It’s not assisted dying. It is killing. That is important because doctors aren’t supposed to kill people. They can, and must, assist people in having as good a death as possible but everyone knows that’s not what euthanasia, or doctor-mediated killing, is.
If you do legalize killing, you are putting it in the hands of one person — the doctor — to decide if this particular killing meets whatever the exemption from the law of murder the particular legislation enables. The experience in Canada is there really is a slippery slope.
Finally, the issue isn’t whether a person has the right to die. Of course they do: (Edit: attempted) suicide has not been a criminal offence anywhere in decades (Edit: and any competent adult, and even many minors, can refuse life-prolonging treatment, or any treatment, for any reason.) The issue is whether a doctor (or anyone else—who says it has to be a doctor?—) can escape criminal penalties if he kills you at your request. And what if the doctor is unwilling? Is he guilty of professional misconduct and can lose his licence if he believes killing is morally wrong and refuses to comply with your request? In Canada he is: he must do the deed or find someone who will. The patient can legally compel him.
It is a dangerous, slippery slope for the very elderly. My mother was diagnosed with congestive heart failure at age 98, but was not put on oxygen, was ambulatory and could afford 24/7 care. She probably needed only a fraction of that. My older sister, her health proxy and executor, decided she didn't want to manage the staffers my mother would need, and despite offers to do this from several other siblings, forced my mother to leave the house she'd lived in for 61 years. My mother lived in a small hospice room at Agrace Hospice in Fitchburg, Wisconsin for a year and a week. She was ambulatory until 10 days before they got her to start the morphine. She had only been on oxygen for 2 months. I and several other relatives witness the Agrace hospice staff suggest or cajole my mother to start taking morphine, as they offer no other pain medication, not Tylenol, not Advil. While NY state, where I live does not allow large 250 bed hospices like Agrace to exist, this is absolutely the slippery slope to corporate "death management." My mother was a religious woman and her wish to meet her maker naturally was taken from her. No to any assisted death when the patient is not in constant pain and asking to end his or her life.
Morphine is useful for reducing the respiratory distress of severe congestive heart failure, even when there is no pain. It works better than oxygen. Advil and Tylenol will not relieve breathlessness. Another way to interpret your mother's care is that the hospice staff were trying to ease the distress of breathlessness (with morphine) and not trying to deliberately shorten her life. "You will feel better if you have some morphine," is a reasonable suggestion to someone who is too breathless at rest to talk or eat, and I wouldn't call it cajoling.
If your mother was a religious woman she would be aware of the principle of the double effect, which is that a drug (or other treatment) that may shorten life is permissible if it is given for the purpose of relieving pain or other distress, and not given for the other purpose of shortening life. The rationale for giving drugs like morphine has to be documented in the notes and the dose has to be reasonable for the goal of relieving symptoms. Nurses can't just give morphine willy-nilly on their own initiative until the patient stops breathing.
The danger with jurisdictions that allow euthanasia is that family members will assume wrongly that a loved one who is being treated for relief of symptoms dies because the doctors or nurses killed them. If euthanasia is illegal, i.e., is prosecuted as murder, I think it protects doctors from being accused of doing euthanasia on the sly because family members know how much trouble we'd be in if we did it.
I absolutely agree. Morphine removes the anxiety of trying to breathe. Anxiety causes one to take shallow, less efficient breaths. Careful doses are used by veterinarians for animals in respiratory distress.
Yes, my mother knew the double effect. My mother never asked to be in a facility, she never asked to end her life, she never asked to have morphine. She told me, 2 days after my sister forced her move to Agrace Hospice in Fitchburg, Wis, that "THIS IS THE WORST MISTAKE I'VE MADE IN MY LIFE. PLEASE CALL YOUR SISTERS AND TELL THEM I WANT TO GO HOME. .
This sounds more like a family dispute over who’s going to look after Mom, and recriminations arising therefrom, than anything to do with euthanasia, which isn’t legal in Wisconsin in any case.
The only point I wanted to make is that patients can be comforted skilfully and humanely without killing them. Leaving euthanasia illegal (=murder) doesn’t condemn people to suffering. I’ve made my point so I have nothing further to say.
