MAID in Canada - should we be killing the mentally ill?

[Reg Volk]

I say no.

Canada should indefinitely abandon plans for psychiatric euthanasia, parliamentarians urge

[Army Guy]

1 hour ago, Reg Volk said:

I say no.

Canada should indefinitely abandon plans for psychiatric euthanasia, parliamentarians urge

who would vote for the left if we allowed them to kill all the mentally ill...

[Legato]

[Moonbox]

2 hours ago, Army Guy said:

who would vote for the left if we allowed them to kill all the mentally ill...

It's juvenile, braindead comments like this that keep making The Left™ tent larger.  We're voting against the stupidification of politics that you've so eagerly embraced.  

[I am Groot]

Reposting this from elsewhere.

2 yrs ago when I had surgery for cancer, the lady in the next bed was visited by a hospital administrator she had not met before, not her doctor, who stood at the end of her bed and said she had no option but to have MAID. The woman said “Absolutely not! I plan to get up and dance again”. The administrator then started to argue with her saying she had no choice but MAID without explaining why. The woman said “Well I’ll talk to my family when they come on Monday.” The administrator replied “They’re coming on Monday? Good, I’ll talk to them”. She headed off the family on Monday before they saw her and they came to our room primed to convince her she had to have MAID according to the hospital. She then argued with the family that she didn’t want it. During the day she was firm but at night when they weren’t there she cried. Ultimately they convinced her and started preparing a party for her to say goodbye to all her friends. So sad. And it has made me more skeptical about MAID procedures.

[Goober National]

4 minutes ago, I am Groot said:

Reposting this from elsewhere.

2 yrs ago when I had surgery for cancer, the lady in the next bed was visited by a hospital administrator she had not met before, not her doctor, who stood at the end of her bed and said she had no option but to have MAID. The woman said “Absolutely not! I plan to get up and dance again”. The administrator then started to argue with her saying she had no choice but MAID without explaining why. The woman said “Well I’ll talk to my family when they come on Monday.” The administrator replied “They’re coming on Monday? Good, I’ll talk to them”. She headed off the family on Monday before they saw her and they came to our room primed to convince her she had to have MAID according to the hospital. She then argued with the family that she didn’t want it. During the day she was firm but at night when they weren’t there she cried. Ultimately they convinced her and started preparing a party for her to say goodbye to all her friends. So sad. And it has made me more skeptical about MAID procedures.

Its disturbing they would allow such a deeply personal conversation to be overheard in a shared room. The story may be fake.

[CdnFox]

It's a pretty complicated issue. Having watched people go through absolute horrific conditions dealing with things like Alzheimer's which is incurableI can certainly understand where a rational person would agree that if you have been diagnosed with this you should be allowed to terminate before it gets to a point where you can no longer make decisions for yourself. And that would count as a mental illness. There are other examples which may similarly be understandable.

 

Like most things it's not cut and dry, 

 

 

[Army Guy]

5 hours ago, Moonbox said:

It's juvenile, braindead comments like this that keep making The Left™ tent larger.  We're voting against the stupidification of politics that you've so eagerly embraced.  

f#ck you moon pie , you and all the left on this forum has said much worse about the conservatives, must be a slow night in moms basement for you to be chirping about something so trivial as my comments...

besides some of the leftist retards  are leaving the liberal ranks  in some interesting numbers and going back to the short bus know as the NDP now there is a really leftist party for ya, you seen the campaign speeches , talk about stupidification of politics...............and if my comments help in that transfer I'm all in....Just shows how bright your side of the political spectrum really is...

[gatomontes99]

MAID is always the end result of government run health care. It is certainly cheaper to kill someone than it is to keep them alive. If all you look at is numbers, it makes perfect sense. Now tell me how you still have the right to live?

Life is precious and fleeting. If there is any way to extend a life, it should be done. God will take them home when it is their time. 

[SpankyMcFarland]

But MAID is appropriate for some conditions, surely? MND, dementia? Again, if a person has suffered for forty years with paranoid schizophrenia, for example, I think they have earned the right to a humane death of their choosing rather than having to swing from the rafters or blow their head off. Younger people are different. I don’t support MAID for a young person with mental illness under any circumstances I can think of. They may have many good years left. Old people not so much. I’m ageist. 

