The Right to Die

[Oxygen]

What are some of the secular arguments against letting a person choose the time and/or place of their own death (assuming they don't take anybody with them who don't want to go)? Is there any position against it that doesn't invoke religion? Especially among the terminally ill, we seem to show more compassion for a suffering animal than we do our own fellow humans. Assuming a person genuinely wants to die and isn't just going through a severely depressed phase that may pass, why shouldn't they be allowed to die?

To add an argument that I think Justice O'Connor made, why is physician-assisted suicide such a controversy, but physicians are required to attend the condemned at state executions? What's the difference? (Aside form the fact that dead people don't have to pay taxes, so the state wants to control who gets out of it.)

 

[water]

What are some of the secular arguments against letting a person choose the time and/or place of their own death (assuming they don't take anybody with them who don't want to go)? Is there any position against it that doesn't invoke religion?

Political correctness, really.

Or, and this one makes some sense, general social causality. Letting people die just like that could possibly promote mass suicide as a proper means of dealing with life's troubles, and thus the eventual dying out of the whole race. There is the udnerlying assumption that the extinction of our race is something which is not desirable.

 

[Neildo]

Letting people die just like that could possibly promote mass suicide as a proper means of dealing with life's troubles, and thus the eventual dying out of the whole race.

For those that don't wanna deal with life's troubles can already and do commit suicide. And if the government or state recognizing the right to die brings mass suicides all of a sudden all because of that, then good. They were weak people to begin with. I'd rather have those weak people die outright than continue to live and fuck up society with their stupid politically correct laws. It's all about survival of the fittest and they, well, don't fit in.

- N

 

[Baron Max]

What are some of the secular arguments against letting a person choose the time and/or place of their own death....?

One thing you have to be aware of is that people can and do commit suicide regularly. There are laws against it, but if the person is dead, not much can be done about it!

What ye're really talking/asking about is ....DOCTOR ASSISTED SUICIDE And that's a whole new/different issue. In essence, it's legally permitting someone to take the life of someone else ...even if he/she IS a doctor ...even if he/she has written permission from the patient. No matter how you view it, that doctor is killing that patient ....how else can you view it? How else can the legal profession view it?

It's also an issue of others in the family "carrying out" the wishes of another member of the family ...like in a will or something. And again, that's nothing more than legally permitting someone to kill someone else. No matter how you view it, that doctor is killing that patient ....how else can you view it? How else can the legal profession view it?

Humans try to cling to life until the very last moment ....and then, in that brief span of time, want to go without any pain or discomfort! How fuckin' selfish and ego-centric. What they should do is "gamble" ...if they know that they have incurable disease, then they should kill themselves while they still are ABLE to do so. Waiting until the last moment is idiocy.

Baron Max

 

[Baron Max]

Letting people die just like that could possibly promote mass suicide as a proper means of dealing with life's troubles, ....

Mass suicides? Surely you jest. How many people do you really think would opt for suicide just because of a few problems in their lives??? ...and you call that "mass suicide"?

Baron Max

 

[water]

Mass suicides? Surely you jest. How many people do you really think would opt for suicide just because of a few problems in their lives??? ...and you call that "mass suicide"?

Right now, not that many people (in % ratio in comparison to the whole population) commit suicide.
But I can't exclude that this is partly due to suicide being socially considered as something bad or negative.

In the extreme, if suicide were socially and legally promoted as an honorable deed and lost the stygma of a crime, I can imagine many more people would opt for it.

Decriminalization is the first step towards making something acceptable; once acceptable, it can be raised higher, even into being something normal, and eventually something desirable.

(Take for example prenuptial agreements: 50 years ago, they were something outrageous, now they are something desirable.)

 

[GodlessEvil]

I think there should be a suicide house, like you have hospitals you should have suicide houses only less of them obviously.

You go to a suicide house to be killed, they will give a counseling session first, if you want to go ahead you fill out a form (or someone such as a relative does it for you if you cannot) ,deed is done, get pumped full of a tonne of morphine and off you go.

Hopefully that would mean people do it properly and none of this messy "i cut my wrists for attention" bullshit taking up our hospitals and costing money.
Get over it or do it properly for fucks sake.

 

[Pete]

Please select mode of death. Quick and painless or slow and horrible.​

 

[Baron Max]

...if suicide were socially and legally promoted as an honorable deed and lost the stygma of a crime, I can imagine many more people would opt for it.

You sound like you don't want people to have that freedom ....why? If they want to end their life, why should you or anyone else FORCE them not to do so?

Baron Max

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

In the extreme, if suicide were socially and legally promoted as an honorable deed and lost the stygma of a crime, I can imagine many more people would opt for it.

I don't know about the legalities, but suicide is not considered dishonorable in Japan. Its suicide rate is nothing compared to Sweden.

 

[okinrus]

What are some of the secular arguments against letting a person choose the time and/or place of their own death (assuming they don't take anybody with them who don't want to go)?

The conditions that led these people to seek death are extraordinary, and perhaps not what they'd want with rational thought. Some, too, could be cohersed. But some doctors will refuse to kill their patients, maybe for religious reasons, maybe for their oath.

To add an argument that I think Justice O'Connor made, why is physician-assisted suicide such a controversy, but physicians are required to attend the condemned at state executions?

I think medical witnesses are necessary to prove the criminal didn't receive cruel and unusual punishment and really died.

 

[water]

Baron Max,

You sound like you don't want people to have that freedom ....why? If they want to end their life, why should you or anyone else FORCE them not to do so?

? No. I don't think I sound that way.


* * *


Fraggle Rocker,

I don't know about the legalities, but suicide is not considered dishonorable in Japan. Its suicide rate is nothing compared to Sweden.

