This isn’t about slippery slopes, the difficulty of defining the boundary between a killing we allow and a killing we don’t, it is about the morals and behaviour of actual people
One of the most important reasons to opposed assisted suicide. My fear is that the high cost of elderly care is an unconscious reason why some people support its legalisation.
Wouldn't it be better to go back to looking after granny at home?
I agree that we should care for Granny at home and I agree that saving money for the cost of care might be an unethical reason for wanting to allow assisted dying. But I also think that ending six months of pain is a good reason.
I can understand that it appears to be compassionate, but the problem is that this kind of euthanasia then gets applied to other situations in the areas where it has been legalised. This post was just about one of the reasons why it's a bad idea, here are the bullet points of other v good reasons that still apply in terminal illness:
1) palliative care is such that agonising pain is rare
2) all places where killing is legalised have spread to much broader people than the terminally ill
3) you never know what will happen in terminal illness - always just a best guess
4) It's abused by relatives who want the money
5) fundamentally alters relationship between doctor and patient
6) some of most meaningful times in a person's life are when they're close to death. Most people are afraid of it and so would be tempted to suicide, but the reality is different
I'm terminally ill. I'm not expecting pain and I don't want assisted dying for myself. As you say, I want to spend my final days with my family. I have a lot of friends — cancer patients — in a similar situation though and several have chosen assisted dying after a long period of pain. I think you are a bit too quick to dismiss the pain that stage four cancer patients feel.
I think there are places — like Oregon — that have a good law that prevent most of the abuse. The law requires that you have two doctors and one of them has to be unknown to you etc etc. I think it prevents most of the abuses that you are concerned about.
Other countries — like Canada and Belgium — have got it wrong but I think there's a sensible law that we can find if we want it.
Hi, I'm sorry that you're in that situation. And aware that discussing these things in the abstract is not really accounting for the pain and struggles of real people such as yourself.
However - I have had both personal experience and professional experience with people who have terminal diagnoses, and witnessed the very real physical pain that people go through first hand. I've also had a very painful chronic illness myself, and I went through cancer. So I'm not unaware of the realities we're discussing here.
I've also worked in mental health where many experience extreme pain - and herein lies the danger. If we view death and suicide as the answer to pain in one situation, there are an awful lot of other situations that this principle can then be applied.
I don't think Oregon is the positive example you believe it is. But obviously there are arguments made from both sides.
I have a terminal illness and will die soon. Probably not six months. Maybe nine. I’m lucky that my death, when it comes, probably will not be painful. It will be a gradual slowing down followed by a coma that will last a few weeks and then the end.
In the likely circumstances ahead of me, I would not choose assisted dying. But if my prognosis included six months of unbearable pain, I would. If it included six months of my wife cleaning me and rolling me over to prevent bed sores, I would. I enjoyed a month of cleaning and rolling when my girlfriend died but six seems like a lot and I expect people would start to offload their former loved ones onto the state. I expect that unethical people would hasten their former loved one’s death.
People will make unethical choices whatever the law says. Allowing assisted dying makes more unethical choices possible but it saves a host of terminally ill patients from a world of pain and lost dignity. I think that's a good trade.
I think some of the countries that have assisted dying have the balance wrong and allow too many of the abuses that you warn against. Canada, for example, or Belgium. Oregon, however, has an extensive suite of safeguards to minimise the likelihood that unscrupulous heirs will hurry the process. I’d hazard a guess that your scheming inheritors have very few advantages under Oregon’s system.
One final point, a patient who is suffering unbearable pain now can catch the train to Switzerland. But if her husband takes the train with her, he will be arrested for manslaughter. That doesn't seem right. If she is unable to take the train alone, she is out of luck.
It’s one thing to decline additional extraordinary measures to stay alive, and to be administered painkilling medications to avoid discomfort; it’s another thing entirely to have a doctor give the patient a lethal injection.
The latter is referred to in other contexts as murder.
Your picture seems to include a doctor who kills a patient against their will. What if the patient urgently wants to die to stop the pain and the doctor writes him a prescription? Is that still murder?
A couple of years ago I watched my wife die from cancer. The last six months she was without treatment and only receiving palliative drugs. She died without pain - I know because I was there, and she hadn’t even graduated to fentanyl.
I share this because the one area where medicine seems to be doing a good job is blocking pain. The unbearable pain consideration isn’t a real issue anymore.
