Something Different - Physician Assisted Suicide

[Fenixgoon]

My friend chose an assisted death in Switzerland. Her dying wish was to tell you why | CNN

Cindy Siegel Shepler had several chronic disease diagnoses and lived with severe pain and fatigue for decades. In choosing legal assisted death, she hoped to provide an example for Americans about a death with dignity.

www.cnn.com

This is the story of a woman who has beset by disease after disease, and kept on fighting through it all. She ultimately chose to end her life in Switzerland, where physician assisted suicide is legal.

If you had asked me growing up what I thought, my go-to answer would have been that it is wrong (I was raised catholic). My response now is the opposite - compassionate, physician assisted suicide should be legal.
When I rode motorcycles, I was never afraid of dying, but I was absolutely terrified of becoming disabled from an accident. At what point is quality of life more important than living itself? If you're just physically existing and alive, does that really count as truly living? I knew that if I were in say.. a persistent vegetative state, I'd want someone to pull the plug on me.

My views have been reinforced in watching my mom suffer and pass from cancer, and more recently, having to put my dog down due to the same. If we can offer animals a compassionate, and loving death, why can't we do the same for ourselves? Why should we ask people to suffer needlessly and put them, their families and loved ones, through additional physical, emotional, and potentially financial trauma?

While I understand the potential for it to be abused, I'm also inclined to think that those are such rare cases - and with the involvement of a physician or physician board - that they'd be essentially zero.

 

[woolfe9998]

I think the right to suicide, assisted or not, is fundamental. It's concomitant of one's basic right to life, and of autonomy over one's body. I see little objection to it outside of religion, and we are not required to follow someone else's religious beliefs. I think there's an argument that laws banning suicide, and banning assisting others in suicide, are unconstitutional. If we are under current Constitutional law allowed to terminate a pregnancy, we are certainly permitted to terminate our own lives.

Yet assisted suicide is only legal in what, one state?

 

[Commodus]

My friend chose an assisted death in Switzerland. Her dying wish was to tell you why | CNN

Cindy Siegel Shepler had several chronic disease diagnoses and lived with severe pain and fatigue for decades. In choosing legal assisted death, she hoped to provide an example for Americans about a death with dignity.

www.cnn.com

This is the story of a woman who has beset by disease after disease, and kept on fighting through it all. She ultimately chose to end her life in Switzerland, where physician assisted suicide is legal.

If you had asked me growing up what I thought, my go-to answer would have been that it is wrong (I was raised catholic). My response now is the opposite - compassionate, physician assisted suicide should be legal.
When I rode motorcycles, I was never afraid of dying, but I was absolutely terrified of becoming disabled from an accident. At what point is quality of life more important than living itself? If you're just physically existing and alive, does that really count as truly living? I knew that if I were in say.. a persistent vegetative state, I'd want someone to pull the plug on me.

My views have been reinforced in watching my mom suffer and pass from cancer, and more recently, having to put my dog down due to the same. If we can offer animals a compassionate, and loving death, why can't we do the same for ourselves? Why should we ask people to suffer needlessly and put them, their families and loved ones, through additional physical, emotional, and potentially financial trauma?

While I understand the potential for it to be abused, I'm also inclined to think that those are such rare cases - and with the involvement of a physician or physician board - that they'd be essentially zero.

I'm with you -- the slight chance of it being abused is not worth inflicting suffering on many others. We should encourage people to live if there's a fighting chance, but it's ultimately their life to control.

In many ways, this is linked to arguments about abortion. The "pro-life" camp objects to both abortion and euthanasia, but more often than not they appear to be completely insensitive to the pain involved in either case, whether it's a woman forced to have a child she didn't want (or couldn't afford) or a hospital patient spending every day in agony. In that regard, "pro-life" activists are really pro-suffering -- I don't see much compassion from them.

 

[Brainonska511]

We have a society that is totally afraid of death, to the point where we try to impede creating avenues for people to discuss it in confidence with a physician. Think back to the ACA: it was set to create a Medicare payment code for physicians to spend time and discuss important age-related issues (like end of life care and death) with elderly patients and people twisted that to "death panels".

Physician-assisted suicide should be legalized, and hospice care should be encouraged. Too many people think hospice = giving up, when it's really about putting quality of life first (in the case of cancer, it can even mean that treatments are continued, since that can alleviate symptoms). And forcing people with crippling terminal illnesses to live until they expire "naturally" is cruel.

 

[BoomerD]

Dr. Jack Kevorkian.

 

[nickqt]

Anyone who tries to prohibit a lucid and competent person from changing their consciousness, or ending it, is violating that person's fundamental human rights.

 

[imported_tajmahal]

It's a basic human right to defend your own life or to take your own life.

 

[Thump553]

It's legal in nine states and the District of Columbia under Death With Dignity laws. It's pretty tightly regulated by both law and the doctor's code of ethics.

In probably every state it is legal in many practicable manners by entering a Do Not Resuscitate order on a patient's chart. In that case the doctor will not assist in the death but will not take activate steps to prevent it.

It's a matter of your own personal code of ethics. Personally I'm very inclined to seek either under the appropriate circumstances, but fortunately I'm a long way away from that at the present.

 

[Stokely]

Working to prevent severely-ill people living in agony (and spending whatever savings they have to prolong their life when they perhaps would like to leave something to their family) should be FAR, FAR down the list of things to worry about. Want to talk about government interfering with our lives, this literally is the best example.

 

[Jaskalas]

Why shouldn't we be given the same humane standard we give to our beloved pets?
We do not let pets linger in pain, suffering until a prolonged end. No, we help them in anyway we can. Even when there is only one option left, but to say goodbye.

 

[Mai72]

Have to wonder if much of this has to go back to the bible. You shall not take anothers life? I've gotten into heated arguments in the past with Christains about this. Thay all claim that it's sinful, and the person is going to hell. I'm sorry but I don't buy it. Why suffer when you don't have too? Reminds me of Brittney Maynard story back a few years ago.

 

[Mai72]

It's legal in nine states and the District of Columbia under Death With Dignity laws. It's pretty tightly regulated by both law and the doctor's code of ethics.

In probably every state it is legal in many practicable manners by entering a Do Not Resuscitate order on a patient's chart. In that case the doctor will not assist in the death but will not take activate steps to prevent it.

It's a matter of your own personal code of ethics. Personally I'm very inclined to seek either under the appropriate circumstances, but fortunately I'm a long way away from that at the present.

How do you know that? Brittney was only 29 when her life was turned upside down with a brain cancer diagnosis. Over 40k people die every year in car accidents. Many are young. That could be anyone of us. I try to not take any of this for granted. Life happens quickly. All of your dreams and plans can go up quickly in a second.