Would you be in favour of assisted dying being introduced for terminally ill patients in your country?

It bothers me that in the U.S., we extend that courtesy to pets who are suffering from terminal issues. But we expect loved ones to hang on and suffer for no real reason other then the vague notion that the imaginary sky man would disapprove.

My grandma passed away 2 months shy of her 101st birthday. I visited her a few weeks before she passed, she was gaunt, skeletal, couldn't see us and was reacting to hallucination caused by their body slowly shutting down. She didn't even know my Mom and I were even there, and when we told her her daughter was there to see her, she said "No, I don't believe it" while staring blanking into the corner of the room. She wasn't suffering from dementia, it was cancer that came back which was killing her. What reason would we not allow a loved pet to suffer though that, but a blood relative, hell yeah, let them lay and suffer for weeks, months, years.

I don't have any grand ideas on how to prevent abuse, I just think it's humane to not let a thinking being suffer needlessly.

I Would be in favor of assisted dying being introduced for anyone who need it.

No one should be forced to live against their will.

Also its better to let a person die peacefully than having them die in gruesome ways (jumping in front of a car/train, jumping from a building, hanging themselves with family and loved ones having to see them in this state, etc ..

Absolutely - and not even just terminally ill. We typically recognize when pets are past their meaningful life - once things start getting difficult or painful enough, we let them off. Meanwhile if you have bone cancer and live an eternity of agony every second, "tough shit lol" I guess.

Sometimes you just can't fix things. Then it gets to be about harm reduction. Flogging someone whose continued existence will only bring them and everyone else pain... seems pretty horrific to me.

I'm strongly in favour of assisted dying. If an animal is too ill and can't be cured, we do the humane thing and put them down so they don't suffer. Yet if it's a human who is terminally ill, you're just told to suffer. How do animals have more rights than we do in death?

I've never understood how it's considered the "moral choice" from opponents of assisted dying to let people suffer.

We already have it in Switzerland.

I'm all for it. I actually had to promise my mum to off her in case she ever get's dementia. (She had to care for her own mother with dementia for almost a decade, to the point where everyone in the family was just glad when she finally died).

We humanely end the suffering of our old cat or dog. Heavens forbid we let grandma go out peacefully. Sorry gramma ya gotta slowly drown in your own blood because I’m afraid of theoretical scenarios in which the government decides to kill everyone.

Any person should have the choice to die at the moment they want with dignity.

If you've lived 40 years of a terrible life and want out, you should be able to.

The legislative side of this issue would be a mess, but the work has to start now.

Do you think people should be allowed to choose when to end their own life?

People who want to kill themselves will do it without permission.

What assisted dying provides is dignity for the person, and some amount of closure for the family.

I fully support assisted dying, because mandatory suffering is insanely cruel and inhumane.

The bioethicists have ready worked out the kinks of assisted suicide laws and I would defer to them. You don't offer it to people who cannot make the decision, you make sure people are fit to make the decision before they become too impaired, and you have plenty of checks for elder abuse, family pressure, and so on. Ultimately right now I can choose to end my life and that knowledge has made bearing some really painful medical things much easier.

We can all do things that make us less safe. We can drive, we can eat unhealthy food, we can drink alcohol, we can smoke, we can have unprotected sex, we can go base jumping, and so on. There is a concept called Dignity of Risk, meaning that while we have a duty of care, a responsibility to protect someone, we also have to respect that person enough to let them make choices, including choices we disagree with. If we don't have this then we treat people as less than human and in the process we are stopping them living the life they want.

If we are going to say life choices should be in your hands then I think death choices should be too.

Yes

Dying should always be a personal choice, and not even limited by physical or mental health. Other people having a say over it is, imo, evil.

With a waiting period, I think assisted dying should be available for adults in general, regardless of terminal illness.

No one opted in, and at least in my society where we are belligerently unwilling to tangibly help one another, where most are expected to endlessly produce regardless of our wellbeing under threat of homelessness and gruesome death by exposure, and where struggling people are often condemned for being lazy or making bad decisions when they're already down, it would be a small, efficient mercy to allow a quiet, painless opt out.

We could even have the capitalists run it and charge a small fee since they need to turn everything into a for profit endeavor. Everyone wins.

Absolutely. Thankfully we actually have it in the Netherlands, with some restrictions. I.e you do need to be clearly ‘suffering’ for a doctor to agree to it.

Personally though, I think there shouldn’t be any restrictions on this beyond making sure it’s a well articulated wish and not someone just having a bad day.

If say, a healthy 30 year old wants off this ride, they should be allowed to die with dignity at a time and place of their choosing. Nobody asked to be born, so we should at least give them the freedom to choose how they depart this realm.

In my opinion, nobody should disagree with that - it’s not your place to force someone to live if they don’t want to.

