Do we ALL have a "right to die"?

[Unknown Soldier]

I recommend you watch the movie Ich Klage An I Accuse. I understand it supports euthanasia for the same reasons the posters on this thread support it.

In the movie the wife has an incurable disease and asks to be helped to die. Her husband, a doctor, loves her enough to reluctantly assent to her request.

Yes. The Nazis wanted approval for their euthanasia program by characterizing it as something based in love.



It's not the assisted suicide that's the ugly thing about the movie.

Oh sure--the Nazi producers made it look nice.

It's that the Nazis who commissioned its making didn't intend to "assist" only those who asked for it. Conflating the two issues is sophistry.



Ah yes--and who else can we not trust who claim they want to "assist" people to die?

 

[Rhea]

So let me ask to make sure I have your position accurately, unknown soldier:

Is it correct to state that your position is that
0. even when there is no chance of recovery,
1. Assisted suicide, aka death with dignity, is always worse than living
2. No one should be allowed to choose it
3. Laws should be passed to punish those who either try to die or try to help someone’s request to die


I am asking here because I’m not sure I understand correctly, so please correct any of the points I have misstated.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I've been disabled for 45 years and have spent much time in hospitals, rehabs, and even a nursing home. The care I received in those places was far from the best I could have ever hoped for. I hated much of it, and to this day I live in fear of ending up in a nursing home. Almost all the people I know feel the same way. So frankly, I'm slow to believe these stories about the "wonder care" some person received in such a place especially when that story is told by somebody who put the person there.

There's no doubt about it--healthcare can be far better than it is. So much pain and misery results from it. And now I'm seeing that pitching for suicide has resulted from it.

Once again, you're making a faith-based argument--

I don't know what you mean here by "faith-based."

That you take certain points as absolute truth without evidence and call any evidence to the contrary false.

...defining good care as care that makes the patient comfortable.

Yes, and I would add that good care strives to ensure the dignity of the patient and heals the patient to the fullest extent possible.

Patients asking for euthanasia are not able to be healed!

Sometimes that's not something the doctors can do.

And sometimes it's very possible for doctors and other health-care professionals to do but tragically doesn't get done.

See what I mean by faith-based? You're taking it on faith that patients can be helped. There are 6 people I have known enough of the medical situation of their deaths to evaluate what might have been possible. 5 of those there was nothing for the doctors to do. There were two things that probably could have prolonged the life of the 6th, one problem caused by Washington fucking things up (supply shortages from driving prices as low as possible) and one that involved knowledge from other domains. There was a major screwup but in the big picture it was moot.

We can know that before they took that action they felt that the value of continued life was negative.

And how do you know that?

Because otherwise they wouldn't have chosen to leave it.

Plenty of people are unwilling to accept that a loved one is gone.

Maybe, but plenty know better than to conclude that a loved-one is "gone." Evidently, a lot of people don't care what they think. Even if their loved one cannot recover, it seems monstrously cruel to me to disregard their feelings and go ahead and kill that loved one. That's exactly what happened in Terri's case.

If they want to care for a pseudo-corpse that's their business, but they have no right to put the burden on anyone else.

And the doctors were right. Autopsy showed much of her brain was gone. Tissue which isn't there certainly can't function.

She was not sentient--the part of the brain that houses consciousness was gone.

I don't believe that. Terri's family, the Schindlers, testified that Terri reacted to them in a very conscious way. I'll believe them.

Once again, you demonstrate why I say faith-based. Her forebrain was gone. They were interpreting random movements as consciousness.

People see random reflex movements that sometimes happen in relation to what they said and interpret it as a response to what they said.

The Schindlers are not stupid people. They knew Terri and their relationship with her and how she related to them.

Faith, once again. What they claim is impossible.

So let me conclude this post saying that I don't believe much of the rhetoric from the suicide advocates here. I don't buy for one minute that they're the compassionate people they claim to be. If they were, then obviously they wouldn't curse out and insult anybody who disagrees with them.

You choose to deny it.

Deny what?

I recommend you watch the movie Ich Klage An I Accuse. I understand it supports euthanasia for the same reasons the posters on this thread support it.

I've given multiple examples in your post right here.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

This is anecdotal, but it is an example of what a lot of people have gone through in person (but they are dead and can't speak for themselves) and as a loved one.

Yes. I'd prefer to hear from those who are to be the beneficiaries of euthanasia. Of course, we cannot hear from those who have died from it. It could have been far worse for them than to live on. We don't know.

We can know that before they took that action they felt that the value of continued life was negative.

And how do you know that?

You'll go through life paralyzed if you are going to torture what we do "know" that much.

The Terri Schiavo case proved that great care doesn't make forcing life on someone sensical.

I've read a lot about Terri, and contrary to what much of what the mainstream media said about her, according to her own family as well as some on the nursing staff Terri was sentient. Her family wanted to take care of her, but Terri's husband, Michael Schiavo, demanded that she die. He got his wish. Some who were present when Terri was being starved and dehydrated to death said she literally shrieked in pain.

Plenty of people are unwilling to accept that a loved one is gone.

Maybe, but plenty know better than to conclude that a loved-one is "gone." Evidently, a lot of people don't care what they think. Even if their loved one cannot recover, it seems monstrously cruel to me to disregard their feelings and go ahead and kill that loved one. That's exactly what happened in Terri's case.

That isn't remotely what happened in the Terri Schiavo case. If you have actually read about it, you've read nothing but baseless accusatory blog articles on it. Nothing from the courts, nothing from Terri's guardian ad litem, nothing from the husband who tried for years to help her. She was medically incapable of recovering and was functioning almost exclusively due to the capacity only in her brain stem. If you actually care about knowing the case, I'd recommend looking it up and actually researching why a conservative Christian judge and a government Guardian ad-litem felt that all possible avenues for Schiavo had been tried and that in all reasonable sense of it, she wouldn't have wanted to have lived as she was and would forever be (without several eurekas in the world of neurological rehab). This is all in the court record.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

And for those with the chronic pain?

I'm not a medical researcher, so I'm not sure how to treat pain. I do think that doctors can do much better regarding alleviating pain.

The good ole, I don't know the subject, but here is my opinion. In order to alleviate some pain, you need to remove consciousness as well.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

And for those with the chronic pain?

I'm not a medical researcher, so I'm not sure how to treat pain. I do think that doctors can do much better regarding alleviating pain.

And 2 + 2 = 5 for sufficiently large values of 2.

The reality is that medicines have side effects. There comes a point for every medicine where you can't take the dose higher.

The Terri Schiavo case proved that great care doesn't make forcing life on someone sensical.

I've read a lot about Terri, and contrary to what much of what the mainstream media said about her, according to her own family as well as some on the nursing staff Terri was sentient. Her family wanted to take care of her, but Terri's husband, Michael Schiavo, demanded that she die. He got his wish. Some who were present when Terri was being starved and dehydrated to death said she literally shrieked in pain.

That is a fabrication.

I think it's essentially correct. I'd sooner trust the Schindlers than the media.

Because you want to believe.

Terri's husband moved heaven and earth to try and seek treatment for his wife.

Actually, while poor Terri resided in a hospital with severe brain damage her husband Michael Schiavo had a live-in girlfriend whom he was having children with. So while he didn't move "heaven and earth" he was moving something much smaller.

Besides, I think the whole reason Terri had brain trauma was a result of an initial murder attempt on the part of Michael Schiavo. Schiavo completed Terri's murder later on with the help of the court system..

He had a live-in girlfriend because his wife was gone and he knew it. Just because her body was still alive doesn't mean there was a person there--and there's no reason for a widower not to find someone else. And your "murder" hypothesis is crazy.

So let me conclude this post saying that I don't believe much of the rhetoric from the suicide advocates here. I don't buy for one minute that they're the compassionate people they claim to be. If they were, then obviously they wouldn't curse out and insult anybody who disagrees with them.

Or people that have seen death take too damn long. Whether days, weeks, months, or years.

Oh, it's very possible they've seen people die. The cause of those deaths is unknown.

Faith. Anything that doesn't match your belief is automatically false.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

That isn't remotely what happened in the Terri Schiavo case. If you have actually read about it, you've read nothing but baseless accusatory blog articles on it. Nothing from the courts, nothing from Terri's guardian ad litem, nothing from the husband who tried for years to help her. She was medically incapable of recovering and was functioning almost exclusively due to the capacity only in her brain stem. If you actually care about knowing the case, I'd recommend looking it up and actually researching why a conservative Christian judge and a government Guardian ad-litem felt that all possible avenues for Schiavo had been tried and that in all reasonable sense of it, she wouldn't have wanted to have lived as she was and would forever be (without several eurekas in the world of neurological rehab). This is all in the court record.

It doesn't matter how many eurekas there were, that which made her her was gone. "Success" in neurological rehab would have produced a new person in the existing body--it would have been a horribly unethical thing to do.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

And for those with the chronic pain?

I'm not a medical researcher, so I'm not sure how to treat pain. I do think that doctors can do much better regarding alleviating pain.

The good ole, I don't know the subject, but here is my opinion. In order to alleviate some pain, you need to remove consciousness as well.

That's what happened to my father--he couldn't lay down new memory under the high doses of morphine needed. Short term memory only, anything not in the room didn't exist. (He still had his old memories, though.)

And as you go higher it will take out your breathing reflex, also.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

I don't know what you mean here by "faith-based."

That you take certain points as absolute truth without evidence and call any evidence to the contrary false.

You can label something any way you want, but it doesn't make it an less true. In any case, I do know of evidence for everything I've said on this thread and have good reasons to doubt what my opponents claim.

...defining good care as care that makes the patient comfortable.

Yes, and I would add that good care strives to ensure the dignity of the patient and heals the patient to the fullest extent possible.

Patients asking for euthanasia are not able to be healed!

Hmmm. I have no idea how you can know that to be true. I should explain that by "heal" I don't necessarily mean a miracle cure but any kind of improvement in a person's medical condition.

Sometimes that's not something the doctors can do.

And sometimes it's very possible for doctors and other health-care professionals to do but tragically doesn't get done.

See what I mean by faith-based?

No--what does your label mean?

You're taking it on faith that patients can be helped.

I know patients can be healed. I am one such patient.

We can know that before they took that action they felt that the value of continued life was negative.

And how do you know that?

Because otherwise they wouldn't have chosen to leave it.

Did they freely choose to die, or were they pressured to do so? I know it's very common for us disabled people to be abused by cruel people who try to make us out to be burdens on society. I know of cases in which disabled persons were driven to take their own lives as a result of being abused and neglected.

Plenty of people are unwilling to accept that a loved one is gone.

Maybe, but plenty know better than to conclude that a loved-one is "gone." Evidently, a lot of people don't care what they think. Even if their loved one cannot recover, it seems monstrously cruel to me to disregard their feelings and go ahead and kill that loved one. That's exactly what happened in Terri's case.

If they want to care for a pseudo-corpse that's their business, but they have no right to put the burden on anyone else.

Oh--your love and compassion is simply overwhelming! Characterizing a family who loved and cared for a family member only wanting her to be saved from execution as burdening society with a "pseudo-corpse" really exposes this death fundamentalism for the evil that it is.

And the doctors were right. Autopsy showed much of her brain was gone. Tissue which isn't there certainly can't function.

That's ridiculous. You can't tell from an autopsy if a murder victim was sentient--you investigate to see if that victim was sentient prior to the murder by asking the people who knew the victim.

She was not sentient--the part of the brain that houses consciousness was gone.

I don't believe that. Terri's family, the Schindlers, testified that Terri reacted to them in a very conscious way. I'll believe them.

Once again, you demonstrate why I say faith-based. Her forebrain was gone. They were interpreting random movements as consciousness.

No they weren't.

People see random reflex movements that sometimes happen in relation to what they said and interpret it as a response to what they said.

The Schindlers are not stupid people. They knew Terri and their relationship with her and how she related to them.

Faith, once again. What they claim is impossible.

And where is the evidence for that?

I think I've had enough of replying to your posts.

 

[abaddon]

You can't tell from an autopsy if a murder victim was sentient--you investigate to see if that victim was sentient prior to the murder by asking the people who knew the victim.

Ignore brain science and ask emotionally distraught superstitious people instead?

That's a weird thing for an atheist to be saying.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

I'm not a medical researcher, so I'm not sure how to treat pain. I do think that doctors can do much better regarding alleviating pain.

The good ole, I don't know the subject, but here is my opinion.

That's your opinion, of course.

In order to alleviate some pain, you need to remove consciousness as well.

LOL--Advil works for me.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

That isn't remotely what happened in the Terri Schiavo case. If you have actually read about it, you've read nothing but baseless accusatory blog articles on it. Nothing from the courts, nothing from Terri's guardian ad litem, nothing from the husband who tried for years to help her. She was medically incapable of recovering and was functioning almost exclusively due to the capacity only in her brain stem. If you actually care about knowing the case, I'd recommend looking it up and actually researching why a conservative Christian judge and a government Guardian ad-litem felt that all possible avenues for Schiavo had been tried and that in all reasonable sense of it, she wouldn't have wanted to have lived as she was and would forever be (without several eurekas in the world of neurological rehab). This is all in the court record.

If reading "nothing but baseless accusatory blog articles" is irresponsible, then why should I believe what pro-suicide advocates say in an online forum?

Anyway, I will believe the Schindlers about Terri and what was done to her.

 

[TomC]

Anyway, I will believe the Schindlers about Terri and what was done to her.

Why?

Why them, instead of her husband and all the medical professionals?

Frankly, I felt terribly sorry for all of Terri's family. It was a total nightmare. And it wasn't until after she died that the reality of her brain dysfunction became clear.

I understand why her parents clung to straws. Clung to any shred of hope that their child would come back. Parents are like that. They're not particularly rational concerning their own child.

But there was a post mortem examination and it turned out that the medical staff did have a better understanding of the reality than her parents had.

Terri was gone and had been for a while.
Tom

 

[Unknown Soldier]

Anyway, I will believe the Schindlers about Terri and what was done to her.

Why?

Why them, instead of her husband...

I think that Michael Schiavo is responsible for Terri's brain trauma. She suffered her injuries in his initial attempt to murder her.

...and all the medical professionals?

Who are they, and why believe them? The Schindlers impress me as decent, sensible people who were desperately trying to save Terri's life.

Frankly, I felt terribly sorry for all of Terri's family. It was a total nightmare. And it wasn't until after she died that the reality of her brain dysfunction became clear.

After Terri's murder, an autopsy was performed on the order of her murderer, Michael Schiavo. The autopsy revealed that Terri had extensive brain damage, something that was never in dispute.

I understand why her parents clung to straws. Clung to any shred of hope that their child would come back. Parents are like that. They're not particularly rational concerning their own child.

And if they are "irrational" in defending their child, then that supposed irrationality gives the state the green light to murder that child.

But there was a post mortem examination and it turned out that the medical staff did have a better understanding of the reality than her parents had.

I don't think so. Like I said, Terri's family were in the best position to know her. Even if they were deluded about her condition, then I see no reason why they could not have kept her alive to be with them. They made it clear that they were willing to do so. It was terribly cruel what was done not just to Terri but to her family.

Terri was gone and had been for a while.

She was always a human being loved by her family. It appears that nobody here cares what they felt. They wanted her six feet under, and they got their wish.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I'm not a medical researcher, so I'm not sure how to treat pain. I do think that doctors can do much better regarding alleviating pain.

The good ole, I don't know the subject, but here is my opinion.

That's your opinion, of course.

In order to alleviate some pain, you need to remove consciousness as well.

LOL--Advil works for me.

Thanks, I needed the laugh.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

So let me ask to make sure I have your position accurately, unknown soldier:

Is it correct to state that your position is that
0. even when there is no chance of recovery,
1. Assisted suicide, aka death with dignity, is always worse than living

Yes. I think that that is a safe bet.

2. No one should be allowed to choose it

Way back in the OP I asked who should be allowed to choose physician assisted suicide (PAS). Did you answer that question?

Anyway, I'm not completely sure. Is anybody obligated to assist the suicide? At the very least, anybody who requests PAS should be screened to make sure that she or he is not being pressured to "choose" suicide.

3. Laws should be passed to punish those who either try to die...

No, but we already protect such people from killing themselves.

...or try to help someone’s request to die

Such laws are already on the books, and I support them. Just in case you're thinking of trying it, doing so is a felony in most states.

I am asking here because I’m not sure I understand correctly, so please correct any of the points I have misstated.

Generally, I just want the truth about this "right to die" to be understood by everybody as the dangerous lie that it is.

 

[Rhea]

Way back in the OP I asked who should be allowed to choose physician assisted suicide (PAS). Did you answer that question?

No, I came onto the thread later.

I’ll answer now:

• Everyone has the right to die.
• I would not expect anyone to help them (to do it peacefully and painlessly, for example,) unless they were in a severe unwanted situation with no hope of recovery. Examples of this include ALS, Parkinsons, Alzheimer’s, and brain cancer.
• If a person were in a severe unwanted situation with no hope of recovery, I would expect a humane society to make it possible for them to elect and carry out a pain-free death with dignity.
• I would expect that society to put in place a path that would help to protect against suicides that are coerced or for reversible reasons.

Generally, I just want the truth about this "right to die" to be understood by everybody as the dangerous lie that it is.

By making this claim you mock the pain of those who suffer from serious diseases that have no hope of recovery and no ability to alleviate symptoms short of loss of sentience. I gave you the story in my family, and you completely ignored it. Not one word. That told me a lot.

So if you don't see my point, then let me spell it out for you: For many of us, physician assisted suicide is a means by which we can rid the world of people we do not value. That's why those of us we value have no "right" to die.

You have not presented any evidence that physician assisted death with dignity has led to anyone “getting rid of unwanted people.” So you want to stop people from having this choice, with no data to support your claim of a problem with it.


Meanwhile, there is a GREAT DEAL of evidence that it has helped people in dire circumstances who elected to avoid being tortured by their disease. You have not shown any compassion to those people and the suffering they endured, and the choice they made freely and clearly. They were valued by their loved ones, but asked to not be forced to endure pain or torture. And their loved ones - valuing them - did not imprison them against their will and prevent them from their choice.


Your premise states that you support my mother being strapped to a chair for years while she cries out, every day, for help that no one can give. Or maybe you support them drugging her into a stupor. I’m not sure exactly what your care plan would be. She wants to die, though, not be strapped to a chair, unable to move, slowly losing her ability to eat, drink, and ultimately breathe.

How long would you watch her slowly suffocate while you withhold her right to die from something besides suffocation? Or are you okay saying, “no, it’s suffocation for you. You have NO RIGHT to any other kind of death”?

I don't think so. Like I said, Terri's family were in the best position to know her.

And by this claim you assert that I am in the best position to know the will of my mother - yet you want us to bend to YOUR decision, and you have never even met her.

Sounds like you want one rule for you and a different rule for me.


It is moot for us now, because she is in a nursing home and no longer able to speak. But she is there because my state did not have that option for her when she was still able to make her wishes known. So she has only been able stay there, begging for someone to help her die - until she could no longer speak at all. 3,000 days in a row of torture that will never ever “heal.”

Myself and all of my siblings have made it clear to each other that we do not, under any circumstances, want to live those 10 years. No, absolutely not. That is not living, that is not life. We will help each other make sure we are not prevented from death with dignity. We all regret not helping her get to a place where she could do what she had always planned to do.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I don't know what you mean here by "faith-based."

That you take certain points as absolute truth without evidence and call any evidence to the contrary false.

