The Netherlands has the most liberal requirements—depression alone is considered a sufficient justification
To offer additional explanation here: the Dutch euthanasia legislation doesn't explicitly enumerate allowed conditions for termination, it merely requires the patient to be experiencing irremediable suffering.
While that may qualify as "most liberal" for the patient, I'm not convinced our legislation is really that progressive: the legislation merely shields a practitioner from homicide charges iff proper procedure is observed. But "proper procedure" cannot be vetted or signed-off before the act; a criminal investigation will always be opened (as it is required for all non-natural deaths), but will be dropped if a medical ethics board agrees (post facto!) with the practitioner's decision.
From the NVVE site (Dutch Society for Voluntary Termination) [1], a practitioner must:
- be convinced the patient's decision is voluntary and well-informed
- be convinced the patient is experiencing irremediable suffering
(literally "indefinite and unbearable suffering")
- inform the patient about their situation and prognosis
- agree with the patient that no acceptable alternatives exist
- collect at least one second opinion (from a non-treating phycisian)
that agrees with all the above
- perform the procedure according to medical standards
I don't understand why helping people who want to die is illegal in most countries. It's unfathomable why some people are against that. If I become deeply sick when I am of age I will probably also want to decide when I want to die and not die slowly and painfully.
People who are against letting people choose their own death is having a selfish and evil stance, there is no way to excuse that.
Because then your kids could forge a signature on a fake letter to get your inheritance money.
Because then companies that happen to profit from your death have an incentive to convince you that you should die, using manipulative advertising and marketing.
Because then people who are highly depressed might kill themselves with assistance from a doctor, when an alternate route could cure them.
Because then the doctor might forge evidence showing that you wanted to be killed and it could be hard for the police to track down. Maybe they only use the attack against certain high-reward targets.
Because then somebody who is impulsive might agree to be killed when he would've regretted it later if he were still alive.
I tend to be in favor of this for people who legitimately want to die, but there's something to be said for the simplicity of "The autopsy showed poison, so we have a murder case." I could be convinced to make it illegal if somebody found some really plausible attacks that could be used against me; and could be convinced to make it legal if we found and required a scientific test with a legally-enforcable chain-of-custody that proved I was in my right mind when I asked to be killed.
One concern is, what if the person doesn't really want to die but the "care"givers want their ordeal to be over, or want to collect an inheritance, or collect an inheritance before it's all gobbled up by end-of-life care?
In genuine cases of wanting out, I support it, but I'm not sure how to design the right controls around it to be fully comfortable with it.
I think it's related to christian morality.
They belive something along the lines of "God gave you your life and only Him can decide when it should end"
It's mostly a vestige of religion. Life is considered sacred and it is not supposed to be your own choice whether you want to live or die but up to god in some form or other.
This then became enshrined in law as well as in medical practice (though in medicine there has long been a recognition that not all life extending medical practice is compatible with medical ethics doctors are still bound by the laws of the land and in plenty of cases doctors that assisted with suicide have been charged with murder).
Quite a few countries have now moved to the point where in the case of grave illness or pain you have the ability to request an end to your life.
There are plenty of fathomable reasons why some people are against that, just as there are plenty of fathomable reasons why others are for it. Anyone who professes not to understand half of a debate might reconsider their confidence on the issue.
Libertarian here, so I'm comfortable with people owning their own bodies and being solely responsible for what they do with it.
Having said that, I'd like to make the case for keeping it illegal because I believe there's a strong case to be made. Killing yourself should be a unique, extraordinary event in both your life and the lives of those around you. We should never make a system out of killing people, because systems can be gamed.
In a way, this is much the same discussion as the old "would you torture a terrorist to determine where a nuclear bomb was waiting to go off?"
Yes. Yes I would. I would consider such an act to be horribly immoral, and I might regret it to the day I die, but yes, I would. Likewise I'd take my own life or help people I love take theirs -- but I would worry over whether I did the right thing or not. If I were a religious person, I might consider my act immoral. But I'd still do it.
Once you create a system out of killing people -- people go in one side, forms get filled out, and dead people come out the other -- you've taken a step towards the state arbitrarily deciding who lives or dies based on its own system of value and not the individual's. So in a way, you give up much more in this fashion than if you simply outlawed it and never prosecuted. (Which is probably what happens 90% of the time in countries where assisted suicide is illegal.)
So yeah, I'd torture the terrorist. But I'd raise holy hell for any system of government where torture was a accepted way of doing things. Good grief, can you imagine what just a little tweaking would do to a system like that?
