I'm in favour of assisted dying. (Please don't call it assisted suicide - we want to prevent suicide. It's useful to keep the word suicide for something we want to stop).
With respect, such arguments are nonsensical.
Elder abuse is rampant. It's easy to imagine that the victim of such abuse may be more willing to die. But assisted death may help this - there would (should) be considerable professional involvement to make sure there's no coersion or abuse.
When we look at places that have assisted dying we find some cases of people who probably died for the wrong reasons. Those cases are always waved around - but people against assisted dying need to come up with some numbers.
That person doesn't mind being labled a suicide, but people campaigning for assisted dying have to spend time and money talking about the difference between suicide (generally something we want to avoid) and assisted dying (something we want to provide).
By continuing to use the word suicide for people who chose assisted death you make it harder for people to get assisted death legalised.
Assissted dying is when you ask a doctor to kill you, or to help you kill yourself.
It's useful to seperate out people who want to control their death when they have an incurable illness from people who want to die when they have a treatable mental illness.
It's especially useful if you want assisted death to become legal. It makes it a bit clearer that you're not trying to make it easier for people with mental illness to die.
It may be that you dislike the word suicide because you have a distaste for it but not for any rational reason—by what recourse could you separate the legitimacy of an assisted dying person from a suicide? They both want to die and then do it—the difference is usually of aesthetics or location. Euthanasia cocktails derive from veterinary medicine where animals are killed in a way where they do not struggle or spasm, the animal dies in a way less disturbing to viewers, but we cannot be sure that there is more or less subjective suffering than with someone jumping from a height. Brain activity continues much longer than movement and breathing with the administering of these cocktails. It could be that the jumping that the author of the article has an aversion to is as good a way to die as any. As for the suicide methods that fail due to discomfort, I am forever grateful that my two attempts failed.
I believe that suffering is not the great evil to be avoided, but the means to joy—even a moment of joy can redeem decades of suffering.
Therefore, the number is ONE. Saving even ONE life is worth our societies enshrining complete prohibition of medical murder in our law codes.
Even rare instances in which new evidence exonerates prisoners decades after murder convictions shows that the death penalty ought to be outlawed. Likewise, rare instances in which patients, believed to be terminally ill, live much longer than thought possible negate the validity of the whole medical death enterprise. Furthermore, the experience of millions... perhaps billions on this planet who have, like me, undergone years of despairing thoughts and suicidal desires to develop more well-adjusted cognitive behavior undergird the ever-beautiful opportunity to stop the suicidal from self-murder in the hope that day will break once more.
I invite all who read this to come together in a culture of life that seeks to make use of and redeem all suffering, to engage in strenuous effort to overcome hardship, to take up "the life of toil and effort, of labor and strife; to preach that highest form of success which comes, not to the man who desires mere easy peace, but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph." (Theodore Roosevelt)
We ought to reject the idea that death is a proper cure for suffering, recognizing the ubiquity of suffering among all lifeforms, recognizing that there are no experiences so painful that no one has endured them without ultimately desiring death, and that, if we truly think that death is an appropriate cure for suffering, we run the risk agreeing with Silenus that "it is best not to be born at all; and next to that, it is better to die than to live", and, even worse, we run the risk of agreeing with him and losing the virtue of his hypocrisy!
People can make mistakes. The choice to kill a child or to kill one's self isn't always right just because it is chosen. In other words, people are not gods. You seem to agree and think it possible that something could go wrong here. But, have you considered that, if someone could be wrongfully "euthanized", that someone could be wrongfully left living? Out of the many faces you have seen in your life, are you willing to follow your moral logic through its full path and conclude that many of them should have killed themselves earlier, perhaps much earlier? How many people do you think go on making themselves live out of ignorant religious fear or compunctions that ought to be deprecated? If you really ponder these questions and those beyond, you may begin to feel the murky outline of the rough beast slowly, and sometimes blindly being conjured by the refashioners of moral taste.
t may be that you dislike the word suicide because you have a distaste for it but not for any rational reason—by what recourse could you separate the legitimacy of an assisted dying person from a suicide? They both want to die and then do it—the difference is usually of aesthetics or location.
The difference is in capacity to make the decision, which many people who die by suicide lack because of mental ill health.
Bob who has bi-polar may not have capacity to make the choice to die.
Other Bob who has a degenerative illness, but who's had recent good quality treatment for any possible mental health problem probably does have the capacity to make the choice.