[CdnFox]

41 minutes ago, gatomontes99 said:

MAID is always the end result of government run health care. It is certainly cheaper to kill someone than it is to keep them alive.

Hogwash. If you have a terminal illness and you are suffering horribly and living in pain every day and they can do nothing for you then it is quite reasonable and logical That you may want to end things on your own terms with a sense of dignity rather than suffer indefinitely only to die anyway

I wouldn't let my dog live like that, why would I accept living like that myself?

But is all things it tends to go too far and it becomes a lazy solution for governments. There's a fine line to walk

[gatomontes99]

32 minutes ago, SpankyMcFarland said:

But MAID is appropriate for some conditions, surely? MND, dementia? Again, if a person has suffered for forty years with paranoid schizophrenia, for example, I think they have earned the right to a humane death of their choosing rather than having to swing from the rafters or blow their head off. Younger people are different. I don’t support MAID for a young person with mental illness under any circumstances I can think of. They may have many good years left. Old people not so much. I’m ageist. 

Where does it stop? Persistent hangnails? Dry skin? Should people with exzema be able to end their life? They suffer too. Yes, I am using hyperbole. Desire to die should not be the standard. Otherwise every teenager that is embarrassed at school would be killed off. 

People need to respect life enough to consider every day sacred. Even the bad ones. 

6 minutes ago, CdnFox said:

Hogwash. If you have a terminal illness and you are suffering horribly and living in pain every day and they can do nothing for you then it is quite reasonable and logical That you may want to end things on your own terms with a sense of dignity rather than suffer indefinitely only to die anyway

I wouldn't let my dog live like that, why would I accept living like that myself?

But is all things it tends to go too far and it becomes a lazy solution for governments. There's a fine line to walk

This will lead to forced suicide...aka state mandated murder. But they'll put a flowery name on it like Compassionate Euthenasia. 

[SpankyMcFarland]

41 minutes ago, gatomontes99 said:

Where does it stop? Persistent hangnails? Dry skin? Should people with exzema be able to end their life? They suffer too. Yes, I am using hyperbole. Desire to die should not be the standard. Otherwise every teenager that is embarrassed at school would be killed off. 

People need to respect life enough to consider every day sacred. Even the bad ones. 

This will lead to forced suicide...aka state mandated murder. But they'll put a flowery name on it like Compassionate Euthenasia. 

Give me examples and I’ll give you my opinion. Let’s take an easy one first - Lou Gehrig’s disease, MND. Would you insist that a person with this lives until they choke to death? Does everybody have to live right up to a literally horrific end when they don’t want to? Hangnails and eczema don’t qualify. I hope that most of us can agree we should meet somewhere in the messy middle when the good years of a patient’s life are clearly all behind them. I’m not talking about young people with mental illness here. 

BTW many of you seem to be unaware of the way in which analgesia has been used to hasten death by doctors for many years across the world. 
 

 

Edited 23 hours ago by SpankyMcFarland

[SpankyMcFarland]

34 minutes ago, gatomontes99 said:

Where does it stop? Persistent hangnails? Dry skin? Should people with exzema be able to end their life? They suffer too. Yes, I am using hyperbole. Desire to die should not be the standard. Otherwise every teenager that is embarrassed at school would be killed off. 

People need to respect life enough to consider every day sacred. Even the bad ones. 

This will lead to forced suicide...aka state mandated murder. But they'll put a flowery name on it like Compassionate Euthenasia. 

Analgesia can shorten lives dramatically in people with terminal conditions. I have seen that happen in several countries without any system of legal euthanasia. Frankly, a collective sigh of relief occurs among relatives when it happens. 

38 minutes ago, gatomontes99 said:

People need to respect life enough to consider every day sacred. Even the bad ones. 

I presume you oppose capital punishment at least?

[gatomontes99]

30 minutes ago, SpankyMcFarland said:

Give me examples and I’ll give you my opinion. Let’s take an easy one first - Lou Gehrig’s disease, MND. Would you insist that a person with this lives until they choke to death?

