Assisted suicide isn't a new freedom - we had it in the past, it went out of favor, and now it's favorable again. Ancient Greece had radical and crazy practices (infanticide, certain sexual pairings) that are revolting "right now". Having to come to terms with those particular practices isn't something that I look forward to doing in the future.
Your stepfather apparently violated your mother's directive based on the desperate belief that his spouse could recover, and she did not. This is absolutely tragic.
Then your stepfather presumably refused kill his spouse (due to hope, moral beliefs, cowardice, etc.) by unplugging her from standard, non-extraordinary life-support. She eventually died a painless death.
For which of these does he deserve to suffer for, more than he has already?
A DNR is not an order to cease basic life-support post-resuscitation. For example, I don't want extraordinary measures, but I also absolutely do not want anyone to euthanize me if I somehow end up semi-vegetative.
Because I would be participating in killing a living human. It's our duty to avoid intentionally doing that, even if it really hurts.
Technically it's the same reason that I don't want someone to euthanize me right now. The value of my life does not derive from feeling happy or otherwise using my senses. Nothing important changes when I have brain damage (or cancer, or depression). All I have to do is be human, and my life has a certain type of value that makes it wrong for anyone to intentionally end it.
If I try to build in loopholes, or start messing with semantics, or if I compromise because something is going to hurt, I end up being unable to act from reasoned moral principles, which is something else I value.
(I have a similar curiosity, if you'd oblige, about what makes euthanasia any different from simple suicide - I actually asked that earlier, but all I got was downvotes.)
Thanks for that explanation. I can't speak for the OP (or anyone else), but my take on the difference between them is that euthanasia is suicide, but only once all other options have been exhausted.
I don't see "simple suicide" (i.e. not in the face of terminal disease) as immoral or wrong. The tragedy though, is how often it happens because of poor social support systems, such as lack of access to mental health support systems or, in some parts of the world, bad debts to loan sharks.
These are often relatively spur of the moment, avoidable situations and, IMO, more of an indictment of society than a moral failing of the person. Euthanasia is different in that it is usually a well-considered decision, once there is little hope of any change for the better. I don't see any value in forcing people to live through misery without anyone having a clue on how to improve their life.
(I don't expect you to necessarily agree with this point of view, but I hope it helps understand another perspective.)
Thanks - yeah, I agree, we need better palliative care, better social support in general. I understand your perspective, but I do have trouble following it through - I need to be able to say "at this point, a life loses that value, and it becomes permissible to kill". I don't see that happening with consent, because dueling to the death is rightly illegal. I also don't see how we can get somewhere by counting up something (like suffering, failure to contribute back to society, whatever) that then makes it permissible to kill a person. And if I try to combine both, I end up with rules that are still problematic, but make it easier to kill the elderly, the dying, and other vulnerable people, which is a bad sign.
For what its worth, I think we're approaching this question from opposite ends of the spectrum. Rather than asking when it is permissible to kill, I look at it as "when is overriding free will (on victimless actions) for societal good permissible"? Forcing terminally ill patients to live through the misery doesn't meet my bar on that front.
I realise that you're drawing a distinction between taking your life and having someone else take it for you, but to me, in this case the difference is largely academic since the agency remains with the patient at all times.
The objections to dueling were, as I understand, more around the social pressures which required one to participate making the idea of consent much more fuzzy.
Interestingly, family pressure to euthanize is a major practical concern for countries with euthanasia.
The point is actually that there is no distinction between taking your life own or someone else's. If consent is our metric, dueling is permissible (with societal pressure safeguards, if you'd like). Consent is irrelevant, the issue is that intentional killing should be a relic of a more barbaric past. The cure (resolving psychological distress over having a painful death by being willingly poisoned, often in front of your family) is worse than the disease.
Ultimately, you're saying that it's permissible to kill when a terminally ill patient would "live through misery", where someone who is not the patient defines what constitutes "misery". Am I understanding that correctly? On what grounds would that not apply to, for example, a severely depressed homeless person suffering from substance abuse, who a doctor might judge has much more suffering in store for them than a cancer patient with access to painkillers?
> "... family pressure to euthanize is a major practical concern..."