Agrace Hospice in Fitchburg, Wisconsin is known widely for the pointed pressure their home care staff put on the adult children of the elderly to put their parents into the large center they built 20 years ago. It allowed hospitals to offload very ill patients there and to coerce frail elderly patients to 'avoid becoming a burden' by agreeing to leave their homes and go there, not knowing the only pain medication available will be morphine. I am in contact with several home caregivers in the area who tell me this story is not just in my family--there is a clear conflict of interest inherent in this proposed law, which fake "non-profit" hospices will profit from. Right down to the banks giving the loans, the developers and the highly paid managers. Both of my parents died their, both of them were told they had no other choice but to leave home and be there so as to "avoid becoming a burden."
I live in The Netherlands, where assisted dying is available for very old and sick people, and sometimes for younger people who suffer tremendously, but to me that's way too restricted. Who are we to judge if someone qualifies? People are brought into this world with medical help without questions asked. Why suddenly ask questions if someone wants medical help to get out? Especially since people who have kids can have regrets, people who die can't.
Personally I don't have kids because of this. I don't want to force life upon them without them having the option to say 'No thanks'. If they had this option, I probably would have kids.
We sometimes hear stories about people who wish to die, often because of depression, but then later are glad that they are still alive. I'm sure that happens. But that doesn't take into account there are still many more people who still wish to die and never get 'over' that. Millions of people are living with a constant passive wish to die. They won't kill themselves, but they experience life as a prison. I am one of those people. Some people with a more active wish to die are constantly banging the prison door. Always looking for ways to escape. And no treatment can help them because it's a very normal and justified feeling. Also, many people experience treatment as an extra lock on their door.
Now you might think if assisted dying would become more widely available people would immediately go and die, but the interesting thing is, the opposite often is the case. If you open the door of a prison, it no longer is a prison. If you say: 'The door is open, you can leave any time you like', the reaction of most people is: 'Okay, good to know, I might do it later'. And they continue their lives more happily because it's their choice. They are free to leave, they are free to stay. They no longer spend their lives banging the door, because the door is no longer there.
I experienced that with the Clinic for Assisted Dying in Switzerland. I looked into it. I can go there. It's available to me. But as soon as I knew it was available to me, I deeply felt withing myself that I didn't want it. At least not for now. And that feeling is something no doctor, treatment, hobbies, church, family or medication can give me. It opened the door of my prison.
And that's why I think available assisted dying can help so many people. Not so much by actually helping people to die, but by just being there. By giving people the right and opportunity. It mostly helps people to live. And of course it helps some people to actually die, but we really shouldn't be afraid that people will go there and die en masse. We can be sure that people who actually want to die, that they have legitimate reasons. And even if they don't, who are we to judge?
Peter - would your stance on AD change if palliative care did a better job with painkillers? When my aunt was dying of cancer, her PCA pump wouldn’t let her (and us) administer enough morphine to keep her comfortable at all times. If it were possible to give painkillers more liberally in terminally ill patients, would AD even be necessary?
My father died with/from dementia and related illnesses. My mother 4 months later. She was very frail, had lost a lot of weight and the will to live. She was affected by delirium in those last 4 months of her life.
Both of them, within the last few days or day of their life knew and said that they were dying.
My brother and I bore witness to my mother's passing. She talked with an end of life care nurse about what she was experiencing and was given something to ease her discomfort, at her request.
She passed later that evening.
I feel that the balance has to be right and I read with dismay of young people, people who are depressed, or just seemingly going through a bad patch in their lives being offered 'assisted suicide' as an option.
It's like this is now seem in some countries - The Netherlands and Canada spring to mind as an opportunity to get rid of people that the Government's various agencies deem to be unworthy of life.
It is a very dangerous road to go down and I think we need to stand firm with terminal illness and significant pain resulting to be the main framework with which to work within.
It’s not assisted dying. It is killing. That is important because doctors aren’t supposed to kill people. They can, and must, assist people in having as good a death as possible but everyone knows that’s not what euthanasia, or doctor-mediated killing, is.