I will tell you that I am against assisted suicide, in all cases. I did not used to be. I used to be libertarian enough to think suicide is a personal choice. Now I see the wisdom in saving people from themselves.

[SpankyMcFarland]

6 minutes ago, gatomontes99 said:

I will tell you that I am against assisted suicide, in all cases. I did not used to be. I used to be libertarian enough to think suicide is a personal choice. Now I see the wisdom in saving people from themselves.

How closely would you want to police doctors when analgesics hasten death by a significant amount, eg, months? 

Edited 23 hours ago by SpankyMcFarland

[SpankyMcFarland]

18 hours ago, I am Groot said:

Reposting this from elsewhere.

2 yrs ago when I had surgery for cancer, the lady in the next bed was visited by a hospital administrator she had not met before, not her doctor, who stood at the end of her bed and said she had no option but to have MAID. The woman said “Absolutely not! I plan to get up and dance again”. The administrator then started to argue with her saying she had no choice but MAID without explaining why. The woman said “Well I’ll talk to my family when they come on Monday.” The administrator replied “They’re coming on Monday? Good, I’ll talk to them”. She headed off the family on Monday before they saw her and they came to our room primed to convince her she had to have MAID according to the hospital. She then argued with the family that she didn’t want it. During the day she was firm but at night when they weren’t there she cried. Ultimately they convinced her and started preparing a party for her to say goodbye to all her friends. So sad. And it has made me more skeptical about MAID procedures.

More documentation is needed here. Hospital administrators are elusive beasts at the best of times. They’re hard to find in their offices, let alone the wards. I can’t imagine any hospital mandarin I’ve encountered doing this. Avoiding pitfalls is the mantra. In that line of work there’s no need to actively look for trouble. It will find you soon enough. 

Edited 23 hours ago by SpankyMcFarland

[gatomontes99]

24 minutes ago, SpankyMcFarland said:

Analgesia can shorten lives dramatically in people with terminal conditions. I have seen that happen in several countries without any system of legal euthanasia. Frankly, a collective sigh of relief occurs among relatives when it happens. 

Yeah, that's a great relief to the dead.

24 minutes ago, SpankyMcFarland said:

I presume you oppose capital punishment at least?

Wildly different. Death as a punishment is kind of the point. In fact, that makes my position very consistent. Killing people is a punishment. The ultimate punishment. We should not punish them for being sick. 

11 minutes ago, SpankyMcFarland said:

How closely would you want to police doctors when analgesics hasten death by a significant amount, eg, months? 

Oh ffs. 

[Legato]

23 minutes ago, SpankyMcFarland said:

How closely would you want to police doctors when analgesics hasten death by a significant amount, eg, months? 

Opioid antagonists like naloxone and naltrexone have shown partial success in blocking the body's natural pain-inhibiting systems, occasionally allowing patients to experience pain for the first time.

[SpankyMcFarland]

3 hours ago, gatomontes99 said:

Oh ffs. 

There are grey areas in palliative care that you don’t seem to be aware of but they are most certainly there. Anyone who has seen a sick relative die abruptly after a new treatment plan has been implemented can tell you about this. It’s not as cut and dried as some people seem to think. It is claimed in studies that opioids don’t hasten death overall but that is not always the case. 

Edited 20 hours ago by SpankyMcFarland

[User]

5 hours ago, SpankyMcFarland said:

But MAID is appropriate for some conditions, surely? MND, dementia? Again, if a person has suffered for forty years with paranoid schizophrenia, for example, I think they have earned the right to a humane death of their choosing rather than having to swing from the rafters or blow their head off. Younger people are different. I don’t support MAID for a young person with mental illness under any circumstances I can think of. They may have many good years left. Old people not so much. I’m ageist. 

Well, since you never came back to this before...
 