Agreed, and this is one of my major reservations about euthanasia. I still think it is overall for the best, but this aspect absolutely needs monitoring. I can only hope that better social services and support help reduce the financial burden on families (which is often one of the biggest reasons for pressure). The emotional aspect, of course, is another story.
> "The point is actually that there is no distinction between taking your life own or someone else's."
Here I have to disagree. Only one of these is an action on one's own body (which one should have relative autonomy). I think consent is absolutely key -- personally, I'm not opposed to the idea of legalizing dueling, as long as we have adequate societal safeguards against it. We don't outright ban other dangerous things that could end up killing people (tobacco, alcohol, free climbing...)
> "The cure ... is worse than the disease."
This is not a determination I am comfortable making for anyone else. Unless there is significant societal/family pressure which means that people are not making this choice themselves, I think they should have that right. If there is extensive pressure, there should be safeguards against that, as opposed to banning the practice?
I see a similar kind of argument in the anti-abortion debate -- there are folks who wouldn't opt for it themselves, but want others to have that right, while others feel that it should be banned for everyone because it is overall a societal ill.
I realise that this is a different question, but is this the kind of angle you are coming from?
> ... not the patient defines what constitutes "misery".
In the long run, it should absolutely be the patient who determines what constitutes misery and makes the choice. Unfortunately, there is entirely too much risk of it being used as a way for society to ignore people we should be helping ("if we wait long enough, maybe they'll just go away") for it to be practical to use it that way yet.
Terminally ill patients are a relatively well-defined set where there is less risk of society starting to ignore the problem (I don't see interest in cancer research drying up just because of this option), so it seems like a reasonable place to start?
My answer actually didn't mention anything about watching over you to ensure that you don't inject lethal poison. I was talking about why I personally would not kill myself or ask anyone else to.
But yes, if I think it's wrong to intentionally kill a human, it follows that I neither want my government supporting it, nor for others to mistakenly think it's fine. Morality isn't something to "keep to yourself".
Presumably you think it's fine to intentionally kill, in certain special cases? Could you do the opposite of keeping your morality to yourself, and tell me what your exceptions are? (I'm wondering, for example, if it is just consent? If so, can someone buy that consent?)
Suffocating while "semi-vegetative" is assumed to be painless, much like we assume euthanasia to be painless.
In any case, I'm sorry about your mother. There's not much I can say about your stepfather, except that you probably shouldn't hate him for trying to hold on to someone he loved.
Some of my family members have died to suicide. One violently after many people could not restrain them. One very much planned, very much like Pieter. Both found reasons to end their suffering, to take authoritative control over their own death. The suffering doesn't go away, it just takes another form in other people. It seems I'm the authoritarian lunatic, the psychopath, because I cannot see what separates euthanasia from every other tragic suicide.
* Is it because someone else performs the injection? Then what about suicide by cop, and cases where the patient injects herself?
* Is it because their family members join them in that initial feeling of peace following their decision (which suicide prevention pamphlets warn to watch for)?
* Is it because a cancer patient really is better off dead? Then so are many other seemingly-hopeless people, who are depressed, abandoned, and addicted. Is it because doctors agree that they are better off dead?
Nobody is pro-suffering, but sometimes we must suffer for the things that make us human. When we hear about deaths, aren't the most painful ones those where a person has said "this human life is not worth living"? No inanimate disease can say something so painful, can affirm it so permanently through willful action.
> (...) what separates euthanasia from every other tragic suicide
I see two large differences:
1. A requirement for euthanasia is usually that the patient keeps wanting it for a reasonably long period of time: it should never be a spur of the moment thing.
2. Another requirement usually is that the patient is mentally competent.
> When we hear about deaths, aren't the most painful ones those where a person has said "this human life is not worth living"?
If euthanasia is forbidden, people _will still be saying that in similar situations_, just they won't be able to do anything about it.
We usually don't want them to do anything about it - this is why we have suicide prevention. The difference with euthanasia is that you personally agree that certain lives really are "not worth living", and for practical purposes you defer that judgement, via government, to a set of doctors. This shifts the requirement away from informed consent to a judgement external to the person, from "do they really want to" to "do I really want them to".