Speeding is illegal. If you want to speed on the way to the hospital because somebody you love is in danger? Speed. By all means, speed. I'll be the first person to protest any law enforcement person that tries to stop you.
But speeding should probably still be illegal for systemic reasons not related at all to your loved one being ill.
You may find this amazing, but not everyone shares your world view.
No one wants to suffer. And no one wants to see other people suffer. But the truth is suffering is a part of life.
Some people I know and love have suffered their last few years of life. And other people I know and love have taken their own lives. My personal experience is that the individuals who allowed death to come on its terms, instead of rushing to that conclusion, left everyone around them with more strength, peace, happiness, and personal growth.
The people who ended their life because they didn't want to suffer anymore left a wake of suffering and trouble around them when they went.
It's unfathomable why you wouldn't see the difference.
Beautiful story. I have several friends in the Netherlands whose parents (terminally ill, i.e. MLS, cancer) opted for euthanasia. They were all happy with the process and the outcome.
Unless advances in immunotherapy significantly change the outlook, I'd rather move back to my home country for a dignified death on my own terms.
I've seen too many cases where several rounds of chemo extended life by just a few months under dismal circumstances for the patient and their family. Lives revolved around hospital visits while -- depending on the type/stage/location of cancer -- chances of recovery are slim to none. False hope and misery. Bankruptcy. Why bother?
While I personally, regardless my health would never end my life...
...anyone that believes they would be able to deal level of suffering, mindlessness, toll on friends & family, etc. - should try experiencing it for themselves to see if they would be able to deal with it and provide aid to those they've forced to live on.
Everyone should have the right to die, to believe otherwise is inhuman.
Take luck out of the picture. Learn how to meditate. I find that when the suckiness of mortality intrudes upon my thoughts, twenty minutes of meditation clears my mind and prepares it for handling more immediate concerns.
Being trapped in negative patterns of thought can be unhealthy. It's best to break those patterns. Exercise is also very helpful.
Here's a way of thinking about it that might make it a little lighter. First, you have to understand that the version of you at this moment is different from the version of you yesterday. You don't feel what you felt yesterday. All that is left are memories, which are somehow engraved in your brain. The part of you that survives is purely physical. So in a sense, dying and living are the same thing: you die at every femtosecond of living. Dying is not special. You (as anyone else) have been doing it for many years now.
If this doesn't work for you, then consider the following. We are all living beings, and sometimes some of us die, and sometimes new beings are born. But who says that those living beings aren't just one big living being? Our brains tell us so. But this view is only an artifact of the brain. If our brains were all interconnected more strongly, then I bet our brains would view us as one living being. So what you can take from this is that dying is just like losing a few brain cells. This is also something that you have been doing for years (in fact billions of years). So in this view, you never die until, of course, the universe ends.
Let's look at it another way, the enormity of death shows us the precious value of being alive. GO out and live your life! Go do what makes you happy and feel alive. If you couldn't die, you wouldn't know you were alive, like a rock.
Many of those who have come close to death claim to feel more alive than they ever have, unless they are drugged out by pain killers and such.
The doctor's response to the question if he'd recommend her mother to go through cancer treatment reminded me a lot of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3313570 [How Doctors Die]... why is the standard answer still to make people suffer for extending their life just a few months or years?
> The doctor's response to the question if he'd recommend her mother to go through cancer treatment reminded me a lot of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3313570 [How Doctors Die]...
Though I can't think of anything strongly against Switzerland at the moment, this is another reason for me to despise governments and law... where one can't even aid someone in ending their unnecessary, completely pointless suffering without getting their life ruined? Yet states often reserve the hypocritical "right" to execute the death penalty.
A sad read, worth it.
Lets flip the coin for a moment. Supposing you had a 30 year old family member who wanted to die. The choice she gives you is, i'll hang myself or jump in front of a moving car.. or you can let me die with my family surrounding me peacefully. Would you do it?
Note there is no mention of why she wants to die. If there is a cure or it can be fixed will you go along with it?
That seems like a rather unlikely scenario. People don't just decide they want to die on a whim. And it's not like in countries with legalized euthanasia you can just go to a doctor tomorrow morning, declare you're not feeling so well, and you'll be scheduled for termination later that afternoon.
I for one would not assist in any suicide without knowing why someone wants to die, and given that my country has a process that allows for legal euthanasia, I'm not sure why your hypothetical family member would ask me to commit this crime rather than going through official channels, especially since we are apparently so estranged that I was completely unaware of her struggles and death wish until this request. The best I can do in your scenario is warn the authorities of the suicide risk, and recommend that she does not throw herself in front of a car or train, because it's so extremely inconsiderate towards the driver and/or passengers, and is that really the way you wish to go / be remembered?
