Physician assisted suicide

[Saigon]

Do you feel terminally ill patients should have the right to ask doctors to help them die?

Yes, absolutely.

Providing the right checks and balances are in place, it is a basic freedom.

This is one of those issues where many who pretend to want less government suddenly seem to want more government.

 

[Noomi]

Why is it that if an animal is in pain and suffering, letting it go on living is considered cruel, but forcing a person to suffer until their breath is somehow okay?

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Why is it that if an animal is in pain and suffering, letting it go on living is considered cruel, but forcing a person to suffer until their breath is somehow okay?

Why is that you think people cannot kill themselves without involving another person? Do you know how easy it is to OD on easily available drugs?

 

[Saigon]

Why is it that if an animal is in pain and suffering, letting it go on living is considered cruel, but forcing a person to suffer until their breath is somehow okay?

Why is that you think people cannot kill themselves without involving another person? Do you know how easy it is to OD on easily available drugs?

Can you explain how easy it is for a quadraplegic?

 

[Noomi]

Why is it that if an animal is in pain and suffering, letting it go on living is considered cruel, but forcing a person to suffer until their breath is somehow okay?

Why is that you think people cannot kill themselves without involving another person? Do you know how easy it is to OD on easily available drugs?

Sure - but what if that person has become incapacitated suddenly and cannot even feed themselves, therefore not take any pills?

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Why is it that if an animal is in pain and suffering, letting it go on living is considered cruel, but forcing a person to suffer until their breath is somehow okay?

Why is that you think people cannot kill themselves without involving another person? Do you know how easy it is to OD on easily available drugs?

Can you explain how easy it is for a quadraplegic?

Just as easy as it is for anyone else.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Why is it that if an animal is in pain and suffering, letting it go on living is considered cruel, but forcing a person to suffer until their breath is somehow okay?

Why is that you think people cannot kill themselves without involving another person? Do you know how easy it is to OD on easily available drugs?

Sure - but what if that person has become incapacitated suddenly and cannot even feed themselves, therefore not take any pills?

What if?

 

[Noomi]

Why is that you think people cannot kill themselves without involving another person? Do you know how easy it is to OD on easily available drugs?

Can you explain how easy it is for a quadraplegic?

Just as easy as it is for anyone else.

I think someone with terminal cancer but who still has full mobility would find it easier to swallow pills than a quadraplegic.

 

[Saigon]

I guess a lot of this is personal experience.

I watched my father die of cancer, and the last months he was out of his mind, basically. He could no more of gone down the street to buy drugs than he could have run a marathon, and I somehow doubt he knew many drug dealers either.

I just find QW's points here rather näieve.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Can you explain how easy it is for a quadraplegic?

Just as easy as it is for anyone else.

I think someone with terminal cancer but who still has full mobility would find it easier to swallow pills than a quadraplegic.

What makes you think quadriplegics can't swallow?

 

[Quantum Windbag]

I guess a lot of this is personal experience.

I watched my father die of cancer, and the last months he was out of his mind, basically. He could no more of gone down the street to buy drugs than he could have run a marathon, and I somehow doubt he knew many drug dealers either.

I just find QW's points here rather näieve.

I am naive because I think doctors shouldn't kill people?

 

[Saigon]

QW -

I think you are näive because you think everyone has the physical and mental capacity to score lethal drugs while they are in chronic pain.

You are alo näive because you think ordinary people should know where and how to buy and use a drug like heroin. I've never given myself an injection of anything, and have no idea how to do it.

 

[FA_Q2]

QW -

I think you are näieve because you think everyone has the physical and mental capacity to score lethal drugs while they are in chronic pain.

You are alo näieve because you think ordinary people should know where and how to buy and use a drug like heroin. I've never given myself an injection of anything, and have no idea how to do it.

You don’t need illegal drugs to kill yourself. You can do so with a spoon should you so choose.

Jump off a bridge, drive off of one with your wheelchair should you need to (or just ride into LA traffic). I find it funny that people so want to get a doctor involved when the fact is you can finish yourself off with a vast number of creative ways should you actually want to do so.

You have every right to decide for yourself when it is appropriate to take your life, but not when I should be allowed to take mine.
The "death with dignity law" has no place in our lives. What gives the government the power to limit personal choice of its people? Look at the tenth amendment. Show me where the constitution gives the government the power to dictate whether a person can take their own life or not. That is a personal decision - like whether or not you want to own a gun or whether or not you will fight to defend yourself. The government or even the voters should have no say in the matter. It is my life and I can choose whether it is worth living to me. It boils down to personal choice.

The question is not whether or not you are allowed to kill yourself; there is absolutely no questioning that as there is no way to stop you. It is difficult to apply legalities to a person after they are deceased. The question was about physician assisted suicide. The government has no right to determine if you are allowed to end your life (though some laws try anyway) but they have the right to regulate the medical field to some degree. In that manner, I find no problem with laws like the death with dignity law that requires a physiatrist to agree and an unpleasant terminal condition to be present. Other cases; take care of that yourself.

 

[Big Black Dog]

Do you feel terminally ill patients should have the right to ask doctors to help them die? Do we as a nation spend too much time trying to keep people alive that we have abandoned the notion of allowing people to have a dignified death?

