Euthanasia/Assisted Suicide

[Riverwind]

Sigmund Freud chose excruciating lucidity over a painless haze. Such questions are not so straightforward as you would imagine.

The key word, of course, is "chose" - something that everyone should be allowed to do whether they want "excruciating lucidity", a "painless haze" or a quick death. Edited August 25, 2009 by Riverwind

[Remiel]

The key word, of course, is "chose" - something that everyone should be allowed to do whether they want "excruciating lucidity", a "painless haze" or a quick death.

You make it sound as if it is no different than whether I choose to eat burnt toast, burnt toast with jam, or no toast at all. Choices are not equivalent to one another. Choice is not the be all and end all of everything.

[Riverwind]

You make it sound as if it is no different than whether I choose to eat burnt toast, burnt toast with jam, or no toast at all. Choices are not equivalent to one another. Choice is not the be all and end all of everything.

When it comes to fundemental matters such as life or death having individual choices is even more important. Edited August 25, 2009 by Riverwind

[Remiel]

When it comes to fundemental matters such as life or death having individual choices is even more important.

That is simplistic. Would you consider being given the choice of being immolated or submerged in acid an important choice because it is a matter of death?

[Malaclypse the Younger]

Yet somehow this "very good reason" has nothing to do with whether the horse wants to be shot.

Put yourself in the horse's position. Do you think the horse wants to live with a broken leg that will never heal? The truth is, we don't know what horses think, but it's not hard to tell when a horse is not happy. I've seen a horse cry because he was stuck in a tiny pen with crowds of people poking and staring at him all day for several days. It's not hard to imagine how that horse would feel about not being able to get up and run around.

It's more humane to kill the horse and end its suffering than to allow it to continue to live a painful, degrading life.

[Malaclypse the Younger]

Sigmund Freud chose excruciating lucidity over a painless haze. Such questions are not so straightforward as you would imagine.

That was his choice. I think that most people, given the choice, would rather die than live with pain that only gets worse with every passing day which cannot be healed.

[Malaclypse the Younger]

You make it sound as if it is no different than whether I choose to eat burnt toast, burnt toast with jam, or no toast at all. Choices are not equivalent to one another. Choice is not the be all and end all of everything.

In the end, it is not any different than choosing to eat burnt toast or no toast. In the grand scope of the universe, people are not that important.

[Malaclypse the Younger]

That is simplistic. Would you consider being given the choice of being immolated or submerged in acid an important choice because it is a matter of death?

Yes, your argument is simplistic, not to mention irrelevant. Given those choices, it doesn't matter which one you choose, because you die painfully in both cases.

If you want to make a relevant argument, you should be asking if one would rather die slowly and painfully, or quickly and painlessly. In both cases, you still die, but one choice involves less suffering than the other.

Edited August 25, 2009 by Malaclypse the Younger

[daniel]

This may surprise some people here but "I don't know".

Not even for immigrants? If immigrants don't commit suicide, they'll overpopulate the world!!

[Riverwind]

That is simplistic. Would you consider being given the choice of being immolated or submerged in acid an important choice because it is a matter of death?

You have artificially reduced the choices available by not including living as option. You also forget that people always have the option of killing themselves, the trouble is they need to do it a brutal fashion, alone and will often leave a mess that cna be traumatic for others to clean up. Assisted suicide allows people to leave life gracefully in the presence of their loved ones. I see that as a much more positive affirmation of life than forcing people linger on for years.

[Remiel]

Put yourself in the horse's position. Do you think the horse wants to live with a broken leg that will never heal? The truth is, we don't know what horses think, but it's not hard to tell when a horse is not happy. I've seen a horse cry because he was stuck in a tiny pen with crowds of people poking and staring at him all day for several days. It's not hard to imagine how that horse would feel about not being able to get up and run around.

It's more humane to kill the horse and end its suffering than to allow it to continue to live a painful, degrading life.

You are a fool if you think that an animals will to live is so weak as yours. Have you never heard that some animals, when stuck in a legtrap, will CHEW THEIR OWN LEGS OFF in order to escape? And you think a horse with a broken leg in the care of people, not out in the damn wild on its own, has it rough?

[Remiel]

In the end, it is not any different than choosing to eat burnt toast or no toast. In the grand scope of the universe, people are not that important.

"People are not that important" is a self defeating argument in any moral debate.

[Remiel]

Assisted suicide allows people to leave life gracefully in the presence of their loved ones.

It may also allow the clever to get away with murder. And, Riverwind, you must have a really messed up view of the world if you think watching a family member kill themselves is not traumatic. There will never be anything graceful about it.

[Riverwind]

It may also allow the clever to get away with murder. And, Riverwind, you must have a really messed up view of the world if you think watching a family member kill themselves is not traumatic. There will never be anything graceful about it.

And how would that trauma compare to the physical and emotional trauma of being a caregiver for a vegetable that could live for years? As for getting away with murder I already said it would only apply to people who are capable of making the final choice to take the drug themselves.

Frankly, the people with the messed up view of the world are the people who think they can pontificate about abstract principles while they deny people the option of making their own choices. There is really no difference between your argument and the argument that a woman does not need access to assisted abortion because she can always give the child up for adoption.

Edited August 25, 2009 by Riverwind

[Remiel]

You have artificially reduced the choices available by not including living as option.

In the end, living is never an option. Everything dies.

[Riverwind]

In the end, living is never an option. Everything dies.

So why shouldn't people be entitled to choose the manner of their death? Edited August 25, 2009 by Riverwind

[lictor616]

In the end, living is never an option. Everything dies.

Tempus Edax Rerum

"le temps détruit tout"

Edited August 25, 2009 by lictor616

[Remiel]

So why shouldn't people be entitled to choose the manner of their death?