The differences you mention (duration of ideation/plan, competence) are ultimately about determining if the person "really wants to". But this applies equally to "normal" suicide: it places the many rationally planned suicides into the same class as euthanasia (it's their life, they're freeing themselves, keep your morality to yourself).
Furthermore, according to the above link, of the 1 million who create a plan, only half report going through with it - how many with a "planned death" would not actually have gone through with it and instead endured, had they been lucid?
Should we be trying to prevent "(rationally) planned death", or shouldn't we?
What are the downvotes for? The questions aren't rhetorical, if that's the issue - I really do want to know what distinction people see between this and suicide, which periodically comes up as a topic here, and people are so much against.
No, that's not euthanasia. On that account, sedation without death would count. Euthanasia is when you ask (or in some cases, force, against their conscience) someone to kill you. Compare with "suicide by cop".
We are going to die. Some of us are going to die on the street after decades of physical pain, alienation, emotional abandonment, mental illness, and alcoholism/drug abuse. Many of these have less true hope for a good life than a cancer patient like Pieter, but it would be insane if there were dozens of comments lamenting the lack of voluntary suicide services in homeless shelters (though maybe we're a bit sensitive about that sort of thing not working out too well the last time we tried it).
Humans have something that puts us above being put down like an animal. And we have to suffer for it - like we do for many of the other things that make us human.
This is not accurate. Euthanasia in Belgium (as in all countries where it's a legal act) has nothing to do with suicide and everything to do with removing pain and criminality from what is a fairly widespread act.
* Doctors who wish to help their suffering patients can do so without fear of criminal prosecution.
* Terminal patients can control their own deaths without family demanding expensive, painful treatments that have little or no chance of success.
* Such patients are protected from punishments such as loss of insurance.
* Family and friends can be shielded from extended stress and trauma.
Given that cancer is a majority cause of death in the West, and tends to be incurable in most cases, and tends to lead to massive suffering, euthanasia is IMO one of the most fundamental human rights.
You are of course free to reject such a course based on your own beliefs. However to argue that suffering and pain are the cost of being human is... invalid.
I think we at least agree on suicide. Suicide is a desperate act: we must feel deep sympathy for its victims and contempt for its promotion. But what you plan to undertake - euthanasia - is not suicide, but just something that reduces pain, stress, and financial loss.
Those are the goals, but to attain them you plan to ask someone to sedate you and then kill you by stopping your heart. The evil of suicide isn't that it's a violent or unexpected death, but that it is a planned death, the victim trading her life for benefits like reduced suffering (or in even sadder cases, life insurance payoffs, a ufo trip, honor for the emperor, whatever). The person's remaining life seems worthless, so they plan, make their decision, feel at peace and begin to put their affairs in order - I read this in a "suicide prevention" pamphlet. Please tell me what the difference is to you, since I no longer have the opportunity to ask someone in that position. I see the following answers:
* It is not suicide because I really am better off dead.
* It is not suicide because numerous doctors judge that I really am better off dead.
* It is not suicide because cancer is worse than depression and an injection is better than a rope.
* It is not suicide because my loved ones also feel at peace with my decision.
Can you tell me plainly how what you plan is different from suicide?
And sure, I agree that humans are rational animals, not suffering animals. But the world is not perfect, so there are still some times where we must endure even intense suffering to maintain our human dignity. You are fortunate enough to have access to sedation until natural death, why not take advantage of that instead?
To disagree is to try to invalidate contrasting beliefs. They aren't saying "people who commit suicide are revolting", nor "I wish we never had to make tough choices that tested our moral constitution" (like you suggest). They're saying "saccharine suicide-endorsement is revolting".
There's no consensus arising from softening and "adjusting" each other's views. We're better off describing things clearly.
What is euthanasia, except killing yourself because you have no hope for your remaining life, like every other suicide? Is it justified because you had your family and your doctor agree with you?
I don't think they're talking about having your kids 3d print a clone of you using your dna, but about having medical info available in case your cancer is hereditary. You seem to be into giving your body to science, so it's not a crazy suggestion.