If you do legalize killing, you are putting it in the hands of one person — the doctor — to decide if this particular killing meets whatever the exemption from the law of murder the particular legislation enables. The experience in Canada is there really is a slippery slope.
Finally, the issue isn’t whether a person has the right to die. Of course they do: (Edit: attempted) suicide has not been a criminal offence anywhere in decades (Edit: and any competent adult, and even many minors, can refuse life-prolonging treatment, or any treatment, for any reason.) The issue is whether a doctor (or anyone else—who says it has to be a doctor?—) can escape criminal penalties if he kills you at your request. And what if the doctor is unwilling? Is he guilty of professional misconduct and can lose his licence if he believes killing is morally wrong and refuses to comply with your request? In Canada he is: he must do the deed or find someone who will. The patient can legally compel him.
It is a dangerous, slippery slope for the very elderly. My mother was diagnosed with congestive heart failure at age 98, but was not put on oxygen, was ambulatory and could afford 24/7 care. She probably needed only a fraction of that. My older sister, her health proxy and executor, decided she didn't want to manage the staffers my mother would need, and despite offers to do this from several other siblings, forced my mother to leave the house she'd lived in for 61 years. My mother lived in a small hospice room at Agrace Hospice in Fitchburg, Wisconsin for a year and a week. She was ambulatory until 10 days before they got her to start the morphine. She had only been on oxygen for 2 months. I and several other relatives witness the Agrace hospice staff suggest or cajole my mother to start taking morphine, as they offer no other pain medication, not Tylenol, not Advil. While NY state, where I live does not allow large 250 bed hospices like Agrace to exist, this is absolutely the slippery slope to corporate "death management." My mother was a religious woman and her wish to meet her maker naturally was taken from her. No to any assisted death when the patient is not in constant pain and asking to end his or her life.
Morphine is useful for reducing the respiratory distress of severe congestive heart failure, even when there is no pain. It works better than oxygen. Advil and Tylenol will not relieve breathlessness. Another way to interpret your mother's care is that the hospice staff were trying to ease the distress of breathlessness (with morphine) and not trying to deliberately shorten her life. "You will feel better if you have some morphine," is a reasonable suggestion to someone who is too breathless at rest to talk or eat, and I wouldn't call it cajoling.
If your mother was a religious woman she would be aware of the principle of the double effect, which is that a drug (or other treatment) that may shorten life is permissible if it is given for the purpose of relieving pain or other distress, and not given for the other purpose of shortening life. The rationale for giving drugs like morphine has to be documented in the notes and the dose has to be reasonable for the goal of relieving symptoms. Nurses can't just give morphine willy-nilly on their own initiative until the patient stops breathing.
The danger with jurisdictions that allow euthanasia is that family members will assume wrongly that a loved one who is being treated for relief of symptoms dies because the doctors or nurses killed them. If euthanasia is illegal, i.e., is prosecuted as murder, I think it protects doctors from being accused of doing euthanasia on the sly because family members know how much trouble we'd be in if we did it.
I absolutely agree. Morphine removes the anxiety of trying to breathe. Anxiety causes one to take shallow, less efficient breaths. Careful doses are used by veterinarians for animals in respiratory distress.
Yes, my mother knew the double effect. My mother never asked to be in a facility, she never asked to end her life, she never asked to have morphine. She told me, 2 days after my sister forced her move to Agrace Hospice in Fitchburg, Wis, that "THIS IS THE WORST MISTAKE I'VE MADE IN MY LIFE. PLEASE CALL YOUR SISTERS AND TELL THEM I WANT TO GO HOME. .
Living wills are absolutely vital.
This sounds more like a family dispute over who’s going to look after Mom, and recriminations arising therefrom, than anything to do with euthanasia, which isn’t legal in Wisconsin in any case.
The only point I wanted to make is that patients can be comforted skilfully and humanely without killing them. Leaving euthanasia illegal (=murder) doesn’t condemn people to suffering. I’ve made my point so I have nothing further to say.
