throwaway324324

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?

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).

http://www.emorycaresforyou.emory.edu/resources/suicidestati...

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?

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.

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.

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?)

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.)

If collective survival was the driving influence, we would have been in favor of suicide for people who were a "burden", like cancer patients.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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?

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.

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?

Sorry about your dad.

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.

Why the downvotes?

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.

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 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.

[1] http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/articles/relationship-suicid...

[2] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3070710/

(...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.)