All that falls under passive euthanasia or passive suicide. Most terminally ill cancer patients who die in hospital die because the morphine levels are so high that it challenges their respiratory system. However, others who opt for passive starvation could end up getting a doctor who is a stiffler for intervention and will order a feeding tube inserted. Without laws that ensure the right to die, you are at the whim of the medical people who look after you.
Also, power of attorney only works in some medical cases. It doesn't ensure the right to die if you're already physically healthy but no longer wish to live; it doesn't ensure the right to die if aren't terminally ill (in other words, it can't force doctors to neglect you while in your care so that you do die), etc.
Palliative care, IMO, is immoral when it involves patients who don't want to suffer to the bitter end. Our health care system is way too Christian.
Don't I strike you as someone who can make good choices? I can and noticed that you did not address that there are varying levels of mental illness? In a case of someone like me? Yes. I could see it going to court. You simply cannot do this to people.
Please refer to post #51 this thread. We measure "normal" peoples actions by looking at their motivation and mentally ill folks action through causality.Of course there are varying degrees of mental illness. Suicidality falls under a severe form. If you are not severely mentally ill, you are not usually suicidal.
Please refer to post #51 this thread. We measure "normal" peoples actions by looking at their motivation and mentally ill folks action through causality.
Quick example
Woman is angry. Man does not know why so he chalks it up to PMS instead of the fact that he did not fill the car up with gas. Then he finds out why she is mad and tries to save face. He says you're overeacting because of PMS.
Being mentally Willis not a bad hair day. It is a daily struggle completing simple tasks, using a regimen of medicine that often changes andhas horrible side effects. No one can really help you as sometimes you just need someone to watch Tv with or hold your hand or to completely leave you alone. These is physical pain that comes with it. Migraines,IBS, muscle cramping from not moving around much. Eating irregularities, fear so gripping that you can't leave your bed. I'll go on with more later. Keep in mind this is all going on after you have been treated over and over. How can you say that this quality of life is good? Just because you can't, for the most,part see the illness like you see cancer does not mean it is not there. That person is sufferring as well but people assume it must be irrattional instead of based on sound reasoning.
That is phooey if I ever saw it.
Thank you for this post that I am reading through the blur of tears.
My oldest cat Chutney Occam Walligford has lymphoma. She is just fur and bones. She is still eating and jumping up to her favorite spots but I know that her time is in days now. She isn't quite ready to leave yet but she will tell me when the time comes and I will honor her request.
I don't support suicide unless you are dying anyway. I think it's horrible that your last few days, weeks or months should be filled with pain and that anyone who helps you will be charged with a crime. However, you shouldn't be supported because of a bad hair day. It's usually obvious when quality of life drops below a certain level.
Do people have the right to die and take their own lives? Should healthcare professionals be allowed to aid patients in taking their lives in a painless and more dignified manner? Should we criminalize suicide or remove criminal status?
What are you opinions on suicide/self-deliverance/right to die?
fI am very well aware of everything you say. I am and have been a licensed psychotherapist for 20+ years and treat people with sucidality, DAILY. One's suffering is not irrational, but their response or reactions to their suffering may very well be.
This is the dumbest strawman ever!
Do people have the right to die and take their own lives? Should healthcare professionals be allowed to aid patients in taking their lives in a painless and more dignified manner? Should we criminalize suicide or remove criminal status?
What are you opinions on suicide/self-deliverance/right to die?
My personal thoughts are that of course we have the right to die, but I have an ethical problem with the medical professional community administering euthanasia. If someone wants to die, they should facilitate that action themselves. I have no problem with passive measures if the person wants that, but I have serious personal issues with administering drugs in order to kill a person.
Why shouldn't the medical professionals help? They are the most qualified authorities on things that kill people, particularly with little to no pain. Wouldn't we rather have people who are committing suicide, particularly to end their pain, be able to do so without a) much pain, preferably none, and b) greatly reduce the chance that they will harm others in their effort to kill themselves by giving them a controlled environment in which to do it in?
We shouldn't help because it is our professional standard to save life, not end it. As I said, passive measures are okay with me if people have stated that wish in written and legal form. Otherwise, if you want to die, at least take the responsibility to do it to yourself.
Doctors seem to get blinded sometimes in their effort to extend a person's life (since everyone eventually does die), and miss the more important thing of letting their patients experience life in the time they have.
I'm not saying that efforts shouldn't be made to help people live longer, particularly when those people could live many more years of a happy, healthy or at least not very painful, life. But when there is a really good chance that you are just extending a person's suffering, it should be left up to the patient. And the patient should be well informed of what their real chances are, including the chance of their extended life being very painful.
That is primarily because that is what the patient and/or family wants.