I’m more concerned about the patient who is legally incompetent; the severely autistic teenager, the geriatric dementia patient, the Downs patient, etc. Who gives their consent? The court appointed guardian, who is quite often a beleaguered relative or even in line to inherit? Thorny ethical issues best avoided by not opening the door to physician assisted suicide.
I'm sorry to hear about your wife. I know how hard it is and have been through the same sad experience.
I'm in the same place right now. I am dying of a brain tumour. Many of my cancer tumour friends are suffering from terrible pain — palliative care or no. Several of my cancer friends have chosen assisted dying because they couldn't bear the ending. I don't want it for myself but I wouldn't forbid people who need it more than I do.
For me, pain doesn't scare me as much as months of unconsciousness where my wife has to clean me and change my feeding tube. I might be beyond caring at that point but I wouldn't want to inflict that on my wife.
The incapacity is exactly what my wife feared, but she fortunately didn’t have to experience it. I wish you and your friends the very best in your journeys.
Continuance is a personal choice and shouldn’t be interfered with by the state.
The problem is the cradle-to-the-grave welfare state launched in 1948 which over the decades has transferred responsibility from self to the State in all matters. Added to this is the destruction of family and marriage starting in the 1960s promoted by hippies, feminists and Socialists which made the State surrogate husbands and fathers further increasing State-dependency. Remove the family support unit and individuals must turn to the State - this is Socialist policy.
In 1950, UK life expectancy was 68 years (now 80) therefore the Socialist Government believed it could rake lots of money into the so-called National Insurance Fund (there was no fund) and use it for other things, because most people requiring health care, pensions, welfare would die or live only about 5 years to collect.
Whereas before the welfare state, people knew they had to provide for their old age, a family network existed to care for elder relatives, by now we have a large elder population surviving longer than ever who have made no provision for their later years (they were told no need the State will oblige), and many with no family support network.
The solution? Kill as many off as possible. Increasing energy cost whilst removing Winter fuel allowance will kill off many elderly. The NHS has always had a policy of putting old people at the back of the queue for hospital treatment, not bothering to test comprehensively with the expectation that they will die before their turn comes. Now it seems, out of compassion. the ones who need expensive care can be eliminated legally.
One of the most important reasons to opposed assisted suicide. My fear is that the high cost of elderly care is an unconscious reason why some people support its legalisation.
Wouldn't it be better to go back to looking after granny at home?
I agree that we should care for Granny at home and I agree that saving money for the cost of care might be an unethical reason for wanting to allow assisted dying. But I also think that ending six months of pain is a good reason.
I can understand that it appears to be compassionate, but the problem is that this kind of euthanasia then gets applied to other situations in the areas where it has been legalised. This post was just about one of the reasons why it's a bad idea, here are the bullet points of other v good reasons that still apply in terminal illness:
1) palliative care is such that agonising pain is rare
2) all places where killing is legalised have spread to much broader people than the terminally ill
3) you never know what will happen in terminal illness - always just a best guess
4) It's abused by relatives who want the money
5) fundamentally alters relationship between doctor and patient
6) some of most meaningful times in a person's life are when they're close to death. Most people are afraid of it and so would be tempted to suicide, but the reality is different
7) value of human life should be primary
I'm terminally ill. I'm not expecting pain and I don't want assisted dying for myself. As you say, I want to spend my final days with my family. I have a lot of friends — cancer patients — in a similar situation though and several have chosen assisted dying after a long period of pain. I think you are a bit too quick to dismiss the pain that stage four cancer patients feel.
I think there are places — like Oregon — that have a good law that prevent most of the abuse. The law requires that you have two doctors and one of them has to be unknown to you etc etc. I think it prevents most of the abuses that you are concerned about.
Other countries — like Canada and Belgium — have got it wrong but I think there's a sensible law that we can find if we want it.
Hi, I'm sorry that you're in that situation. And aware that discussing these things in the abstract is not really accounting for the pain and struggles of real people such as yourself.
However - I have had both personal experience and professional experience with people who have terminal diagnoses, and witnessed the very real physical pain that people go through first hand. I've also had a very painful chronic illness myself, and I went through cancer. So I'm not unaware of the realities we're discussing here.
I've also worked in mental health where many experience extreme pain - and herein lies the danger. If we view death and suicide as the answer to pain in one situation, there are an awful lot of other situations that this principle can then be applied.
