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So. Assisted Suicide. Good or Bad idea?

merlin

merlin

Avatar changed - Town names deemed offensive.
Back in May we approached this subject with relation to dementia but we never began a separate thread.

I'd really be interested in hearing people's thoughts.

I cannot for the life of me understand why we treat human beings in a far less humane fashion than we would a domestic cat or even a farm animal.

The insistence on keeping people breathing when there is no prospect of improvement in their outlook is causing horrendous bed blocking in the NHS and daily battles between local authorities and the NHS.

Why don't we consider the alternatives? Why are we insistent on having our loved ones around even just to watch them humiliated and suffering?

Not an easy subject I appreciate but then difficult discussions are far more interesting and informative than those that are completely polarized before they even begin.

I'd like to see the option myself. I cannot understand why I am not allowed to have it.
 
Bumping people off as a cure for bed blocking is a bit severe, there are many causes of BB, some of them orchestrated.
 
I agree. I think it's a case of morality trumping reasoning, and also fears of a "slippery slope". In the case of US healthcare I think it's also driven by profits since hospitals make pots of money out of the last couple of years of life.

There are diseases & conditions that cause such suffering that it seems to me providing assistance to those who wish to commit suicide should be part of a humane healthcare system.
 
If someone is of sound mind and physically capable of initiating their own demise then I have no issue with that. If, in that circumstance, someone else has to obtain the necessary materials and substances and put them together then again no problem for me - the law says differently at the moment.

Where it gets tricky is where the would be suicide is not personally capable (either mentally or physically) of initiating the fatal act. If mentally incapacitated then I would argue that it is impossible for that person to give any informed consent. Regarding lack of physical capability then there would have to be very close scrutiny throughout the process to ensure that consent was genuine and continuing.
 
I've seen so much unnecessary suffering over the past 18 months that I am firmly on the side of changing the law to allow assisted suicide.

Not only on the part of the patient but also in the eyes and minds of their friends and families who have sat bedside day in day out.

It's cruelty in reality. That's before we get onto the cost to the Country of inflicting this cruelty on members of our society.
 
Assisted suicide makes perfect sense imo, but I've also seen people suffering severely and for many months at the end of life unnecessarily.
 
Assisted suicide is a human right.

It has been going on for ages anyway, with consent and assistance from GP's, doctors, nurses and district nurses.


Bloss
 
Bloss has the best summary: assisted suicide is a human right.

Assisted is the important word, it isn't just about the right to die, it is also about ensuring that the family & friends left behind are 'assisted' in coming to terms with your decision i.e. no sudden jumps off bridges, and instead a proper process, and a legal one. It would suck to assist in one's suicide & get locked up for manslaughter afterwards.
 
Does some form of living will have any status in uk yet?

I'm about to redo a will and it's on my list of topics to discuss.

My father got it right, did a days work, had a good night out with his friends and didn't wake up the next morning. He looked totally peaceful.
 
A major concern I have is, if we kept a dog alive who is suffering we could be prosecuted, yet...

I'm all for AS, indeed wish to go that way when my time is up/ready.
 
merlin said:
Not only on the part of the patient but also in the eyes and minds of their friends and families who have sat bedside day in day out.
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I am not sure if I got this right, do you mean here that the friends and families must have the right to decide about the death of another person without his/her formal agreement ?

Over here, a few months ago, a man arranged his assisted suicide on the grounds of decades-long problems with depression. Two of his brothers filed a lawsuit against the organisation called 'Exit' because they didn't want to see their brother go, and frankly the legal situation in case of depression is far from being clear. As a result, their brother jumped out of a window only days later. Interfering in another person's decision is never a good idea - suicide is a human right, but staying alive is human right too.
 
Switzerland is way ahead of the U.K. - assisting suicide here is illegal.
Most Brits are terrible at facing death, and that includes non-specialist medical professionals.
Ending life to prevent severe suffering is unthinkable, even if that is what the patient wants.
This also leads to numerous awful botched suicides.
 
There have been three signal events in my life that have firmed up my views on this subject of legalising "assisted suicide" (in chronological sequence of occurrence):

1) We had two dogs - William (a collie/alsatian cross) and Peter (a pavement special) and by the time they were 9 years old, both were in bad shape and in pain (William with chronic hip dysplasure and Peter with a tumour the size of a human fist) and my wife was resisting having them put down (more from her own potential pain than out of any "political" motives). Eventually, she gave up fighting but said she refused to be involved. I called our vet and asked him if would make a final house-call. He agreed and I held each dog in my arms as he injected them. He also arranged to remove their remains and then left. I cried like a baby - more because of how long they had had to suffer, but also the way in which they had trustingly accepted my involvement.