For those wondering what the typical regulations consist of, I found the following article doing a quick google search:
>> In all jurisdictions, the request for euthanasia or pas has to be voluntary, well-considered, informed, and persistent over time. The requesting person must provide explicit written consent and must be competent at the time the request is made. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3070710/
This is fairly comprehensive, which is reassuring. However, the article goes on to say:
>> Despite those safeguards, more than 500 people in the Netherlands are euthanized involuntarily every year. In 2005, a total of 2410 deaths by euthanasia or pas [physician assisted suicide] were reported, representing 1.7% of all deaths in the Netherlands. More than 560 people (0.4% of all deaths) were administered lethal substances without having given explicit consent. For every 5 people euthanized, 1 is euthanized without having given explicit consent.
Just because regulations are strict, does not mean that they are strictly followed, or enforced.
It would be relevant to know, of the 'involuntary' numbers, how many of those were statutory involuntary and for what reasons.
My hope is that in the majority of those cases the paperwork either just didn't get finished in time, or that the subject in some way did actually want this but started the process too late to be clearly of their own decision.
"When life was ended without the explicit request of the patient, there had been discussion about the act or a previous wish of the patient for the act in 60.0% of patients, as compared with 26.5% in 2001. In 2005, the ending of life was not discussed with patients because they were unconscious (10.4%) or incompetent owing to young age (14.4%) or because of other factors (15.3%). Of all cases of the ending of life in 2005 without an explicit request by the patient, 80.9% had been discussed with relatives. In 65.3% of cases, the physician had discussed the decision with one or more colleagues"
So, part of this is due to the fact that the law states that doctors must check that the patient consents _now_ with the choice. A written statement that, for example, one doesn't want to live on with Alzheimer's when one has reached a well-described state is not sufficient.
So you're essentially hoping that these people, who did not give explicit consent, actually (and perhaps secretly) did want to be killed?
My hope is that where paperwork did go through, no person was uncertain or regretted their life-altering decision (which, for example, increases suicide risk in one's family twofold). But I doubt that either of our hopes lives up to reality.
It seems against protocol to argue with a dying man, but refraining also seems disrespectful to Pieter. I always open the comment section hoping that someone will disagree with the article in a thoughtful way; perhaps it's my turn, since I disagree so intensely. Presumably others would like to at least hear the counterpoints.
Euthanasia is bad from a practical standpoint, and an evil, because:
1. Objectively speaking, euthanasia is suicide, and the killing of an innocent person. If Schwartz killing himself (out of despair for his future, fear of suffering in prison, or otherwise) was a tragedy, why is Pieter's upcoming suicide not a tragedy? Is it because his certain death is closer? (This view promotes the idea that a "disabled" life, where one is "unhappy", or must be cared for at great expense, or is suffering, or (extrapolating) is cryogenically frozen, is not valuable in and of itself; but it is.)
2. Suicide increases the risk that friends and family will commit suicide. A search will yield numerous studies: "2.1-fold increased risk of committing suicide"[1], etc. If you kill yourself, you are indirectly killing the people closest to you.
3. If you are against the death penalty because we might execute an innocent person, you should be against Euthanasia because we might kill a non-consenting person. This is already the case:
> "these laws and safeguards are regularly ignored and transgressed in all the jurisdictions ... about 900 people annually are administered lethal substances without having given explicit consent, and in one jurisdiction, almost 50% of cases of euthanasia are not reported ... some jurisdictions now extend the practice to newborns, children, and people with dementia. A terminal illness is no longer a prerequisite." [2]
Please, when you hear someone speak in flowery language about the dignity of choosing death, take a moment to evaluate what they are actually suggesting, and to research why people are opposed. Many seem to think that the only people against euthanasia are the religious whose reasoning is roughly "well, my religion randomly chose to mark this as evil, therefore it is", which is just not the case.
(...finally, this is likely a very poor protocol for dealing with death - people deal in different ways, and not all people will look back fondly on having to smile all the time, or on expressing "false" hope and being told that, actually, objectively speaking, they should not have hope. Also, a totally minor point, but we are not like Lego houses - we do not need to be utterly destroyed for others to live.)
So this is from a personal point of view, my dad choose euthanasia.
1. Yeah it's suicide. When you live in constant pain, lie in bed, get meds that make you hallunicate and have no realistic hope for improvement that seems like a reasonable option.