I don't think Oregon is the positive example you believe it is. But obviously there are arguments made from both sides.
I have a terminal illness and will die soon. Probably not six months. Maybe nine. I’m lucky that my death, when it comes, probably will not be painful. It will be a gradual slowing down followed by a coma that will last a few weeks and then the end.
In the likely circumstances ahead of me, I would not choose assisted dying. But if my prognosis included six months of unbearable pain, I would. If it included six months of my wife cleaning me and rolling me over to prevent bed sores, I would. I enjoyed a month of cleaning and rolling when my girlfriend died but six seems like a lot and I expect people would start to offload their former loved ones onto the state. I expect that unethical people would hasten their former loved one’s death.
People will make unethical choices whatever the law says. Allowing assisted dying makes more unethical choices possible but it saves a host of terminally ill patients from a world of pain and lost dignity. I think that's a good trade.
I wrote more about this here:
https://raggedclown.substack.com/p/can-we-talk-about-assisted-dying
I think some of the countries that have assisted dying have the balance wrong and allow too many of the abuses that you warn against. Canada, for example, or Belgium. Oregon, however, has an extensive suite of safeguards to minimise the likelihood that unscrupulous heirs will hurry the process. I’d hazard a guess that your scheming inheritors have very few advantages under Oregon’s system.
One final point, a patient who is suffering unbearable pain now can catch the train to Switzerland. But if her husband takes the train with her, he will be arrested for manslaughter. That doesn't seem right. If she is unable to take the train alone, she is out of luck.
It’s one thing to decline additional extraordinary measures to stay alive, and to be administered painkilling medications to avoid discomfort; it’s another thing entirely to have a doctor give the patient a lethal injection.
The latter is referred to in other contexts as murder.
Your picture seems to include a doctor who kills a patient against their will. What if the patient urgently wants to die to stop the pain and the doctor writes him a prescription? Is that still murder?
A couple of years ago I watched my wife die from cancer. The last six months she was without treatment and only receiving palliative drugs. She died without pain - I know because I was there, and she hadn’t even graduated to fentanyl.
I share this because the one area where medicine seems to be doing a good job is blocking pain. The unbearable pain consideration isn’t a real issue anymore.
I’m more concerned about the patient who is legally incompetent; the severely autistic teenager, the geriatric dementia patient, the Downs patient, etc. Who gives their consent? The court appointed guardian, who is quite often a beleaguered relative or even in line to inherit? Thorny ethical issues best avoided by not opening the door to physician assisted suicide.
I'm sorry to hear about your wife. I know how hard it is and have been through the same sad experience.
I'm in the same place right now. I am dying of a brain tumour. Many of my cancer tumour friends are suffering from terrible pain — palliative care or no. Several of my cancer friends have chosen assisted dying because they couldn't bear the ending. I don't want it for myself but I wouldn't forbid people who need it more than I do.
For me, pain doesn't scare me as much as months of unconsciousness where my wife has to clean me and change my feeding tube. I might be beyond caring at that point but I wouldn't want to inflict that on my wife.
The incapacity is exactly what my wife feared, but she fortunately didn’t have to experience it. I wish you and your friends the very best in your journeys.
Continuance is a personal choice and shouldn’t be interfered with by the state.
Thank you, Eric.
The problem is the cradle-to-the-grave welfare state launched in 1948 which over the decades has transferred responsibility from self to the State in all matters. Added to this is the destruction of family and marriage starting in the 1960s promoted by hippies, feminists and Socialists which made the State surrogate husbands and fathers further increasing State-dependency. Remove the family support unit and individuals must turn to the State - this is Socialist policy.
In 1950, UK life expectancy was 68 years (now 80) therefore the Socialist Government believed it could rake lots of money into the so-called National Insurance Fund (there was no fund) and use it for other things, because most people requiring health care, pensions, welfare would die or live only about 5 years to collect.
Whereas before the welfare state, people knew they had to provide for their old age, a family network existed to care for elder relatives, by now we have a large elder population surviving longer than ever who have made no provision for their later years (they were told no need the State will oblige), and many with no family support network.
The solution? Kill as many off as possible. Increasing energy cost whilst removing Winter fuel allowance will kill off many elderly. The NHS has always had a policy of putting old people at the back of the queue for hospital treatment, not bothering to test comprehensively with the expectation that they will die before their turn comes. Now it seems, out of compassion. the ones who need expensive care can be eliminated legally.