 

[User]

5 hours ago, SpankyMcFarland said:

But MAID is appropriate for some conditions, surely? MND, dementia? Again, if a person has suffered for forty years with paranoid schizophrenia, for example, I think they have earned the right to a humane death of their choosing rather than having to swing from the rafters or blow their head off. Younger people are different. I don’t support MAID for a young person with mental illness under any circumstances I can think of. They may have many good years left. Old people not so much. I’m ageist. 

The long form response you did not come back to:

 

I think you're missing my point.

I'm not saying people with schizophrenia are incapable of making decisions about their lives. Obviously that's not true.

What I'm questioning is whether we can reliably determine that the desire to die isn't itself part of the illness.

That's what makes this different from something like cancer.

If a guy has terminal cancer, the cancer isn't convincing him that his life has no value. It's killing him regardless of what he thinks.

With schizophrenia, severe depression, and other psychiatric illnesses, hopelessness, despair, suicidal thoughts, distorted thinking, etc. can all be part of the condition itself.

So how do you separate a truly rational, settled desire to die from the illness talking?

And once you accept psychological suffering alone as justification for MAID, where does the line actually get drawn?

You gave an example of someone with schizophrenia for 40 years. Okay.

What about someone with severe depression for 20 years?

What about someone who has been suicidal for 15 years?

What about someone with PTSD who says they're never going to get better?

Every time I hear these discussions, the line keeps moving.

My concern isn't that people with mental illness have no agency. My concern is that we're asking the state to decide when a desire to die is a symptom that should be treated and when it's a wish that should be facilitated.

That's a line I don't think anyone can draw with nearly the confidence people pretend they can.

[SpankyMcFarland]

1 hour ago, User said:

The long form response you did not come back to:

 

I think you're missing my point.

I'm not saying people with schizophrenia are incapable of making decisions about their lives. Obviously that's not true.

What I'm questioning is whether we can reliably determine that the desire to die isn't itself part of the illness.

That's what makes this different from something like cancer.

If a guy has terminal cancer, the cancer isn't convincing him that his life has no value. It's killing him regardless of what he thinks.

With schizophrenia, severe depression, and other psychiatric illnesses, hopelessness, despair, suicidal thoughts, distorted thinking, etc. can all be part of the condition itself.

So how do you separate a truly rational, settled desire to die from the illness talking?

And once you accept psychological suffering alone as justification for MAID, where does the line actually get drawn?

You gave an example of someone with schizophrenia for 40 years. Okay.

What about someone with severe depression for 20 years?

What about someone who has been suicidal for 15 years?

What about someone with PTSD who says they're never going to get better?

Every time I hear these discussions, the line keeps moving.

My concern isn't that people with mental illness have no agency. My concern is that we're asking the state to decide when a desire to die is a symptom that should be treated and when it's a wish that should be facilitated.

That's a line I don't think anyone can draw with nearly the confidence people pretend they can.

Just because a line can move and is difficult to draw is no excuse for not drawing a line. Laws do this all the time with abortion, age of consent, mature minors, mental competence etc. 

What other decisions would you consider a person with schizophrenia unable to take for themselves? What about buying a house, making a will or getting married? If they’re orientated, not deluded and with capacity then they should be allowed to make decisions like the rest of us. Ditto a person with early dementia or Huntington’s disease. People without schizophrenia have all sorts of false beliefs. We don’t prevent them from making adult decisions because of that. You can’t permanently infantilize somebody simply because of a condition they have without assessing them and say they’re not fit to make decisions. If they understand what they are doing they should be allowed to give consent. 

 

 

Edited 18 hours ago by SpankyMcFarland

[gatomontes99]

3 hours ago, SpankyMcFarland said:

There are grey areas in palliative care that you don’t seem to be aware of but they are most certainly there.

No. I am saying a treatment that has side effects that might include death is not even remotely equivalent to killing them outright. 

[SpankyMcFarland]

46 minutes ago, gatomontes99 said:

No. I am saying a treatment that has side effects that might include death is not even remotely equivalent to killing them outright. 

Again, if the two events are right beside each other, how sure can you be they are so distinct? In the real world things can be a lot greyer and fuzzier than you imagine. The ‘side effect’ may not be unwelcome. 

Edited 15 hours ago by SpankyMcFarland