2) I had one father - and his great pleasures in life were reading and listening to music. In his early 80s his hearing started to pack up and a few years later his vision followed suit. A year later he climbed into the bath early one morning and slit his wrists. My stepmother found him a couple of hours later.
He was in Cape Town and I was in Johannesburg, so flew down to take care of matters. Looking back, I accept what he did (i.e. suicide) and why he did it (nothing left to live for), but felt that the how was a bit extreme.

3) In June 2014, I was diagnosed with cancer of the oesophagus and commenced a treatment plan that comprised 3 stages: one, chemo; two, radiation; and three, surgery to excise the cancerous bits). One and two went well - reducing the size of the tumours by more than 50% - but when I was admitted for surgery, they discovered that the cancer had spread to the peritoneum. Earlier this year an ultrasound showed that it had spread further - this time to the pleura. Since the discovery of this last spread, the levels of discomfort and pain have been increasing - partly due to another round of chemo and partly due to renewed cancer activity around the original site. The prognosis is - according to my oncologist - 6-8 months with every likelihood of the pain level increasing.

This combination of pet euthanasia, paternal suicide and a terminal illness have crystallised my views on assisted suicide - if its not a documented human right, it bloody-well should be (and to hell with any bleeding hearts or religious zealots who say otherwise).

The key reasons lie less in the area or wanting to ease my own exit to minimise any suffering on my part and lie more in the impact these next 6-8 months will have on my wife and my daughters - they will be devastated (particularly my wife who is still in serious denial).

So, by all means, legalise assisted suicide for both the one wanting to die and for any medical personnel involved in providing assistance. I don't care what it takes in terms changing laws and codes of ethics/behaviour - there is absolutely no reason why laws or codes of ethics should deny us of a fundamental right.

Dave

PS: I do understand the potential hazards of abuse - we are after all humans with all their innate failings - but these hazards should not be blown out of proportion by those same bleeding hearts and religious zealots.
 
Cheese said:
I am not sure if I got this right, do you mean here that the friends and families must have the right to decide about the death of another person without his/her formal agreement ?
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No Cheese that's not what I mean. I was referring to the pain of visiting a loved one who, in the case of dementia, doesn't even recognise you and for whom there is no prospect of recovery.

The decision vis a vis euthanasia would have to be taken by the individual concerned when legally considered to be of sound mind or, possibly (and thinking out loud) given to an advocate in certain circumstances.

One experience that crystalised this for me recently was when a patient came to in hospital in ICU. Their brain was aware that they were in ICU and that they had friends there but they soon realised they could not move their limbs nor signal in anyway to the staff that they could hear them. There was a period of a few hours where they thought that would be permanent and trust me, I'm pretty sure that that's a fear no one on here would want to have to deal with.

Someone left in that state is powerless to ask for closure despite it being their preferred option in order to spare both themselves and their loved ones further suffering.

Many situations exist where it might be good for those supporting the "right to live" to just consider putting themselves in the other person's shoes.

The Mother of a good friend passed recently and I've been trying to help in any way I can. The woman had end stage dementia (vascular) and had been suffering from dementia for over five years. This friend had had to watch their mother slowly die and yet visit them every week without getting any response. When I mention that finally losing that person must still be traumatic, the response is that she lost her mother five years ago now so this is just dotting the "I"s and crossing the "T"'s so to speak.

What was the point of much of that five years?
 
DevilEars - I'm profoundly sorry for your situation and I wish you all the best. My father recently passed from mesothelioma and in his final weeks he would have chosen assisted dying.
 
merlin said:
I've seen so much unnecessary suffering over the past 18 months that I am firmly on the side of changing the law to allow assisted suicide.

Not only on the part of the patient but also in the eyes and minds of their friends and families who have sat bedside day in day out.

It's cruelty in reality. That's before we get onto the cost to the Country of inflicting this cruelty on members of our society.
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Considerations of emotional suffering of onlookers, and of increased cost, represent interests other than those of the prospective deceased, and possibly counter to them. As such, they should be strictly excluded from consideration in this matter.

Assisted suicide/voluntary euthanasia should be considered only as a part of an already-in-place excellent program of hospice care.
 
I would disagree. Most people do not have any desire to put their best friends and family through any more suffering than they need to.

There is sadly no "excellent plan" in place for hospice care AFAIK. The hospices are local authority run and the hospitals NHS run - never the twain shall meet.
 
DonQuixote99 said:
Assisted suicide/voluntary euthanasia should be considered only as a part of an already-in-place excellent program of hospice care.
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Won't work for those who don't have time to make the plans.
I think we need something more flexible to deal with the individual.
 
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