Because no one exists in a vaccuum.

[Riverwind]

Because no one exists in a vaccuum.

That is not an argument. All restrictions on freedom must be justified. The only justification you have offered for restricting someone's right to control their own demise is a belief that some people might change their mind later and you think that keeping 9 people alive who don't want to live is worth it to save 1 person who might have died but later changed their mind.

That is not a sufficient justification and contradicts your own position on abortion - i.e. according to your logic it is better to force 9 women to carry a child they don't want because 1 woman might change her mind later.

[lictor616]

That is not an argument. All restrictions on freedom must be justified. The only justification you have offered for restricting someone's right to control their own demise is a belief that some people might change their mind later and you think that keeping 9 people alive who don't want to live is worth it to save 1 person who might have died but later changed their mind.

That is not a sufficient justification and contradicts your own position on abortion - i.e. according to your logic it is better to force 9 women to carry a child they don't want because 1 woman might change her mind later.

well said.

[Remiel]

What I found was a statistic that suggested that 90% of people who would have chosen assisted suicide were later glad to be alive. That changed my view considerably.

That is not an argument. All restrictions on freedom must be justified. The only justification you have offered for restricting someone's right to control their own demise is a belief that some people might change their mind later and you think that keeping 9 people alive who don't want to live is worth it to save 1 person who might have died but later changed their mind.

That is not a sufficient justification and contradicts your own position on abortion - i.e. according to your logic it is better to force 9 women to carry a child they don't want because 1 woman might change her mind later.

Riverwind, perhaps you should put a little more effort into reading what I actually wrote; because, you know, what I said and what you attributed to me are practically opposite statements.

[Riverwind]

Riverwind, perhaps you should put a little more effort into reading what I actually wrote; because, you know, what I said and what you attributed to me are practically opposite statements.

Sorry, I misread this sentence:

Now, unless one could find hard evidence that something to that effect may not be the case, I remain staunchly opposed to assisted suicide, on the grounds that the lives of nine people are more important than ending the suffering of one, given natural conditions, in my opinion.

I got confused because the usual argument for 'proof beyond reasonable doubt' as a criteria is letting 9 guilty people go is worth it if 1 innocent person is not wrongly convicted.

Never the less, your justification is people should be denied assisted suicide because it is 'for their own good' and that is based on a study with undetermined parameters, test subjects and biases (i.e. was the study conducted by groups opposed to assisted suicide). I also suspect the survey only covered people who had free access to the care required to keep them alive which meant they were not making their loved ones suffer by unnecesarily prolonging their life. The study also could not include people who wanted to commit suicide because their condition would turn them into a vegetable because by the time that happened they could not be answering any survey questions.

In other words, I do not feel that one anedotal survey provides sufficient justification to warrent to denial of freedom.

Edited August 25, 2009 by Riverwind

[Remiel]

In other words, I do not feel that one anedotal survey provides sufficient justification to warrent to denial of freedom.

Well, then we will just have to disagree I guess, Riverwind. I am fully aware of the deficiencies of relying on an unsubstantiated (to me presently, not to comment on the actual study) study from years ago, but I have always felt that even if it were only partially true that it would be sufficient to give pause to allowing assisted suicide. Obviously if I were to be drafting legislation I would have to hunt the study down (or ones like it) and examine its reliability in detail, but right now it is merely used to inform an opinion.

[Oleg Bach]

That sweet flowing Greek word "euthanasia" actually means -------KILL -------- don't forget that. The same as that other double speak about providing something for the neccessities of life - like abortion "providers" - they actually take away - not provide - and the KILL also - but we like sweet words that roll off the tonge like honey..even though if we swallow that honey it's deadly poison - They kill you before you come into the world - and at the other end they kill you and force you out of the world at the other end - premature death at both ends - then the slippery slop comes into play and the canyon seperating life and death narrows - soon the kid that is unmanagable or useless to the utitlitariates...will be removed - Hilter and his boys thought they could make a "better" world than God designed - good luck...no matter what you are going to die and suffer - all the dope on the planet and all the early intervension and dying with "diginity" will be to no avail - there is no dignity in death - you still shit your pants and stink up the room

[August1991]

The only requirement should be that person dying must be the one who makes the final choice to swallow the pills or to press the button trigging the injection - that is only safeguard necessary to ensure it does not become a cover for murder.

Living will's are the remedy in such situations. They're the answer. Not assisted suicide.

Shady & Riverwind, you should both read Krauthammer:

Let's see if we can have a reasoned discussion about end-of-life counseling.

We might start by asking Sarah Palin to leave the room. I've got nothing against her. She's a remarkable political talent. But there are no "death panels" in the Democratic health-care bills, and to say that there are is to debase the debate.

...

You are told constantly how very important it is to write your living will years in advance. But the relevant question is what you desire at the end -- when facing death -- not what you felt sometime in the past when you were hale and hearty and sitting in your lawyer's office barely able to contemplate a life of pain and diminishment.

Washington Post

No one is asking for 'government assisted suicide'. What people want the government to do is butt out and allow people to make their own arrangments for how they die even if that requires the assistance of another private individual.

Would you then let the government butt out of a domestic dispute? For example, Dad kills Mom and then presents a paper with Mom's signature showing that Mom wanted to die. Case closed?

There is really no difference between your argument and the argument that a woman does not need access to assisted abortion because she can always give the child up for adoption.

When it comes to such social questions, I too reason in terms of incentives.

If a woman can have an abortion, what happens? More young women have sex.

If a person can give the decision of their death to another person, what happens? More people die.

Edited August 26, 2009 by August1991