I live in Oregon in the US and we've had it for a number of years. We had to fight hard for that and even so its fraught with BS, but a couple years ago I had a family member make use of it and I was very glad it was available.

The short answer is yes. The longer answer is also yes.

I'm also in favor of having it as an option for anyone. There should be nobody opining what I should do with my life or with my body who doesn't know me at a deep and personal level.

It was introduced in my country (Canada) and immediately the government started talking about expanding access to it for people with intellectual disabilities; and worse yet, people with treatable conditions where the treatment is just very expensive. That freaks me out quite a bit.

I think it's good for it to be available but there need to be significant guardrails on its availability. My cousin and his wife recently used it for her father, and based on my understanding of his situation, I think it was probably a lot better than letting him die slowly.

It should be available to anyone as long as informed consent can be achieved and they're of sound mind in the view of at least a few medical professionals.

I think it should be available as a medical directive, like a DNR order with specific criteria, and require several doctors to evaluate the criteria unanimously, and no family to object if the patient can't give informed consent, only whatever form of consent they can give.
It should be called off if the patient objects, regardless of their ability to give informed consent.
Scenario I'm picturing is a person with dementia who previously filled out a form stating that if they're no longer themselves or able to function, and other criteria they specified beforehand, and doctors agree the circumstances have been met, and the family doesn't object, it should be able to proceed even though someone with advanced dementia cannot consent because they cannot fully understand. If they say no it must stop.

I feel concern about people with mood disorders seeking that route, which is why I want a medical professional to say they're of sound mind.
Ultimately it's your life and your body, so you should be able to have that autonomy, but I think it's responsible to pause if a doctor says you're not in a rational place to make that type of choice.

I was in favor of this until I started reading Marta Russell. She lays out the history of using the concept of assisted dying to do things like get rid of people with disabilities, increase profits for hospitals, decrease funding for home nurses, convince people who are no longer productive that they shouldn't live anymore, etc etc. It seems like a good idea on paper, because bodily autonomy and stuff, but capitalist ghouls coerce people into it.

Canada currently has assisted dying (referred to as MAID — Medical Assistance In Dying). The issue that I see with it, in Canada, is that it is a conflict of interest; Canada has public healthcare, so all patients are seen as a net drain on the system. Because of this, It is in the government's best interest to reduce the cost of healthcare by lessening the number of patients in hospitals. In my view, it is, therefore, in the Canadian government's best interest to encourage assisted dying over treatment to the absolute limits of what is ethically or legally allowed.

I am in favor, and we already did introduce it here.

I think it might have been 2018 when we voted on it for the state of Colorado.

A doctor can now administer suicide drugs if a patient is terminally ill or has a condition that makes their life hell.

For sure. When your own body becomes a prison, you should have a say on whether you want out.

Yeah, it's not like it's done on a whim. As long as there is someone on staff that is comfortable administering it, I have no problem with it. I wouldn't want it to be forced as an option if there is no one on staff comfortable doing it. But transferring to a place that does offer it should be an option for those cases.

Already a thing here in NL.

Of course.

Yes, I think this is absolutely okay. However, I do think that it should be periodically reviewed, say, every five years and reaffirmed that this is actually what you want.

I'm glad that no one has said no!

We all know things won't get better anytime soon.

Hope yall find what peace you can in this life.

We already have it in the Netherlands and I think it is a good thing. I know several people who chose for assisted dying when they were terminal and I think it protected them from a lot of unnecessary suffering.

There are some laws in place to prevent abuse. For example, there is a second, independent doctor assessing the situation to make sure conditions are really met and that someone is really terminal and deciding this from their own free will. The patient should be able to reconfirm that they really want to get euthanised before it happens. I think this is a good thing, but sometimes it is difficult when people with dementia clearly have stated and written down officially that they want assisted dying in certain circumstances, but they are not able to reconfirm because they lost their ability to understand.

In some cases you can have assisted dying when you suffer psychologically without any outlook of improvement (i.e. you have tried all treatments etc). However, there are waiting lists for those, which are quite long. My sister was on such a waiting list because she had anorexia. However, she died from starvation before she could be assessed. I am still a bit in doubt whether it would have been a good idea for her to get assisted dying. I still was hoping and thinking that there could be ways for her to get better.

Maybe the doctor assessing whether she would be approved for this would have thought the same, maybe not. She died anyway, so maybe I was wrong. In any case, I am not completely against euthanasia in case of psychological illness, as people can suffer from that equally as from physical ailments. However, you should be extremely careful and it should be extremely clear that there is no other solution at all anymore.

This would seem like the kind of question that sounds at first like a single question but causes a number of others to be unpacked. For example, would someone see a difference between simply pulling a plug, ceasing to feed someone, and administering a drug, or would this being politicized be too much of a fear...