But the Japanese come from a different background, with different values.
If Westerners would keep *other* values that they have, and change *only* their view on suicide, then I imagine more people would opt for suicide.

 

[Nysse]

I highly doubt that if it were legalised, and societies opinion on the matter changed, that suicide rates would increase. People are not going to want to kill themselves more so because it is legal, that would just be an added bonus.
The same quantities of people are going to commit suicide regardless of their cultures views, the legality, or the morals surrounding it.

People that have gottten to the point of completely recognising and understanding the fact that they want to die are hardly going to care if it is socially acceptable, moral or honourable. Nor are they going to care if it is the exact opposite. None of those things matter to them, no one else’s opinions, no laws, no cultural views, and no after effects, only the intense pain they are feeling, and their need to end it.

 

[dr. cello]

people might want to kill themselves more if it was easy, nearly guaranteed, and painless. it's not legality--if you're dead, who cares if you just broke a law? there are times when contemplating suicide goes no further because there's no practical way to go about it.

 

[Nysse]

there are times when contemplating suicide goes no further because there's no practical way to go about it.

If practicality is preventing someone from committing suicide, then that person is not in a severe, or desperate enough situation emotionally, to need to commit suicide.

 

[milkweed]

The only secular arguement against allowing a "right to die" that I can think of is the potential for the evolution of this into becoming anothers decision.

Such as the state deciding all persons with cancer cannot be treated, only euthanization. Or insurance industries deciding that all cancer treatment is "experimental" thereby leaving persons with an option of paying for treatment yourself or letting the disease progress on its own. But that is occuring now isnt it? On lower levels rather than blanket statements of all persons with [whatever disease]. Organ transplant comes to mind. No cash, no hope of receiving this treatment.

So if various outside entities are already allowed to deny coverage for certain medical conditions, what is the point of not allowing the individual themselves decide the same thing, with a bonus of deciding for themselves when/how those final moments will be controlled?

 

[Oxygen]

Before I got a job that provided medical insurance I use to wear a hand-made "medi-alert" type bracelet that read "No Insurance-Let Me Die. This Is Not A Joke." I wonder if some of these people who are being forced to stay alive are only being kept around so the hospital can keep billing someone.

 

[windeater]

If Westerners would keep *other* values that they have, and change *only* their view on suicide, then I imagine more people would opt for suicide.

This is one of the most common arguments made against euthanasia, and the main criticism that the Netherlands is getting over and over again for its legalisation of euthanasia, so if you'll allow me to unravel some of those myths.
Here's something I wrote on a different forum, concerning a recent debate in the Netherlands of allowing euthanasia for elderly people who are physically healthy.

"You have to be very careful not to mix up euthanasia and suicide (although, i realise, this is a rather subjective difference, in many countries and cultures they are seen as the same.) The question is, when should a patient be able to call in the help of a doctor and when not? Doctors cant just go about and aid depressed people with their suicide, its probably even against the oath of Hippocrates. But in this country, they can help to end a live when suffering has become 'unbearable'. of course, when has life become unbearable? and when does this unbearableness call for a doctor?

The Commission Dijkhuis was erected after the High Court ruling that convicted the doctor helping Senator Brongersma to end his life for aid to suicide. Brongersma had no big physical illnesses, but was simply tired of living, and because of this the High Court ruled that euthanasia was not permitted here. The Dijkhuis report investigates the way how doctors deal with patients who don't have a clear medical indications for 'unbearable suffering', but want to end their lives nonetheless. its a thin line, where does the doctor step in and where don't they? i'm in favour of -every case of course individually and carefully weighed- doctors being allowed to help such patients, but that doesnt mean i think doctors should be able to help just any patient who wants to kill himself (when you have a history of depression your request for euthanasia is in many cases not even granted).

Somebody called Euthanasia a simple mercy killing, instead of solely being about "pulling the plug" on life support.

actually that's not true... in practice, it ís mostly about "pulling the plug" on life support. In fact, according to the figures in Karin Spaink's book "De Dood in Doordrukstrip" (Death in Wrappers was the english title she offered to me), in 75% of euthanasia cases, and mostly its just ending medical treatment, life is shortened with only a week, sometimes a day. Euthanasia is strictly wrapped up in medical protocol, as it should be i think, it doesnt mean that dutch doctors just go killing very ill patients (as some people i spoke to seem to think). there has to be a very clear medical indication that the (physical) suffering is both unbearable and there is no hope of recovery.

But the question is, "Is that the way it SHOULD BE?"
I don't think it should.
Why should it?

Because you are dealing with people's lives here, and a doctor is there, first and foremost, to make people better, not dead. Hippocrates oath and all that. Death is irrevocable, and when you call in someone's help, especially a medical professional, you're putting a huge amount of responsibility on them, and when you take away the legal ramifications there is the threat of doctors abusing this responsibility. Not so long ago there was a nurse convicted for killing a number of patients, according to her they all wanted to die, but how do you prove that? the victims arent there anymore to testify to this? however slim the chance, any patient being killed by a doctor (or whomever, for that matter) against there will should be ruled out. Legal ramifications when you call in a doctor are therefore absolutely essential."

The most common secular arguments used against euthanasia and legal suicide, I think, are governed by the firm believe in Western societies to prolonge life at all costs. We are constantly expanding our options of lengthening life, and spend buckets of money on that. Usually, when medical aid is available, it is a societal taboo not to take it. Even in secular societies (as far as they exist... but thats a different debate altogether), life is more sacred then anything. And we've gotten quite far. People in rich western societies get older and older. And they are pressured to do so. The majority is simply unwilling to accept death. To accept an ending. Life prevails. Even if its a life full of pain and suffering