Oh, and perhaps recommend that if for whatever reason she does find the opportunity to kill herself, don't try to poison yourself unless you really know what you're doing. Killing yourself with an overdose of painkillers sounds like a really good idea at first, but it's likely that hanging yourself or cutting your wrists doesn't seem like such a bad way to go in hindsight, when you're dying of liver failure over the next few days.
Saddens me that we still cannot find solutions to bring them back to healthy. Instead of spending too much time on how law can understand it, we should find way to remove hurdles for medicine to progress.
Why? They haven't even proven human revival is possible. Until they do it is nothing more than vaporware. More of a scam. And this statement... "We believe that the damage caused by current cryopreservation is limited and can someday be repaired in the future." I don't really care what you believe when selling a scientific solution. What is proven? Why do you believe that? Good marketing? Actual data that shows it is limited?
But hey, by the time they fail to prove it correct you'll be dead and have no recourse or care. Thanks for the money.
[+] [-] tremon|10 years ago|reply
To offer additional explanation here: the Dutch euthanasia legislation doesn't explicitly enumerate allowed conditions for termination, it merely requires the patient to be experiencing irremediable suffering.
While that may qualify as "most liberal" for the patient, I'm not convinced our legislation is really that progressive: the legislation merely shields a practitioner from homicide charges iff proper procedure is observed. But "proper procedure" cannot be vetted or signed-off before the act; a criminal investigation will always be opened (as it is required for all non-natural deaths), but will be dropped if a medical ethics board agrees (post facto!) with the practitioner's decision.
From the NVVE site (Dutch Society for Voluntary Termination) [1], a practitioner must:
[1] https://www.nvve.nl/wat-euthanasie/zorgvuldige-uitvoering[+] [-] rev_bird|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JackFr|10 years ago|reply
Wow.
[+] [-] dominotw|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] staticelf|10 years ago|reply
People who are against letting people choose their own death is having a selfish and evil stance, there is no way to excuse that.
[+] [-] MichaelBurge|10 years ago|reply
Because then companies that happen to profit from your death have an incentive to convince you that you should die, using manipulative advertising and marketing.
Because then people who are highly depressed might kill themselves with assistance from a doctor, when an alternate route could cure them.
Because then the doctor might forge evidence showing that you wanted to be killed and it could be hard for the police to track down. Maybe they only use the attack against certain high-reward targets.
Because then somebody who is impulsive might agree to be killed when he would've regretted it later if he were still alive.
I tend to be in favor of this for people who legitimately want to die, but there's something to be said for the simplicity of "The autopsy showed poison, so we have a murder case." I could be convinced to make it illegal if somebody found some really plausible attacks that could be used against me; and could be convinced to make it legal if we found and required a scientific test with a legally-enforcable chain-of-custody that proved I was in my right mind when I asked to be killed.
[+] [-] sokoloff|10 years ago|reply
In genuine cases of wanting out, I support it, but I'm not sure how to design the right controls around it to be fully comfortable with it.
[+] [-] naringas|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jacquesm|10 years ago|reply
This then became enshrined in law as well as in medical practice (though in medicine there has long been a recognition that not all life extending medical practice is compatible with medical ethics doctors are still bound by the laws of the land and in plenty of cases doctors that assisted with suicide have been charged with murder).
Quite a few countries have now moved to the point where in the case of grave illness or pain you have the ability to request an end to your life.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_euthanasia
[+] [-] lambdaphagy|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DanielBMarkham|10 years ago|reply
Having said that, I'd like to make the case for keeping it illegal because I believe there's a strong case to be made. Killing yourself should be a unique, extraordinary event in both your life and the lives of those around you. We should never make a system out of killing people, because systems can be gamed.
In a way, this is much the same discussion as the old "would you torture a terrorist to determine where a nuclear bomb was waiting to go off?"
Yes. Yes I would. I would consider such an act to be horribly immoral, and I might regret it to the day I die, but yes, I would. Likewise I'd take my own life or help people I love take theirs -- but I would worry over whether I did the right thing or not. If I were a religious person, I might consider my act immoral. But I'd still do it.
Once you create a system out of killing people -- people go in one side, forms get filled out, and dead people come out the other -- you've taken a step towards the state arbitrarily deciding who lives or dies based on its own system of value and not the individual's. So in a way, you give up much more in this fashion than if you simply outlawed it and never prosecuted. (Which is probably what happens 90% of the time in countries where assisted suicide is illegal.)