The rest of your post is semi-coherent and contradicts itself.
Comments
I'm in favour of assisted dying. (Please don't call it assisted suicide - we want to prevent suicide. It's useful to keep the word suicide for something we want to stop).
Elder abuse is rampant. It's easy to imagine that the victim of such abuse may be more willing to die. But assisted death may help this - there would (should) be considerable professional involvement to make sure there's no coersion or abuse.
When we look at places that have assisted dying we find some cases of people who probably died for the wrong reasons. Those cases are always waved around - but people against assisted dying need to come up with some numbers.
From the article: “I don’t mind a bit being labelled a suicide.”
That person doesn't mind being labled a suicide, but people campaigning for assisted dying have to spend time and money talking about the difference between suicide (generally something we want to avoid) and assisted dying (something we want to provide).
By continuing to use the word suicide for people who chose assisted death you make it harder for people to get assisted death legalised.
How is "suicide" different from "assisted dying"? I don't understand how they are different, and why one is good and one is not.
Suicide is when you kill your self.
Assissted dying is when you ask a doctor to kill you, or to help you kill yourself.
It's useful to seperate out people who want to control their death when they have an incurable illness from people who want to die when they have a treatable mental illness.
It's especially useful if you want assisted death to become legal. It makes it a bit clearer that you're not trying to make it easier for people with mental illness to die.
It may be that you dislike the word suicide because you have a distaste for it but not for any rational reason—by what recourse could you separate the legitimacy of an assisted dying person from a suicide? They both want to die and then do it—the difference is usually of aesthetics or location. Euthanasia cocktails derive from veterinary medicine where animals are killed in a way where they do not struggle or spasm, the animal dies in a way less disturbing to viewers, but we cannot be sure that there is more or less subjective suffering than with someone jumping from a height. Brain activity continues much longer than movement and breathing with the administering of these cocktails. It could be that the jumping that the author of the article has an aversion to is as good a way to die as any. As for the suicide methods that fail due to discomfort, I am forever grateful that my two attempts failed.
I believe that suffering is not the great evil to be avoided, but the means to joy—even a moment of joy can redeem decades of suffering.
Therefore, the number is ONE. Saving even ONE life is worth our societies enshrining complete prohibition of medical murder in our law codes.
Even rare instances in which new evidence exonerates prisoners decades after murder convictions shows that the death penalty ought to be outlawed. Likewise, rare instances in which patients, believed to be terminally ill, live much longer than thought possible negate the validity of the whole medical death enterprise. Furthermore, the experience of millions... perhaps billions on this planet who have, like me, undergone years of despairing thoughts and suicidal desires to develop more well-adjusted cognitive behavior undergird the ever-beautiful opportunity to stop the suicidal from self-murder in the hope that day will break once more.
I invite all who read this to come together in a culture of life that seeks to make use of and redeem all suffering, to engage in strenuous effort to overcome hardship, to take up "the life of toil and effort, of labor and strife; to preach that highest form of success which comes, not to the man who desires mere easy peace, but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph." (Theodore Roosevelt)
We ought to reject the idea that death is a proper cure for suffering, recognizing the ubiquity of suffering among all lifeforms, recognizing that there are no experiences so painful that no one has endured them without ultimately desiring death, and that, if we truly think that death is an appropriate cure for suffering, we run the risk agreeing with Silenus that "it is best not to be born at all; and next to that, it is better to die than to live", and, even worse, we run the risk of agreeing with him and losing the virtue of his hypocrisy!
People can make mistakes. The choice to kill a child or to kill one's self isn't always right just because it is chosen. In other words, people are not gods. You seem to agree and think it possible that something could go wrong here. But, have you considered that, if someone could be wrongfully "euthanized", that someone could be wrongfully left living? Out of the many faces you have seen in your life, are you willing to follow your moral logic through its full path and conclude that many of them should have killed themselves earlier, perhaps much earlier? How many people do you think go on making themselves live out of ignorant religious fear or compunctions that ought to be deprecated? If you really ponder these questions and those beyond, you may begin to feel the murky outline of the rough beast slowly, and sometimes blindly being conjured by the refashioners of moral taste.
The difference is in capacity to make the decision, which many people who die by suicide lack because of mental ill health.
Bob who has bi-polar may not have capacity to make the choice to die.
Other Bob who has a degenerative illness, but who's had recent good quality treatment for any possible mental health problem probably does have the capacity to make the choice.
The rest of your post is semi-coherent and contradicts itself.