This is an interesting topic to me. I was a Corpsman in the Navy for 20 years and before I joined the Navy I worked as an Orderly in a fairly large hospital Emergency Room. I have seen many people die. Some as the result of illness and some as the result of accidents they could not hope to recover from. There are several ways to look at the situation. There is a basic human tendency to conserve and extend life (or survival) - fight to live, if you will. However, if you are terminally ill, the decision should be yours to make when it comes to ending your own life. I believe all people should have the right to die with dignity - whatever form that takes for them. I myself, have a Living Will that states no heroics should be use to extend my life or keep me alive in the event of a terminal illness or accident. However, asking somebody else to help you die is another can of worms. It's a lot to ask of somebody - especially somebody trained to keep you alive.

 

[October]

Do you feel terminally ill patients should have the right to ask doctors to help them die? Do we as a nation spend too much time trying to keep people alive that we have abandoned the notion of allowing people to have a dignified death?

Yes

 

[Politico]

Yes people who have the sack to off themselves should be allowed to do it.

Alzheimer's isn't a terminal illness.

My great great great great grandpa, great great great grandpa, great great grandpa, great grandpa, grandpa who all died from it as I will based on the odds would disagree with you.

 

[C_Clayton_Jones]

I am not saying anything about the "death with dignity act", I am talking about a right that has been trampled by the government for whatever reason they may have. COPD is also a terminal disease. People get the same death care on COPD as they do with cancer once it progresses to a certain point. The difference with COPD is that the disease can be effectively treated with the constant use of oxygen to aid in providing high enough levels in the blood for a long time. Long enough that most people eventually quit hauling concentrators and oxygen bottles around and die quietly at home.

I support PAS, but not for any condition that whatever person deems unbearable. I would reserve it for terminal illnesses with a short prognosis that carry a large degree of physical discomfort.

That is how the death with dignity act was written and why it is good law.

And that is indeed the problem: there are many who consider decades of such an existence devoid of dignity, and they should be allowed to end that existence accordingly.

You are also correct that Alzheimer’s is not a terminal illness, and those suffering from the disease may not elect PAS because they lack the mental capacity to make such a decision – but the brilliant surgeon who was my father is nonetheless dead.

Why is it that if an animal is in pain and suffering, letting it go on living is considered cruel, but forcing a person to suffer until their breath is somehow okay?

Because we fear death and pretend it won’t happen to us; by allowing others to die of their own volition undermines the myth of immortality we each create for ourselves.

 

[midcan5]

Knowing several people who were terminal these past years, it should be the decision of the person. Some want to live long enough to see an important family event, some want the comfort of home, most until the end, live within a large business of supply and support that has grown up in America over dying. Morphine pumps keep the pain away but America is a land in which if money can be made of it, it is made. But sometimes it helps those in their last moments before eternal sleep. Mom not long ago called out to her gawd to take her home, bed was a place that didn't fit her personality but suicide support conflicted with her values.

 

[Katzndogz]

Life is a terminal disease. There is no possibility of recovery. We will all doe.

I don't like the liberal progression of the concept of assisted suicide. The philosophy is wrong. It gets extended. In the Netherlands it's gone from the terminally ill, to the chronically ill, to the disabled who, if they want to live, are considered too mentally ill to make that decision themselves. Then extended to people who aren't ill, but so old that if they got ill, their treatment would be very expensive. Doctors have to make these decisions for them. Family members who don't want a member killed are too emotionally involved, they can't make that decision. It has to be taken from them.

Age 70 seems to be the magic number to murder. After 70, a person is considered worthless and too expensive to be allowed to live.

Dutch Assisted Suicide Policy Should Serve as a Grisly Warning

LifeSiteNews Mobile | Netherlands churches express concern over assisted suicide proposal

 

[Saigon]

Life is a terminal disease. There is no possibility of recovery. We will all doe.

I don't like the liberal progression of the concept of assisted suicide. The philosophy is wrong. It gets extended. In the Netherlands it's gone from the terminally ill, to the chronically ill, to the disabled who, if they want to live, are considered too mentally ill to make that decision themselves. Then extended to people who aren't ill, but so old that if they got ill, their treatment would be very expensive. Doctors have to make these decisions for them. Family members who don't want a member killed are too emotionally involved, they can't make that decision. It has to be taken from them.

Age 70 seems to be the magic number to murder. After 70, a person is considered worthless and too expensive to be allowed to live.

Dutch Assisted Suicide Policy Should Serve as a Grisly Warning

LifeSiteNews Mobile | Netherlands churches express concern over assisted suicide proposal

Thi is largely mth, of course. In reality the law has not changed in years.

According to research done by the Vrije Universiteit (Amsterdam), University Medical Center Utrecht and Statistics Netherlands, and published in The Lancet, this is not more than before the introduction of the "Termination of Life on Request and Assisted Suicide (Review Procedures) Act" in 2002. Both in the Netherlands and in Belgium, the number of termination of life without explicit request for terminally ill patients, decreased after the introduction of the legislation about the termination of life. In effect, the legislation about did not lead to more cases of euthanasia and assisted suicide on request

Euthanasia in the Netherlands - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia