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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Choosing a candidate for voluntary euthanasia
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Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
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Posted
Archbishop George Carey just can't resist the limelight and making things difficult for the CofE, can he?
This time he has come out in support of the right to die legislation against the CofE stance, just before it is debated in General Synod - CofE daily digest
quote:
the former Archbishop reveals that he is to back legislation tabled by Labour peer Lord Falconer that will seek to legalise assisted dying for the terminally ill in England and Wales.
This one has already had a few posts on the TICTH and I agree with deano (falls over in surprise, it's the second or third time recently) that it deserves it's own Hell thread.
How about Carey just volunteers for his suggestion first so we can see how it goes?
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Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat
Posts: 13794 | From: outiside the outer ring road | Registered: Aug 2006
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Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
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Posted
Copying over the posts from the TICTH thread:
Originally posted by Alex Cockell:
quote:
TICTH George Carey - for following the Nazi playbook on "assisted suicide" or Mercy Killing.
It's basically Action T4 being replayed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_T4
Carey went public today - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/10963195/Lord-Carey-I-support-assisted-dying.html
Does he want to look ME in the face and tell me that as an autistic man that I am less than human? because I am disabled? Does he view Mr Nicklinson as less of a human? Because that is the logical outcome.
quote:
Although officially started in September 1939, Action T4 might have been initiated with a sort of trial balloon.[24] In late 1938, Adolf Hitler instructed his personal physician Karl Brandt to evaluate a family's petition for the "mercy killing" of their blind, physically and developmentally disabled infant boy. The boy was eventually killed in July 1939.[25] Hitler instructed Brandt to proceed in the same manner in similar cases.[26] The Reich Committee for the Scientific Registering of Hereditary and Congenital Illnesses was established on 18 August 1939, three weeks after the killing of the mentioned boy. It was to prepare and proceed with the registration of ill children or newborns identified as defective. Secret killing of infants began in 1939 and increased after the war started. By 1941, more than 5,000 children had been killed.[27]
Hitler was in favour of killing those whom he judged to be "unworthy of life". In a 1939 conference with health minister Leonardo Conti and the head of the Reich Chancellery, Hans Lammers, a few months before the euthanasia decree, Hitler gave as examples of "life unworthy of life:" severely mentally ill people who he believed could only be bedded on sawdust or sand because they "perpetually dirtied themselves", or who "put their own excrement into their mouths, eating it and so on".
When did we become a fascist country?
originally posted by Albertus
quote:
Might of course cause a few 'liberal' supporters of the proposals to rethink their position. Hope so, anyway.
Originally posted by deano:
quote:
TICTH Twats who conflate comments like the following with nazi forced killing...
quote:
"I would have paraded all the usual concerns about the risks of “slippery slopes” and “state-sponsored euthanasia”.
"But those arguments which persuaded me in the past seem to lack power and authority when confronted with the experiences of those approaching a painful death.”
And who do it in a thread where debate is forbidden instead of having the balls to create a separate thread in purgatory where their arguments could have been dissected fully and completely.
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
quote:
Now look what you've done, Alex, you've made me agree we deano.
Fuck. ![[Mad]](angryfire.gif)
Originally posted by Spike:
quote:
quote:
Originally posted by Alex Cockell:
Does he want to look ME in the face and tell me that as an autistic man that I am less than human? because I am disabled? Does he view Mr Nicklinson as less of a human? Because that is the logical outcome.
I'm sure he would quite happily look you in the face, because what you are accusing him of is NOT what he is advocating. OK, so Carey is a dick of the first order and I've always thought so, but even more so since he became a rentagob for the Daily Mail, but although I disagree with his stance, your reaction is hysterical to say the least.
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Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat
Posts: 13794 | From: outiside the outer ring road | Registered: Aug 2006
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Callan
Shipmate
# 525
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Posted
I am not an unqualified admirer of Lord Carey and, as it happens, I disagree with him on this issue. That said, it is something of an overstatement, to put it politely, to compare his comments to the Nazi Euthanasia programme.
When he was editor of the Telegraph Max Hastings* used to forbid his writers to compare anything to the Third Reich. I think that is a very good rule of thumb.
(*Rather ironically Sir Max was known to readers of Private Eye as 'Hitler').
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How easy it would be to live in England, if only one did not love her. - G.K. Chesterton
Posts: 9757 | From: Citizen of the World | Registered: Jun 2001
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Doublethink.
Ship's Foolwise Unperson
# 1984
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Posted
I think it is harmful to others, to ask them to kill you. And therefore, it is morally suspect. But I have yet to see this issue seriously addressed in discussions about euthanesia.
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All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome. George Orwell
Posts: 19219 | From: Erehwon | Registered: Aug 2005
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anne
Shipmate
# 73
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Doublethink:
I think it is harmful to others, to ask them to kill you. And therefore, it is morally suspect. But I have yet to see this issue seriously addressed in discussions about euthanesia.
This is a significant factor in my objection to both euthanasia and to judicial killing. I don't think that society should place the burden on a person of expecting them to kill another human being, whether they are willing or not.
anne
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‘I would have given the Church my head, my hand, my heart. She would not have them. She did not know what to do with them. She told me to go back and do crochet' Florence Nightingale
Posts: 338 | From: Devon | Registered: May 2001
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Callan
Shipmate
# 525
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Posted
Just to mix it up Obersteppenfuhrer Desmond Von Tutu comes out in favour of assisted dying in the Grauniad.
Has someone got an attic they can put Alex up in, for the duration?
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How easy it would be to live in England, if only one did not love her. - G.K. Chesterton
Posts: 9757 | From: Citizen of the World | Registered: Jun 2001
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Spawn
Shipmate
# 4867
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
How about Carey just volunteers for his suggestion first so we can see how it goes?
Did you just say what I think you said? Would you like to say it again?
Posts: 3447 | From: North Devon | Registered: Aug 2003
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Oscar the Grouch
Adopted Cascadian
# 1916
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Posted
The issue of assisted dying is a deeply complex one and also highly emotive in all directions.
I welcome Carey & Tutu's interventions, although I find it amusing that we can talk about them in the same breath. I think that the C of E should have a long hard look at this.
But what I find especially intriguing is that Carey uses the kind of arguments that are often used by those arguing in favour of SSM - and the kinds of arguments that Carey and others would dismiss out of hand if the subject WAS SSM.
I agree completely that personal experience of people who are suffering will make us think long and hard about the rights and wrongs of something like assisted dying. Will Carey now be doing the same sort of exercise with SSM and homosexuality in general? If not, why not?
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Faradiu, dundeibáwa weyu lárigi weyu
Posts: 3871 | From: Gamma Quadrant, just to the left of Galifrey | Registered: Dec 2001
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Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
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Posted
Tutu is saying good death and not unnecessarily prolonging life, which is somewhat different to Carey's stance.
And Spawn, I don't actually wish anyone dead, but I really do wish that Lord Carey was silenced. That he would stop writing columns on how the CofE should be run. His term as ABC was two terms ago now, twelve years since, and throughout that time his pontifications have continued to poison the chalice that subsequent ABCs have inherited.
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Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat
Posts: 13794 | From: outiside the outer ring road | Registered: Aug 2006
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Spike
Mostly Harmless
# 36
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
Archbishop George Carey just can't resist the limelight and making things difficult for the CofE, can he?
I don't think he's making things difficult. Most of us regard him as the mad old uncle who comes out with randomly odd comments but who is largely ignored.
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"May you get to heaven before the devil knows you're dead" - Irish blessing
Posts: 12860 | From: The Valley of Crocuses | Registered: May 2001
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Lyda*Rose
Ship's broken porthole
# 4544
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Posted
I worry about people who are terminal asking for death because they want to make it easier on their families. And even worse, unscrupulous family members who nudge a person toward choosing their death for the nudger's own well-being, and dare we say it, material ends in terms of legacy. This is similar to my opinion about capital punishment: what if it is gotten wrong? What if the dying miss out on important moments because of an attitude that if one is dying one might as well just get it over with?
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"Dear God, whose name I do not know - thank you for my life. I forgot how BIG... thank you. Thank you for my life." ~from Joe Vs the Volcano
Posts: 21377 | From: CA | Registered: May 2003
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Lyda*Rose:
I worry about people who are terminal asking for death because they want to make it easier on their families. And even worse, unscrupulous family members who nudge a person toward choosing their death for the nudger's own well-being, and dare we say it, material ends in terms of legacy. This is similar to my opinion about capital punishment: what if it is gotten wrong? What if the dying miss out on important moments because of an attitude that if one is dying one might as well just get it over with?
This is precisely my problem with voluntary euthanasia -- the possibility or likelihood that a dying person be talked into getting out of the way by unscrupulous relatives.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Sioni Sais
Shipmate
# 5713
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
Originally posted by Lyda*Rose:
I worry about people who are terminal asking for death because they want to make it easier on their families. And even worse, unscrupulous family members who nudge a person toward choosing their death for the nudger's own well-being, and dare we say it, material ends in terms of legacy. This is similar to my opinion about capital punishment: what if it is gotten wrong? What if the dying miss out on important moments because of an attitude that if one is dying one might as well just get it over with?
This is precisely my problem with voluntary euthanasia -- the possibility or likelihood that a dying person be talked into getting out of the way by unscrupulous relatives.
I'm concerned that those who aren't related will try to influence "dying persons" too, and amongst 'those' I include non-personal entities.
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"He isn't Doctor Who, he's The Doctor"
(Paul Sinha, BBC)
Posts: 24276 | From: Newport, Wales | Registered: Apr 2004
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Ariston
Insane Unicorn
# 10894
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
Originally posted by Lyda*Rose:
I worry about people who are terminal asking for death because they want to make it easier on their families. And even worse, unscrupulous family members who nudge a person toward choosing their death for the nudger's own well-being, and dare we say it, material ends in terms of legacy. This is similar to my opinion about capital punishment: what if it is gotten wrong? What if the dying miss out on important moments because of an attitude that if one is dying one might as well just get it over with?
This is precisely my problem with voluntary euthanasia -- the possibility or likelihood that a dying person be talked into getting out of the way by unscrupulous relatives.
Anyone who would automatically trust next of kin to always make the right decision for their relatives on principle needs to read a certain Hell thread.
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“Therefore, let it be explained that nowhere are the proprieties quite so strictly enforced as in men’s colleges that invite young women guests, especially over-night visitors in the fraternity houses.” Emily Post, 1937.
Posts: 6849 | From: The People's Republic of Balcones | Registered: Jan 2006
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Sioni Sais:
I'm concerned that those who aren't related will try to influence "dying persons" too, and amongst 'those' I include non-personal entities.
Insurance companies are people, my friend.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
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Posted
There was this story too - an article showing how the number of deaths from assisted dying has escalated in the Netherlands and
quote:
former supporter of the Dutch Euthanasia laws and member of the Euthanasia Review Committee in The Netherlands, Professor Theo Boer tells Britain that he was wrong.
The problem with all these arguments is where do you draw the line? The "Thou shalt not kill; but needst not strive officiously to keep alive" argument sounds reasonable, but what is striving officiously to keep alive and what is giving up too early? And who decides? The patient? The family? The medical team? The finance board at the local hospital?
Is it striving officiously to keep alive a Down's Syndrome child of 3 with pneumonia? Is it striving officiously to keep a mother alive for three or four years with repeated hospital visits and daily treatments so her son has a few more years to grow up before she dies?
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Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat
Posts: 13794 | From: outiside the outer ring road | Registered: Aug 2006
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Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Spike:
I don't think he's making things difficult. Most of us regard him as the mad old uncle who comes out with randomly odd comments but who is largely ignored.
The press coverage today has certainly not ignored it. Every BBC news led on this story and the splits between the Archbishops and the Church of England and all the papers have picked up on it.
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Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat
Posts: 13794 | From: outiside the outer ring road | Registered: Aug 2006
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RuthW
liberal "peace first" hankie squeezer
# 13
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
The problem with all these arguments is where do you draw the line?
Uh, well, yeah. It's the whole problem with arguments on both sides. The problem with arguments for assisted suicide is that we could end up drawing the line too close to ending life, and the problem with arguments against it is that we could end up drawing the line too close to prolonging suffering.
I submit that the problem is that we're trying to draw lines not in the sand but in muddy water. Some might want every last possible moment of life. Others may feel that their suffering is so great that life isn't worth living. These two groups might be in very similar positions from a medical standpoint. And we're trying to write laws that tell people what they can and cannot do in extremely difficult situations. Wherever we draw this line, some people are going to end up on a side of it they don't want to be on.
So is there a way to do this without drawing a line? Without making a one-size-fits-all law?
Posts: 24453 | From: La La Land | Registered: Apr 2001
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Sioni Sais
Shipmate
# 5713
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
.. is there a way to do this without drawing a line? Without making a one-size-fits-all law?
In Britain and America we have judges to make case-by-case decisions. They aren't perfect but I prefer them to legislation put together by politicians who may be swayed by lobbyists for goodness knows what.
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"He isn't Doctor Who, he's The Doctor"
(Paul Sinha, BBC)
Posts: 24276 | From: Newport, Wales | Registered: Apr 2004
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Alex Cockell
Ship’s penguin
# 7487
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Sioni Sais:
quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
.. is there a way to do this without drawing a line? Without making a one-size-fits-all law?
In Britain and America we have judges to make case-by-case decisions. They aren't perfect but I prefer them to legislation put together by politicians who may be swayed by lobbyists for goodness knows what.
What was kinda my point. Just that if the line was moved on irrational or emotional bases... you have the risk of seeing people as "useless eaters". And if I factor int he attitudes of people like IDS and Esther McVey...
Posts: 2146 | From: Reading, Berkshire UK | Registered: Jun 2004
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MarsmanTJ
Shipmate
# 8689
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Posted
I find this one tough. A relative of mine was dying of cancer. He was in agonising, debilitating pain, and had between 1-2 weeks of agony left. Or, alternatively, the Doctors offered enough morphine to deaden his pain, giving him 12-24 hours to live, but pain free and relatively with it. It wasn't a difficult decision. But technically that was illegally assisting suicide. All I know is, the family had an amazing last few hours vs the previous week of him being unable to talk through the pain. This is a hugely complex issue, and I can't help but feel that there are very rare occasions where it can be fully justified to give someone a lethal combination of pain-killers, just so their last few hours are pain-free.
Posts: 238 | Registered: Oct 2004
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Arabella Purity Winterbottom
Trumpeting hope
# 3434
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Posted
I've had the same experience, with my granddad. He was able to die without pain, after saying goodbye to us individually. We all knew what the doctor was doing, including Granddad, and not one of us had a problem.
Mind you, he was very clearly right at the end of his life, and it would have been a matter of 2-3 days difference. But it was a dignified death as opposed to an agonising one.
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Hell is full of the talented and Heaven is full of the energetic. St Jane Frances de Chantal
Posts: 3702 | From: Aotearoa, New Zealand | Registered: Oct 2002
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Welease Woderwick
Sister Incubus Nightmare
# 10424
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Posted
It was similar with my mum when the Dr prescribed Brompton's Mixture as and when required. This may well have shortened her life by a day or two but ensured that she was comfortable during the transition. The Dr instructed my dad and I to administer it as and when, which we did. I have no problem with my conscience on this - we gave her 5mls whenever she started exhibiting pain symptoms, she was already semi-comatose and the cancer wasn't going to go away.
I am very wary of the idea of NHS bureaucrats, or local equivalent, getting hold of any such rights, legislation, etc. particularly when or where healthcare is a commercial commodity.
[Codefix.]
[ 13. July 2014, 06:07: Message edited by: Ariston ]
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What part of Matt. 7:1 don't you understand?
Posts: 48139 | From: 1st on the right, straight on 'til morning | Registered: Sep 2005
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North East Quine
Curious beastie
# 13049
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Posted
My grandmother, too, though I'm sure her life was shortened by only a matter of hours, perhaps a day or two at most.
I knew what was happening, once they started the morphine, but I don't know whether the rest of the family knew or not. We've never discussed it. But once everyone who was going to come to say their goodbyes had arrived, the morphine was upped and Gran's distress ebbed away.
I think I'd arrived about 36 hours before the morphine was increased, and there was no doubt in my mind that my frail grandmother had no hope of recovery.
But this sort of "managed death" already happens. People have a reasonable expectation that they will not be left in agony when there are drugs to manage pain, even if a side effect of those drugs is to hasten the end.
The proposals go beyond that; to pre-empting anticipated pain, not just managing existing pain.
ETA - Gran didn't know what was happening; she would not have had the capacity to consent to the morphine being increased; had ceased to have that capacity several months earlier.
[ 13. July 2014, 06:09: Message edited by: North East Quine ]
Posts: 6414 | From: North East Scotland | Registered: Oct 2007
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Spike:
quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
Archbishop George Carey just can't resist the limelight and making things difficult for the CofE, can he?
I don't think he's making things difficult. Most of us regard him as the mad old uncle who comes out with randomly odd comments but who is largely ignored.
And on this occasion might be, and the uncharitable might use the phrase "stopped clock", right.
Which puts me in mind of the unusual experience I had the other day of feeling some sympathy for Leon Brittan (yes, really!) - not acting on a child abuse dossier provided by Geoffrey Dickens is not entirely unlike not acting on a dossier about lizard illuminati infiltration of the royal family provided by David Icke.
But I digress.
[ 13. July 2014, 07:20: Message edited by: Karl: Liberal Backslider ]
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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Doublethink.
Ship's Foolwise Unperson
# 1984
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Posted
[langet]Re Leon Brittan, plus they are saying he didn't act - whilst also saying he passed it to officials (deals with conflict of interest / allegations of making political capital) who passed the allegations on to the police. How is that an inappropriate response ? Now its possible the police then dropped it like a stone, but that is a rather different issue. [/tangent]
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All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome. George Orwell
Posts: 19219 | From: Erehwon | Registered: Aug 2005
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
You realise the thread title is pretty much a contradiction in terms...
Anyway, carry on.
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Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
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Gee D
Shipmate
# 13815
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Sioni Sais:
In Britain and America we have judges to make case-by-case decisions. They aren't perfect but I prefer them to legislation put together by politicians who may be swayed by lobbyists for goodness knows what.
And here as well. On a similar thread a few months ago, I gave a link to a decision of a NSW Supreme Ct judge on an application by a hospital for a declaration that they would be justified in following the wishes of a patient to turn off his life support systems. He had been severely injured in his teens and survived for a dozen years or so. His condition was deteriorating and it was apparent that his expectancy was only about another year, over which time his condition would deteriorate even more. He did not want euthanasia*, but simply to turn off the various machines, in the hope that he would die on his 28th birthday. The judge considered large amounts of evidence and concluded that the hospital would indeed be justified in having the systems turned off. AIUI, his family were the ones who attended to that step and he died peacefully some 10 hours later, on his birthday as he had wished.
* He expressed his distaste for the idea that someone would have had to give him a fatal injection, his thoughts being along the lines set out by another poster above.
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Not every Anglican in Sydney is Sydney Anglican
Posts: 7028 | From: Warrawee NSW Australia | Registered: Jun 2008
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Schroedinger's cat
Ship's cool cat
# 64
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Posted
I am steadfastly opposed to euthanasia, for all of the reasons above. Having said that, I do understand the desire to an extent - I would have liked to relieve my dad of his suffering for his last few days. But I am glad that I didn't/couldn't.
Carey has simply made a point that he has changed his mind. And yes, he knew exactly when to announce this, ahead of the synod debate, but it is more significant that he has changed his mind, I think. The CofE is actually not that important.
We do need to have a discussion about it. But I am not sure how we can in a climate where the only "discussions" are people shouting arguments to prove their points. If the government is serious about managing end-of-life care, the first thing to do is pay for the hospices, and help them to support the dying.
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Blog
Music for your enjoyment
Lord may all my hard times be healing times
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Posts: 18859 | From: At the bottom of a deep dark well. | Registered: May 2001
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Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
You realise the thread title is pretty much a contradiction in terms...
Anyway, carry on.
Yep - no-one else was going to start a thread and I was still running a temperature, so shoot me.
[ 13. July 2014, 09:40: Message edited by: Curiosity killed ... ]
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Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat
Posts: 13794 | From: outiside the outer ring road | Registered: Aug 2006
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Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
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Posted
The problem is that we are likely to get a wholesale change in the law with all the attendant dangers to deal with those hard cases like the locked in cases. And even in these cases (pdf):
quote:
Healthy individuals and medical professionals sometimes assume that the quality of life of an LIS patient is so poor that it is not worth living. On the contrary, chronic LIS patients typically self-report meaningful quality of life and their demand for euthanasia is surprisingly infrequent. Biased clinicians might provide less aggressive medical treatment and influence the family in inappropriate ways.
This proposed law will allow so many consequences for so many other people that it is dangerous.
We do need a debate about how to support a good death, which is what the Liverpool Plan was attempting to achieve but the implementation was flawed. The link is to the report into the Liverpool Plan and suggested way forward from the Marie Curie Cancer Care charity.
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Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat
Posts: 13794 | From: outiside the outer ring road | Registered: Aug 2006
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Schroedinger's cat
Ship's cool cat
# 64
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
You realise the thread title is pretty much a contradiction in terms...
Anyway, carry on.
Yep - no-one else was going to start a thread and I was still running a temperature, so shoot me.
Actually, I can think of a few actual candidates. Not all of them politicians.
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Blog
Music for your enjoyment
Lord may all my hard times be healing times
take out this broken heart and renew my mind.
Posts: 18859 | From: At the bottom of a deep dark well. | Registered: May 2001
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Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
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Posted
My mother had brain cancer. A symptom was that any skin contact was agony. She was conscious but could not speak. The hospital suggested morphine (actually diamorphine which I later discovered was heroin) and when asked to indicate via blinking, she made it very clear she wanted it. It took them three days to clear the prescription. And she then had a bad reaction to it with a vile fluid leaking from her mouth. She was not peaceful, not able to communicate at all.
I had a look at the powered driver pump for the drug, but I could not work out how to increase the dose. I was prepared to go to jail for it.
Eventually a senior nurse took my father and I aside and explained that what was happening was an unusual and unpredictable side effect of the stuff and they were very sorry about it, and, curiously, while they were tidying the bed while we were out of the room, she left.
The spokesman who went on TV to counter Carey's opinions went on about the dignity of life to its end.
Even though this is a place where bad language is permissible, I can't bring myself to respond to that man. In his post, as bishop, he MUST have been at bedsides like my mother's, and it is utter gall to use the word dignity of that agony.
[ 13. July 2014, 11:51: Message edited by: Penny S ]
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Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
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Posted
Nobody is against a good death. And the gradual increase of morphine to ease pain is well known to shorten life but make the death less painful. As is removal of life support when that is all that is keeping someone alive.
What this bill is suggesting is that people ask to be killed, as is already happening in the Netherlands. And people involved in the Dutch decision are pointing out that they are not comfortable with the results following the increase in assisted suicides - it looks like an exponential graph - linked above. There are all the risks that someone could be pressurised into being killed and people are seen as expendable.
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Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat
Posts: 13794 | From: outiside the outer ring road | Registered: Aug 2006
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Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
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Posted
One of the things that I heard countering Carey which was a matter of serious concern was the linking of the issue with elder abuse, and the pointing out that the number of people wanting to have assisted suicide was much smaller than the number of reported cases of elder abuse. (And then I found myself watching an episode of New Tricks which touched on the theme.) That is a serious worry. There would need to be very strong defences against the possibility of pressures from outside, and those would cost public money.
Posts: 5833 | Registered: May 2009
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JoannaP
Shipmate
# 4493
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by anne:
quote:
Originally posted by Doublethink:
I think it is harmful to others, to ask them to kill you. And therefore, it is morally suspect. But I have yet to see this issue seriously addressed in discussions about euthanesia.
This is a significant factor in my objection to both euthanasia and to judicial killing. I don't think that society should place the burden on a person of expecting them to kill another human being, whether they are willing or not.
anne
For me, giving doctors permission to kill their patients is crossing a line that I am deeply unhappy about. As said above, administering pain relief knowing that, as a side effect, it will shorten life, is seems to be a whole different ball game from administering a drug that has no purpose other than to kill the patient.
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"Freedom for the pike is death for the minnow." R. H. Tawney (quoted by Isaiah Berlin)
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." Benjamin Franklin
Posts: 1877 | From: England | Registered: May 2003
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Pigwidgeon
Ship's Owl
# 10192
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Posted
I'm surprised no one has mentioned Sarah Palin's warning about Obama's Death Panels.
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"...that is generally a matter for Pigwidgeon, several other consenting adults, a bottle of cheap Gin and the odd giraffe."
~Tortuf
Posts: 9835 | From: Hogwarts | Registered: Aug 2005
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Ariston
Insane Unicorn
# 10894
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
You realise the thread title is pretty much a contradiction in terms...
Anyway, carry on.
Yep - no-one else was going to start a thread and I was still running a temperature, so shoot me.
You mean nobody else had started a thread, so, as Mistress of the Universe, Manager of Wayward Shipmates, Self-Appointed Boss of Everybody, Queen Junior Host Extraordinaire, you decided to butt in and dictate the starting terms?
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“Therefore, let it be explained that nowhere are the proprieties quite so strictly enforced as in men’s colleges that invite young women guests, especially over-night visitors in the fraternity houses.” Emily Post, 1937.
Posts: 6849 | From: The People's Republic of Balcones | Registered: Jan 2006
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Schroedinger's cat
Ship's cool cat
# 64
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
Nobody is against a good death. And the gradual increase of morphine to ease pain is well known to shorten life but make the death less painful. As is removal of life support when that is all that is keeping someone alive.
Increasing pain killers to the point where a person is no longer in pain I am all for, even if it reduces their life expectancy from months to weeks. I am less sure if it is liable to take years off their life - that is a more difficult decision.
But there is a huge conceptual leap from "making their last days/weeks comfortable" to "deciding when to deliberately and explicitly end their life".
I did know of someone who went to have an induced birth, because the husband had to plan time to attend around his work. While I was disconcerted by this, it did make sense (and it was just about the right time). My worry is that a similar approach would be taken to dying: "can we just finish him off this weekend, so I can get back to work on Monday". It sounds callous, but (in possibly different words) would happen.
Death is always unpleasant. I actually think we need to deal with it a whole lot more, not comoditise it as something we can package up and organise.
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Blog
Music for your enjoyment
Lord may all my hard times be healing times
take out this broken heart and renew my mind.
Posts: 18859 | From: At the bottom of a deep dark well. | Registered: May 2001
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Pyx_e
Quixotic Tilter
# 57
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Posted
3 points, mostly already made.
In 20 years of ministry I have never known anyone suffer terribly. The morphine thing is just true.
I know this is the age we live in but the venality of some adult/children of elder folk astonishes me. I have heard them complain that being in a nursing home is "wasting" their inheritance. I have often heard conversations which would take only the lightest straw to reach, "it's best we let them go now, they have no quality of life."
Lastly thousands of people die at their own hands every year. Assisted suicide is a misnomer. If I was that desperate to go I would simply refuse food and water and be expected to be helped to be pain free.
It is the mark of a decadent culture that so many are so afraid and unfamiliar with dying and death that they attempt to make that some hallmark moment too. It is a mess, so is life . It is not the living or dying that matters it is how we live and die. Pray God with hope and a sense of adventure. Not mewling as our kids pump us full of shit so they can go to the Maldives or their inheritance to get over the trauma.
Ghouls.
Pyx_e
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It is better to be Kind than right.
Posts: 9778 | From: The Dark Tower | Registered: May 2001
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Sioni Sais
Shipmate
# 5713
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Posted
One for the Quotes file there Pxy_e.
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"He isn't Doctor Who, he's The Doctor"
(Paul Sinha, BBC)
Posts: 24276 | From: Newport, Wales | Registered: Apr 2004
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JoannaP
Shipmate
# 4493
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Pyx_e:
Lastly thousands of people die at their own hands every year. Assisted suicide is a misnomer. If I was that desperate to go I would simply refuse food and water and be expected to be helped to be pain free.
It worked for Tony Nicklinson.
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"Freedom for the pike is death for the minnow." R. H. Tawney (quoted by Isaiah Berlin)
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." Benjamin Franklin
Posts: 1877 | From: England | Registered: May 2003
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Adeodatus
Shipmate
# 4992
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Posted
Concerning people with diseases such as most kinds of cancer, the argument is, as others have already said, a shoal of red herrings. Proper medical and nursing care make "assisted dying" all but unnecessary. (Here, a word about whether pain killing drugs can shorten life: yes, they can, sometimes. But the ethical principle of double effect is well established in both theology and medicine, which means that this, too, is irrelevant to the argument.)
The "difficult cases", which strain any instinctive opposition to this idea, are conditions like locked-in syndrome, in which the person seems to outsiders to be suspended in a limbo between life and death. I've no direct experience of any such cases, but they sound terrifying, and I simply don't know what side I'd be on if confronted with one.
Aside from the more commonly cited arguments, however, two other less commonly heard arguments continue to worry me. First, as I think I've said here before, if I have a right to ask a doctor to hasten my death, then somewhere, a doctor has the obligation to do so. My argument here is that the expression "right to die" is virtually meaningless. (One might as well say that Newton's apple, once it detached itself from the tree, had a "right to hit the ground".) What we're really talking about is "my" right to demand that "you" kill me - and I don't believe I have such a right.
Secondly, a major problem with this particular proposed legislation is the supposed "protection" built in by its requiring the agreement of two doctors. I'd just like to ask, have you ever tried to get two doctors to disagree? It's virtually impossible to get one doctor openly to contradict another. And if you need another illustration, just look at that other piece of legislation that was supposed to have exactly the same limiting factor: the Abortion Act of 1967. Here, too, it was said that the numbers involved would always be small because two doctors would have to agree to the procedure.
And how did that turn out?
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"What is broken, repair with gold."
Posts: 9779 | From: Manchester | Registered: Sep 2003
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Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Pyx_e:
If I was that desperate to go I would simply refuse food and water and be expected to be helped to be pain free.
It takes about a week to die after giving up fluids. It's not an unpleasant death if people are around to keep you comfortable.