2. Suicide usually has some form of emotional component in it that is shared in the environment. That's why we call it euthanasia, it's not really comparable other then the very general "choose to end own life"
3. Sure mistakes will be made. One such controversy in the Netherlands was euthanasia on baby's with an open back (not sure about the translation). If they had a lot of pain or not. In general there are some pretty rigorous procedures in place to ensure we learn from mistakes, and making sure it are honest mistakes.
So point of this reply, it's a two way street. If you have seen the suffering in the end stages of life euthanasia is not a bad thing. Are there drawbacks sure, we're talking about ending a life, no matter what you do there's a stigma involved and because actual human beings are involved it will not always go the way it should.
At the end of the day, the ideal of someone being able to tell the world enough is enough and empowering them to execute that decision, on certain criteria, is a better world then letting someone die in their own feces hallucinating that worms are digging into their feet due to meds and not being able to move due to advanced parkinson. And yes that's the way my dad was in the end before the docter decided to cooperate with his euthanasia.
Thanks for your response. If I'm reading you right, you seem to be saying for (1) "suicide is better than living like that" - well... yeah, but isn't that always the motive, what's the difference now? And for (2) "sometimes, mistakes are made and people die who shouldn't have" - is that what you also think when it comes to, say, the death penalty?
Regarding (1), you mentioned in another response the value for human dignity as a reason against euthanasia. But medicine has advanced to the point where we're able to keep a human body alive regardless of whether or not the human person has any sense of dignity. The grandparent comment is an example of such a scenario.
>"suicide is better than living like that" - well... yeah, but isn't that always the motive, what's the difference now?
The difference is that the person and their medical personnel are in agreement that realistically: there is not a reasonable hope that their medical condition(s) may be cured or alleviated, so the overwhelming likelihood is that they are going to die from their medical condition(s), and their experience leading up to their death is going to be agonizing and severely depriving of dignity.
With suicide, a person is choosing to take their own life even though they don't have a medical consensus with a reasonable expectation that they are going to die of any condition (besides old age--which I don't believe is commonly a major factor in suicides and would probably not be acceptable).
> well... yeah, but isn't that always the motive, what's the difference now?
See the reply of djokkataja, it covers it pretty well.
> And for (2) "sometimes, mistakes are made and people die who shouldn't have" - is that what you also think when it comes to, say, the death penalty?
There is a world of difference. Now let me say that we in the Netherlands have no death penalty, but let's take the model in America vs the process of euthanasie in the netherlands.
Deathpenalty -> Subject is not willing, evaluation is done by non trained experts (jury) on issues of law (ie guilty)
Euthanasie -> Subject is willing, evaluation is done by trained experts (at least 2 GP's) on medical issues.
In the deathpenalty scenario the worst you can do is kill someone innocent. In the euthanasie scenario the worst you can do is kill someone with a huge medical condition that for all appearances it seems to be terminal with an unbearable standard of living (ie pain).
Comparing the two is cheap rhetoric as far as I'm concerned.
1. This is a tragedy of a death of a human being and the loss for a family of a beloved one - all caused by a disease, not by a "suicide".
2. Those statistics are for overall suicides, not medical assisted ones. Even if they were for medical assisted "suicides" you would need to control for other factors.
3. Medical-assisted "suicide" is voluntary, not imposed by a third party. Its people like you, with your extremist ideas, that are imposing something by denying others the right to choose.
4. This is really not the time nor the place to discuss these ideas. Have some respect please.
The article brought up Euthanasia in big letters and promoted it, and many comments here talk about it favorably; it's on-topic. I disagree, and gave reasons. Disagreement is not off-topic, and it's not disrespectful. If I was dying, or knew someone who was (or in this case, heard about someone who was) I wouldn't want people softening up just to please me.
It isn't extremist to say that it's always wrong to kill an innocent person even if that person asks to be killed. When I was a kid watching silly movies, I knew that you could shoot a dying dog, but that it wasn't right to shoot a dying man. This was because humans had a certain dignity that put them above animals, even if they had to suffer for it.
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2160/did-eskimos-pu...
Assisted suicide isn't a new freedom - we had it in the past, it went out of favor, and now it's favorable again. Ancient Greece had radical and crazy practices (infanticide, certain sexual pairings) that are revolting "right now". Having to come to terms with those particular practices isn't something that I look forward to doing in the future.