Agrace Hospice in Fitchburg, Wisconsin is known widely for the pointed pressure their home care staff put on the adult children of the elderly to put their parents into the large center they built 20 years ago. It allowed hospitals to offload very ill patients there and to coerce frail elderly patients to 'avoid becoming a burden' by agreeing to leave their homes and go there, not knowing the only pain medication available will be morphine. I am in contact with several home caregivers in the area who tell me this story is not just in my family--there is a clear conflict of interest inherent in this proposed law, which fake "non-profit" hospices will profit from. Right down to the banks giving the loans, the developers and the highly paid managers. Both of my parents died their, both of them were told they had no other choice but to leave home and be there so as to "avoid becoming a burden."
Died there, that is to say.
It's a short trip from 'legal' to 'mandated'.
Is it? Is there any country that has done mandated it?
Seems hospitals had some sort of mandate during covid, one that paid fairly well too.
Save children by cutting their junk off or kill them cuz they got the wrong junk.
The philosophical question of the 21st century.
I live in The Netherlands, where assisted dying is available for very old and sick people, and sometimes for younger people who suffer tremendously, but to me that's way too restricted. Who are we to judge if someone qualifies? People are brought into this world with medical help without questions asked. Why suddenly ask questions if someone wants medical help to get out? Especially since people who have kids can have regrets, people who die can't.
Personally I don't have kids because of this. I don't want to force life upon them without them having the option to say 'No thanks'. If they had this option, I probably would have kids.
We sometimes hear stories about people who wish to die, often because of depression, but then later are glad that they are still alive. I'm sure that happens. But that doesn't take into account there are still many more people who still wish to die and never get 'over' that. Millions of people are living with a constant passive wish to die. They won't kill themselves, but they experience life as a prison. I am one of those people. Some people with a more active wish to die are constantly banging the prison door. Always looking for ways to escape. And no treatment can help them because it's a very normal and justified feeling. Also, many people experience treatment as an extra lock on their door.
Now you might think if assisted dying would become more widely available people would immediately go and die, but the interesting thing is, the opposite often is the case. If you open the door of a prison, it no longer is a prison. If you say: 'The door is open, you can leave any time you like', the reaction of most people is: 'Okay, good to know, I might do it later'. And they continue their lives more happily because it's their choice. They are free to leave, they are free to stay. They no longer spend their lives banging the door, because the door is no longer there.
I experienced that with the Clinic for Assisted Dying in Switzerland. I looked into it. I can go there. It's available to me. But as soon as I knew it was available to me, I deeply felt withing myself that I didn't want it. At least not for now. And that feeling is something no doctor, treatment, hobbies, church, family or medication can give me. It opened the door of my prison.
And that's why I think available assisted dying can help so many people. Not so much by actually helping people to die, but by just being there. By giving people the right and opportunity. It mostly helps people to live. And of course it helps some people to actually die, but we really shouldn't be afraid that people will go there and die en masse. We can be sure that people who actually want to die, that they have legitimate reasons. And even if they don't, who are we to judge?
Peter - would your stance on AD change if palliative care did a better job with painkillers? When my aunt was dying of cancer, her PCA pump wouldn’t let her (and us) administer enough morphine to keep her comfortable at all times. If it were possible to give painkillers more liberally in terminally ill patients, would AD even be necessary?
Just look at Canada
89th k
Part of the Western satanic road to communism...😱
My father died with/from dementia and related illnesses. My mother 4 months later. She was very frail, had lost a lot of weight and the will to live. She was affected by delirium in those last 4 months of her life.
Both of them, within the last few days or day of their life knew and said that they were dying.
My brother and I bore witness to my mother's passing. She talked with an end of life care nurse about what she was experiencing and was given something to ease her discomfort, at her request.
She passed later that evening.
I feel that the balance has to be right and I read with dismay of young people, people who are depressed, or just seemingly going through a bad patch in their lives being offered 'assisted suicide' as an option.
It's like this is now seem in some countries - The Netherlands and Canada spring to mind as an opportunity to get rid of people that the Government's various agencies deem to be unworthy of life.
It is a very dangerous road to go down and I think we need to stand firm with terminal illness and significant pain resulting to be the main framework with which to work within.