What I hate is when fluids are pumped into people when it's very clear they are dying - then they drown in their own fluids, a horrible and frightening death.
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Garden. Room. Walk
Posts: 13030 | From: Boogie Wonderland | Registered: Mar 2008
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Anselmina
Ship's barmaid
# 3032
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by anne:
quote:
Originally posted by Doublethink:
I think it is harmful to others, to ask them to kill you. And therefore, it is morally suspect. But I have yet to see this issue seriously addressed in discussions about euthanesia.
This is a significant factor in my objection to both euthanasia and to judicial killing. I don't think that society should place the burden on a person of expecting them to kill another human being, whether they are willing or not.
anne
This is one of the things I would worry about, too. If I had a relative who wanted my collusion - albeit legally with the appropriate medical assistance - to put an end to his life, do I have the right to say 'no'? Who helps me to deal with the guilt if I say 'no' and they die horribly? Or the guilt if I say 'yes' and therefore their death is on my hands? Or if I wanted someone I loved to help me kill myself, in which ways have I provided for the psychological effects upon them of this action, for the rest of their life? After all, I won't be around to reassure them at 3 o'clock in the morning if they're torturing themselves wondering if they did the right thing.
In fact, what is the morality, at all, behind the idea that non-medical relatives and friends, immersed in the emotional and upsetting environment of a suffering and dying loved one is a fit person to collaborate in the decision-making surrounding the euthanasia of that loved one?
Also, what would qualify as an appropriate medical condition for such euthanasia? Physical suffering only? Why not mental? Life-limiting conditions? Or life-long conditions, eg, severe, debilitating untreatable chronic illness or disability?
On the other hand.... there must be situations where allowing particular persons to slip quietly out of the smoke-filled room (as Aurelius puts it) is the natural and humane thing to do.
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Irish dogs needing homes! http://www.dogactionwelfaregroup.ie/ Greyhounds and Lurchers are shipped over to England for rehoming too!
Posts: 10002 | From: Scotland the Brave | Registered: Jul 2002
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Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Adeodatus
What we're really talking about is "my" right to demand that "you" kill me - and I don't believe I have such a right.
I agree completely. I wonder about the effect on those who are willing to comply with such a demand.
Moo
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Kerygmania host
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See you later, alligator.
Posts: 20365 | From: Alleghany Mountains of Virginia | Registered: May 2001
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Gwai
Shipmate
# 11076
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Moo:
quote:
Originally posted by Adeodatus
What we're really talking about is "my" right to demand that "you" kill me - and I don't believe I have such a right.
I agree completely. I wonder about the effect on those who are willing to comply with such a demand.
Moo
I think it makes a big difference who the people are. I have one relative who I know who could make such a request of me (if she were ill etc, which thank gGod she is not!) and not cause me significant guilt. I would be terribly upset to lose her, but she has always lived her life needing control. I doubt she'll ever make such a request of me because I suspect she will instead find a way to say goodbye and then quietly die alone without anyone to see her do anything so messy and uncomfortable. Knowing that, knowing her as well as I do, if she did need someone to make sure she could get enough morphine to go, or to make the doctors stop feeding her by tube or whatever, yeah I'd do it. And I wouldn't feel bad. It would be letting her live her own life, and I know she won't ask if she has any other options. That's essential.
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A master of men was the Goodly Fere,
A mate of the wind and sea.
If they think they ha’ slain our Goodly Fere
They are fools eternally.
Posts: 11914 | From: Chicago | Registered: Feb 2006
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Byron
Shipmate
# 15532
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Posted
All the practical concerns skirt the central issue: the sanctity of life.
Put it this way: if sufficient safeguards can be devised, would you still believe that assisted suicide and euthanasia are wrong? If so, do you believe that your opinion should be imposed on others against their will? If so, why?
Posts: 1112 | Registered: Mar 2010
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Spawn
Shipmate
# 4867
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Adeodatus:
What we're really talking about is "my" right to demand that "you" kill me - and I don't believe I have such a right.
Pretty much agree with everything Adeodatus says and in fact I have severe reservations about assisted dying, but Adeodatus' reaction is to euthanasia not to a terminally ill person requesting medication to hasten their own end.
Posts: 3447 | From: North Devon | Registered: Aug 2003
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Byron
Shipmate
# 15532
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Posted
Putting my own cards on the table, I support both, as I believe that people ought to control their own lives, so much as possible. I'd have no problem with physicians having a conscience opt-out.
Posts: 1112 | Registered: Mar 2010
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