death is pneumonia but the doctors would still manically prescribe as many drugs as possible to keep the poor buggers going.

After my placement I was in a seminar and I raised the issue of what the hell were we doing and who were we doing it for. Even with many of the dementia patients it seemed sometimes we were prolonging things just to make ourselves feel better. I raised the issue of assisted suicide and I suffered the wrath of everyone in the room. (This is in the 80's).

Just before I gave up nursing I used to care for a bloke in the final stages of MS. He lived on his own in a farm cottage and was quite bitter and twisted. He was paralysed from the neck down and all in all lived a shit life. One night the topic of suicide came up and he told of his plan. He had a number of carers that came in during the day and he was going to ask each one for his medication claiming the previous person had forgotten. Over the day he hoped to take enough to affect his breathing when he went to sleep. It would have meant that it was me that would give him his final dose as I was the one putting him to bed. Even though I could sympathise I did call him a selfish c**t as he would be ruining everyones life. The next day I set up a handover book and drug record.

[worm]

That's why, even in cases such as your friend's, they would say that he was suffering from depression and therefore not capable of making a rational decision. It's a Catch 22 situation.

Edited August 18, 2012 by worm

[worm]

I don't know what I think. Mostly I'm against allowing suicide, because there's a possibility that the situation causing the despair might change. But since it's not me feeling the pain, I don't feel qualified to judge.

Edited August 18, 2012 by worm

[feral chile]

Commiting suicide to escape pain is not a rational choice. That's for certain. It's driven by a motivation to cease the pain, which will come about eventually. I strongly believe that these people must be stopped because things will get better once the process of grief has subsided. I know where I stand on this. Usually, people in this stage of psychological torment are just crying for help. And it's usually young men.

But depression is the removal of emotions. It's indifference. It's apathy. It's nothingness. People commiting suicide in this state are not in pain. Don't confuse being in pain with being depressed. And then, like I say, there's rational suicide when someone just thinks that they'd be better off dead.

Edited August 18, 2012 by feral chile

[worm]

But how can someone prove their decision is ra\tional, and not either driven by pain or depression? Since one will involve emotional turmoil and the other the removal of emotion?

Edited August 18, 2012 by worm

[worm]

if you have a condition that is not going to get any better, and/or any pain is there for good, I'd say suicide is a totally rational option

[feral chile]

To make their family better off. To end the boredom of life. To end a chronic physical and real condition that is inescapable. To end a psychological torment that will not cease - this is actually very common and can be seen in the film Shutter Island, when it's revealed that the protagonist actually wants his asylum keepers to give him a labotomy as it's the only way to escape the torment of having killed his family. But if he let them know his intention, then he wouldn't be classified insane so wouldn't be given one. So the whole film he plays along. It's a brilliant example of rational suicide, albeit symbolised by a labotomy.

There's the pain of a psychological process feral and then there's the pain of life. The former is just part of a process.

Edited August 18, 2012 by feral chile

[feral chile]

Yeah, I'd agree. So the issue is in assessing whether things can get better.

Back to the example of my friend, he's given up hope. But things can get better. He still has a future, just a different one. I'd argue that he's in shock or perhaps even denial. He's just part of a process at the moment.

It's very difficult to assess, which is probably why the law just bans it outright.

[worm]

That guy in Shutter Island could have been helped by counselling, or time. When you've done something that you can't accept psychologically, you can either have someone talk you through it, so that you can develop a new perspective. He could have started to see his guilt as penance for his crime, and learnt to accept it. Or, one thing time does, it allows us to look backwards objectively on our former selves. It's as if we're looking at another person. Which, in one way, we are.

[worm]

How long has he known about it?

[eFestivals]

It's not really a religious thing is it? It's just a moral stand point and should allow you someone to request to die?

the whole basis of that "moral standpoint" is a religious one.

The rational decisions are the ones we apply to dogs.

They might even just disagree as they don't believe the appropriate safe guards would be in place.

That's certainly an issue in the wider sense.

But with Tony that issue disappears, and yet it's very likely that those who say it shouldn't happen because of the difficulties over safe-guards would also say that Tony shouldn't be allowed to be helped to die - which then exposes their view as not being about the safeguards.

The law has proved itself an arse over this. While I get that the way of the law has the court case decision given scope over all of the society, the law should at least allow itself to make decisions for individual clear-cut cases such as this one.

At the end of the day we accept the self is sovereign. When someone like Tony is unable to enact his self-sovereignty for himself because of disabilities, the law should assist him in taking his sovereignty, not deny it to him.

A person who is not disabled is allowed in law to end their life. Tony is ultimately being discriminated against on the basis of his disability; we have rafts of other laws that put obligations on the able to enable the disabled - why not here too?

I just can't see how you protect against it not being their true wish to die.

This whole court case has shown that it's easily possible to have that protection for *some* people who might wish to die. No one is trying to claim that Tony needs protecting from others who wish him to die.

Not all cases would be as clear-cut as this one so they perhaps shouldn't be allowed, but when it is as clear as in this case then that ceases to be a relevant argument.

[eFestivals]

That's why, even in cases such as your friend's, they would say that he was suffering from depression and therefore not capable of making a rational decision. It's a Catch 22 situation.

... as well as being further proof of the lack of science in psychology.

If 'will' is accepted as a legitimate driver for other actions then a will to die for perfectly rational reasons should be accepted no less.

Instead, psychology says it's not possible to make a rational decision to die, and yet it has no solid basis for such an argument, only guesswork.

Just because you might not wish to ever end your own life yourself does not mean that you have a right to say that others cannot if they wish; your basis for evaluations such as these is not the only basis there is.

[worm]

At the end of the day we accept the self is sovereign.

Edited August 18, 2012 by worm