You can label something any way you want, but it doesn't make it an less true. In any case, I do know of evidence for everything I've said on this thread and have good reasons to doubt what my opponents claim.

Your "good reason" is faith--it disagrees with what you think.

...defining good care as care that makes the patient comfortable.

Yes, and I would add that good care strives to ensure the dignity of the patient and heals the patient to the fullest extent possible.

Patients asking for euthanasia are not able to be healed!

Hmmm. I have no idea how you can know that to be true. I should explain that by "heal" I don't necessarily mean a miracle cure but any kind of improvement in a person's medical condition.

Think they haven't already tried?

An interesting thing I ran into recently: Over several countries and many decades the rate remains right around 4% of people choosing that option. What people choose is obviously not related to how many advocate for it being legal.

Sometimes that's not something the doctors can do.

And sometimes it's very possible for doctors and other health-care professionals to do but tragically doesn't get done.

See what I mean by faith-based?

No--what does your label mean?

You are assuming the doctors can do more.

You're taking it on faith that patients can be helped.

I know patients can be healed. I am one such patient.

Just because some patients can be healed (and you're assuming there's more than can be done than has been) doesn't mean all can be.

Consider the woman I knew who chose suicide. She knew the medical situation--basically flat in bed for the rest of her life. Yes, the immediate problem could have been treated--but the recovery time exceeded her expected lifespan. She wasn't ever even sitting up in bed again.

We can know that before they took that action they felt that the value of continued life was negative.

And how do you know that?

Because otherwise they wouldn't have chosen to leave it.

Did they freely choose to die, or were they pressured to do so? I know it's very common for us disabled people to be abused by cruel people who try to make us out to be burdens on society. I know of cases in which disabled persons were driven to take their own lives as a result of being abused and neglected.

Look above--4% choose that path across quite a range of places. That says the choice is internal, not external.

Plenty of people are unwilling to accept that a loved one is gone.

Maybe, but plenty know better than to conclude that a loved-one is "gone." Evidently, a lot of people don't care what they think. Even if their loved one cannot recover, it seems monstrously cruel to me to disregard their feelings and go ahead and kill that loved one. That's exactly what happened in Terri's case.

If they want to care for a pseudo-corpse that's their business, but they have no right to put the burden on anyone else.

Oh--your love and compassion is simply overwhelming! Characterizing a family who loved and cared for a family member only wanting her to be saved from execution as burdening society with a "pseudo-corpse" really exposes this death fundamentalism for the evil that it is.

I call them a "pseudo-corpse" because to me someone must have at least some consciousness to be a person. In such cases I see the person as already dead, only the shell remains.

And the doctors were right. Autopsy showed much of her brain was gone. Tissue which isn't there certainly can't function.

That's ridiculous. You can't tell from an autopsy if a murder victim was sentient--you investigate to see if that victim was sentient prior to the murder by asking the people who knew the victim.

Yes you can--the part of the brain where consciousness resides was gone. A missing body part can't do anything.

She was not sentient--the part of the brain that houses consciousness was gone.

I don't believe that. Terri's family, the Schindlers, testified that Terri reacted to them in a very conscious way. I'll believe them.

Once again, you demonstrate why I say faith-based. Her forebrain was gone. They were interpreting random movements as consciousness.

No they weren't.

Faith. Look up what the autopsy said.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

In order to alleviate some pain, you need to remove consciousness as well.

LOL--Advil works for me.

Then you've never had serious pain.

I've had kidney stones--far enough up the pain scale that I've had low doses of morphine.

My father had cancer--near the end what was required to control the pain took out the ability to make long term memory and even before that it was a choice between pain control and mental function.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I don't think so. Like I said, Terri's family were in the best position to know her. Even if they were deluded about her condition, then I see no reason why they could not have kept her alive to be with them. They made it clear that they were willing to do so. It was terribly cruel what was done not just to Terri but to her family.

I must disagree with the concept that her family was in the best position to know her. No, the adults she lives with (in this case her husband) are in the best position to know her.