I agree with the bolded, but a patient wanting to die should either do it himself, or not expect the medical profession to kill him pro-actively. I don't like to see suffering, and I have no qualms about giving drugs to help someone deal with the pain caused by some terminal diseases, but I an not willing to give someone a fatal dose of anything. If he wants someone to actively kill him, then he should either kill himself or find someone willing to do it for him without legal and ethical ramifications. My father died last summer of a terminal, rapidly-growing primary brain tumor. I would never have considered giving him a lethal dose of anything to hasten his death. I did, however, advocate for enough morphine to keep him comfortable at the end of his life.
Our hospital is 1 of 4 in our county. We see approx 2300 suicidal patients a year. I could count on a single hand the number of people attempting or expressing ideation that are doing so because of a 'terminal illness'-they simply arent that prevalent and where they DO exist, most of them manage to pull it off. Of the 2300 and those willing to receive help, the vast majority are referred to a therapist or treatment program and we never see them again. Of those unwilling to get help, we typically see them several times a year. Their 'suicide' attempts are seldom more than the occasional overdose of prescription meds followed by a long tearful "**** you, cruel world" text, email or letter.
Advocating for the 'right' for those struggling with emotional duress to kill themselves...well...lets see...this last weekend we would have lost a 12 year old girl who was angry at her very destructive and bitter divorced parents. We would have lost an incredibly cute intelligent 16 year old girl who is carrying the guilt because she happens to be more attracted to girls than boys and is afraid to tell her parents. We would have lost another 15 year old boy who had his wee heart broken by 15 year old little girl. We would have lost an 8 year old who cant explain why but just wants to die (he cant...I can...his father is an absentee POS and his mother is an alcoholic and he is scared to death, angry, frustrated and doesnt know what to do about any of it because...oh yeah...he is 8). We would have lost a 45 year old woman who is also an alcoholic...her 3 children have grown up and left her and now she has no one to dote on and is confronted by the memories of being sexually assaulted at age 10 by her stepbrother and maybe more painfully...by the anger, abandonment, and betrayal she feels because her parents downplayed the acts and instead insisted the stepbrother was the one that REALLY needed the help and none of this would have been a problem had she just kept her mouth shut. We wouldnt have lost 35 year old manic sex addict...she wasnt REALLY suicidal. Her we will see a few dozen times this year. We wouldnt have lost our favorite 19 year old malingerer who claims to be mentally disordered and wants to jump in front of a train but really he is just a stupid kid raised by a dysfunctional mother and has no motivation to make changes in his life because there is always someones couch he can crash on, garage he can sleep in, or when it gets really tight...just say the magic words...I am going to...and the state takes care of him. We could have lost a whole lot of good people that really just need help and people to show them that there actually ARE other options and opportunities out there. Sometimes when you are enveloped in 'this' its kinda hard to see 'that'.
I can cite about 2300 similar cases...a year...in one hospital...in one county.
I get the 'right to die' argument for terminal patients...I really do. But advocating for the 'right to die' simplifies the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of cases annually of people suffering from something as 'curable' as guilt, shame, or a broken heart.
There are many in the medical profession that see their job as ending pain and suffering, not just saving lives.
You can't save everyone. And sometimes trying to save everyone could cause more to die than could have been saved if you refocused the priorities.
Doctors seem to get blinded sometimes in their effort to extend a person's life (since everyone eventually does die), and miss the more important thing of letting their patients experience life in the time they have.
I'm not saying that efforts shouldn't be made to help people live longer, particularly when those people could live many more years of a happy, healthy or at least not very painful, life. But when there is a really good chance that you are just extending a person's suffering, it should be left up to the patient.
And the patient should be well informed of what their real chances are, including the chance of their extended life being very painful.
I'm not saying anyone should be forced to assist a person in suicide. But I also do not feel that it should be illegal or seen as an automatic ethical violation for someone to do so. It may violate your specific ethics, but that doesn't mean it is violating someone else's, even another medical worker's.
Many health care workers who took the lives of those they were supposed to be helping saw nothing ethically wrong with that.
And I would say whether there was something ethically wrong with it would depend on whether the person wanted to die or not and whether or not the person actually was suffering.
There is a difference on doing absolutely everything to keep someone alive and actually taking their life. I believe we waste far too much money in trying to extend people's lives in general. That is a seperate arguement though.
It is. Nobody can force you to undergo cancer treatement or something.
They are gave this information.
They are not always given all the information. Health care workers can be just as stubbornly set in their beliefs, particularly if they hope that they can make a person better despite the odds being against it.
I think there should be some sort of stipulation for non-terminal requests for end-of-life procedures (i.e. psych evals, debt analysis, etc), but if you don't want to live who am I to force you?
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