So yeah, I'd torture the terrorist. But I'd raise holy hell for any system of government where torture was a accepted way of doing things. Good grief, can you imagine what just a little tweaking would do to a system like that?
Speeding is illegal. If you want to speed on the way to the hospital because somebody you love is in danger? Speed. By all means, speed. I'll be the first person to protest any law enforcement person that tries to stop you.
But speeding should probably still be illegal for systemic reasons not related at all to your loved one being ill.
[+] [-] danieltillett|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dominotw|10 years ago|reply
Intelligence Squared Debate: Euthanasia Should be Legalised https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ge7dlzMCbos
They talk about examples from patients in states where its already legal (under some circumstances).
[+] [-] frogpelt|10 years ago|reply
No one wants to suffer. And no one wants to see other people suffer. But the truth is suffering is a part of life.
Some people I know and love have suffered their last few years of life. And other people I know and love have taken their own lives. My personal experience is that the individuals who allowed death to come on its terms, instead of rushing to that conclusion, left everyone around them with more strength, peace, happiness, and personal growth.
The people who ended their life because they didn't want to suffer anymore left a wake of suffering and trouble around them when they went.
It's unfathomable why you wouldn't see the difference.
[+] [-] notlisted|10 years ago|reply
Unless advances in immunotherapy significantly change the outlook, I'd rather move back to my home country for a dignified death on my own terms.
I've seen too many cases where several rounds of chemo extended life by just a few months under dismal circumstances for the patient and their family. Lives revolved around hospital visits while -- depending on the type/stage/location of cancer -- chances of recovery are slim to none. False hope and misery. Bankruptcy. Why bother?
[+] [-] nxzero|10 years ago|reply
...anyone that believes they would be able to deal level of suffering, mindlessness, toll on friends & family, etc. - should try experiencing it for themselves to see if they would be able to deal with it and provide aid to those they've forced to live on.
Everyone should have the right to die, to believe otherwise is inhuman.
[+] [-] akanet|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] crusso|10 years ago|reply
Being trapped in negative patterns of thought can be unhealthy. It's best to break those patterns. Exercise is also very helpful.
[+] [-] amelius|10 years ago|reply
If this doesn't work for you, then consider the following. We are all living beings, and sometimes some of us die, and sometimes new beings are born. But who says that those living beings aren't just one big living being? Our brains tell us so. But this view is only an artifact of the brain. If our brains were all interconnected more strongly, then I bet our brains would view us as one living being. So what you can take from this is that dying is just like losing a few brain cells. This is also something that you have been doing for years (in fact billions of years). So in this view, you never die until, of course, the universe ends.
[+] [-] alanwatts|10 years ago|reply
Let's look at it another way, the enormity of death shows us the precious value of being alive. GO out and live your life! Go do what makes you happy and feel alive. If you couldn't die, you wouldn't know you were alive, like a rock.
Many of those who have come close to death claim to feel more alive than they ever have, unless they are drugged out by pain killers and such.
[+] [-] Delmania|10 years ago|reply
Why? The fact we are aware of our death is important.
[+] [-] endymi0n|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] masklinn|10 years ago|reply
Of Atul Gawande's "Being Mortal" as well.
[+] [-] loonattic|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rtkwe|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sickbeard|10 years ago|reply
Note there is no mention of why she wants to die. If there is a cure or it can be fixed will you go along with it?
[+] [-] Thiez|10 years ago|reply
I for one would not assist in any suicide without knowing why someone wants to die, and given that my country has a process that allows for legal euthanasia, I'm not sure why your hypothetical family member would ask me to commit this crime rather than going through official channels, especially since we are apparently so estranged that I was completely unaware of her struggles and death wish until this request. The best I can do in your scenario is warn the authorities of the suicide risk, and recommend that she does not throw herself in front of a car or train, because it's so extremely inconsiderate towards the driver and/or passengers, and is that really the way you wish to go / be remembered?
Oh, and perhaps recommend that if for whatever reason she does find the opportunity to kill herself, don't try to poison yourself unless you really know what you're doing. Killing yourself with an overdose of painkillers sounds like a really good idea at first, but it's likely that hanging yourself or cutting your wrists doesn't seem like such a bad way to go in hindsight, when you're dying of liver failure over the next few days.
[+] [-] krijt|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] agumonkey|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kregasaurusrex|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] maaku|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bkmartin|10 years ago|reply
But hey, by the time they fail to prove it correct you'll be dead and have no recourse or care. Thanks for the money.
[+] [-] duskwuff|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tveita|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tubelite|10 years ago|reply