should assisted suicide be allowed?

Anyone who waits for physical incapacitation before deciding to go ahead has missed out on the opportunity to do so, imo. At that point, it's best just to let natural death take its course. And of course it's their responsibilty to do themselves. It most certainly isn't up to doctors and other health practitioners who are responsible for saving lives and not ending them.

 

Well no, I would not want to make assisted suicide a professional responsibility for physicians. However, it's a different matter if the "patient" and the physician agree on the matter.

It is a slippery slope, to be sure. I certainly do not want medical professionals helping love sick teenagers to depart this world. Terminally ill octogenarians- and entirely different matter in my mind.

 

A person that’s terminally ill and is in severe pain should get the same consideration a dog gets!

 

Only if it's terminal.

 

Yes, no one should be able to tell someone to carry on living when they want to call it a day.

 

Some 400 Chinese factory employees threatened to commit suicide by jumping off the building they work in. The Dutch have the highest suicide rates in the west, usually leaving nasty notes blaming their boss. In the US, divorce is the most common reason for suicide, with money being cited as the single biggest reason for divorce. Suicide is all about money with, for example, Japan being one of the wealthiest countries in the world, but having an epidemic of suicides during the last economic recession. Young men all committed suicide in one particular forest, out shame for being unemployed, and burden on their families, and to make it easier to dispose of their bodies. What we require is a way to place a dollar value on people, so we can predict when they will commit suicide, and insurance companies can charge higher rates.

However, you also have to account for their immune system and ability to reproduce, but I'm working on it.

 

To some extent this happens already.
We trust doctors not to keep blood running through our brain and artificially maintaining it's oxygenation when major organs are beyond any hope of recovery.
I don't know of any fixed rules, but normally at least 3 doctors decide whether their is no hope of recovery.

Even earlier than the last few hours, I am certain that in terminal situations hospitals have allowed terminally ill patients to cease medication and slip away in their sleep.

When a patient is not on permanent medication or life support, their will always be the question of whether their condition is terminal.
It would be wrong to allow patients to die because THEY THINK that their condition is terminal, but doctors do not agree.

 

I wonder if suicide in the US was more common or less common in the 19th century than in the 20th century. But I doubt accurate numbers are known for the 19th century.

 

The song "I've been working on the railroad" contains a line, "I got married to the widow next door, she's been married seven times before". That was an average number of times, for frontier women. They couldn't own property until around 1880, and would have to immediately remarry or risk loosing everything. Committing suicide in the wild west, was as simple as walking out in the woods.

 

Many thanks, you brought back some lovely memories of my childhood with those lyrics.

The song you may be thinking about is "I'm Henery the Eighth, I Am", an old London cockney ditty from the Music Hall days of the early 1900s. The lyrics are:

I'm 'Enery the Eighth, I am,
'Enery the Eighth I am, I am!
I got married to the widow next door,
She's been married seven times before
And every one was an 'Enery
She wouldn't have a Willie nor a Sam
I'm her eighth old man named 'Enery
'Enery the Eighth, I am!

Hermans Hermits did a cover in 1965

 

Well...

I suspect so. But America's infatuation w/ suicide is grotesque. We need adherence and strict guidelines. It's not a solution to one's social problems. That's not what it's for.

SO...

What if quality of life is dramatically altered by disease or something? What if you're paraplegic? I wouldn't say that you can't have quality of life because you can't walk. What if you can't see? It's not an appropriate solution in lots of cases. There are other options.

But if continuing care is simply prolonging the inevitable, and if pain and suffering are unbearable, that's when.

It's sad, but in some cases it's probably more humane than making life continue.

 

My mistake, my memory is crap, which is one reason I write my book. Memory can often substitute for parallel processing and vice versa, while my book helps me to leverage quantum mechanics.

 

According to the statistics, evangelicals have the best first hand knowledge of hell.

 

I am in favor of people being able to decide if and when they want to die.
Go to any Nursing home and observe the patients that are near the very end of their life and tell me it is better for them to go thru a long and painful period slowly approaching the end of life, I dare you to to tell me it is 'the best way for everyone.'
I am NOT in favor of doctors being in control of the decision as this is in direct conflict with their oath taken as a doctor.
That being said, it seems like the process currently in use in state of Oregon seems to work well enough.
People are allowed to smoke cigarettes, a known cancer causing agent, as much as they want, which is in essence choosing a 'slow death', why shouldn't they be allowed a 'quick death' in certain situations?

 

Its a particle-wave thing. The right and left hemispheres specialize in 4 and 5 fold symmetries, and comparing causal and acausal perspectives is how the lightbulb comes one. Note that both consciousness and humor remain profound mysteries to modern science, and I'm working on how to make a profit off helping them to remain fat, happy, and ignorant.

 

So do I. If you can relieve the suffering of an animal, why not a human!

 

My father at 85 was in a care home for 3 years after having a stroke. My father was a strong willed man and on his 85th birthday he told me he had enough. The next day he quit taking his meds and eating. Five weeks later he died. He didn’t have a terminal illness though he was in constant pain from arthritis. It would have been better if he would have had access to assisted suicide. So yes.

 

For the right reasons it absolutely should be allowed. I've watched several family members wither away to an unnecessarily painful end that if given the option to leave with dignity and in peace I'm absolutely certain they would have chosen that way to go.

 

If someone is severely suffering then yes of course. It aggravates me that people will force their so called morality and will on terminally ill, comatose, or paraplegic strangers. If Do not Revive is what those people want, then mind your own bloody business.

 

I wonder why a thread on assisted dying has so much in it about suicide. The two subjects are completely different.

Assisted dying comes to relevance when a mentally stable person with a terminal, debilitating or painful condition, chooses their own time to go.

Suicide is when a person with a chronic or acute mental breakdown, feels hopeless and ends it all.

We can't stop suicide because if the person wants to do it, they will find a way.

We can manage assisted dying. We can allow it in certain circumstances.

I'm told that in the UK it will come in when it has been worked out how to prevent greedy children and their wives/husbands, from coercing the patient in any way, to choose to dye.
It may not be doctors who do it. People shouldn't assume that medics will be allowed do it. They shouldn't assume anything.

It will likely be a specific process, to be performed by appropriate people in the right circumstances.

For example (though not necessarily): a lawyer, trained in giving the requisite meds, being authorised by a court/tribunal, which will have assessed and adjudicated on the illness being terminal or the decline being irreversible; (such as MND, MS, Altzheimers/dimentia) and the patient being of sound mind and able to make that decision, and do so without interference.

I understand it's all doable except ruling out interference.

As for people who say it should not be allowed; i say that those people shouldn't be so arrogant as to think everyone should live by their rules.

Same for abortion. I wouldn't be happy if it were an embryo created partly by me but it must be the woman's decision. It's she who will live with the consequences much more than the guy and it's nobody else's business.