A few things come to mind here as certainties for me. To start out, if a society for whatever reason greenlights the concept, definitely don't institutionalize/politicize it. The moment it even becomes a debate in the public sphere, pull the heck out, the concept is lost. I might not have the greatest relationship with life, but the same thoughtpath makes it hard to comprehend being all willy-nilly about it. In such a society, if anything, I'd say it should be by an individual's own breath that the candle is blown out, so to speak. Going by the same literary device, if the individual cannot produce the exhale to do that, shrug your shoulders. I would not put a dog down for this reason. By the same token, everyone should recognize the gravity of all this, which in most cases nobody does.

it also affects the life insurance industry. have a terminal illness with a couple months of agony left? if you end it early, they won't pay out.

It does exist here.

I opposed its legalization... but supported its existence in practice. In fact, I need its existence... Medical technology has created a lot of complicated situations because we have the ability to keep people alive to carry on in suffering even when there is no hope of recovery.

It is the unspoken duty of a modern doctor to deliver a coup de grace when this point has been reached - I think even without asking permission. The old Greek or Mexican lady with a cross around her neck and the Priest coming to visit her and deliver communion can never assent to be euthanized.... She needs her doctor to read the situation and to send her off when recovery is impossible and only suffering remains.

When we make it a process that requires her consent & signature, we deny her a peaceful death...

And, when we legalize it, we open the door to some upsetting things, like the euthanization of people for merely mental health conditions. There's something profoundly ugly & disturbing about someone in their 20s being put to death by a doctor for their mental anguish. Yes, mental suffering is very real, and it should absolutely be addressed... But, just like in the case of prostitution, it is just not something the state can set a moral precedent of approving of it when it happens.

I think in utopia it'd be great, but we don't live in utopia, and in the world we do live in, assisted suicide is just an easy out for ableist society to push us towards, because it's significantly easier to dispose of us from behind the alarmingly thin veil of "compassion" than it is to create a world where we don't struggle and suffer by default just for existing as ill or disabled people.

And it's so much easier mostly because the first step to creating an actually compassionate and inclusive world, is facing the fact that society and the individuals in it treats disabled people so badly and sees so little value in our lives, which is why so many abled people (including those making legislation, because disabled people sure aren't) would "rather die than be disabled" in the first place (or why so many disabled people have been denied treatment because their lives were deemed "not worth saving", which happens a lot more often than most people would be comfortable acknowledging), and that's simply not something most abled people are willing to do, never mind actually acting on these facts to change them.

This kind of legislation is closer to eugenics than it is disability rights.

1000% yes

Pretty sure it already is here in some capacity...

Yep. https://www.uclahealth.org/patient-resources/support-information/advance-directive/california-end-life-option-act-eoloa

Not country wide, but I live in California so I could possibly benefit from this if I ever get super fucked up.

As long as it is kept to terminally ill people. Here in Canada, it's being offered to people with life long health issues (Chronic pain etc.) But for us the slippery slope is it has been offered to people with mental health issues as well. I can't verify if it is an officially sanctioned offering, but people have come forward with stories of it being offered to them.

We have that in Canada. I think dying with dignity is important and why suffer in agony when you can plan it out if you're terminally ill?

But it made Canada show how poor its social supports are for this guy: https://ottawa.citynews.ca/2022/10/14/ontario-man-applying-for-medically-assisted-death-as-alternative-to-being-homeless-5953116/

When this news broke everyone came out of the woodwork to help him and he is no longer applying for MAID.

My coworker's husband has end stage COPD and has been in and out of hospital a lot lately. She says she felt pushed for him to accept MAID, but they didn't and he is doing somewhat better now. It's temporary obviously but I also understand not wanting to lose him. There have been other stories where some people feel the decision was made irresponsibly, this is a good article about it: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/06/22/the-death-treatment

I don't know what I think about MAID for mental health conditions. Not that I don't think they are debilitating, but I wonder how sound of mind someone who is suffering so much is in. I really don't know the answer to that.

No.

I used to think yes but canadas maid (I should have known by the abbreviation) program has been a crazy disaster and completely changed my mind.

No, for several reasons.

Death is final. There is no coming back from it.

A cure, or at least an effective treatment, might be just around the corner. HIV used to be a death sentence; it isn't any more (and from what I understand, carriers can now have unprotected sex without passing it on). I wonder how much medical research into treating HIV wouldn't have been possible without sufferers to try out potential treatments. Maybe it would still be a death sentence today if assisted suicide had allowed people to escape it.

There is no way to be 100% certain someone isn't being pressured to die. If they answer all the questions correctly, that only shows they know the right answers; it doesn't show they are being truthful.

Justifying assisted suicide on the basis of the worst cases is not sufficient. There will always be worst cases. Let's say we define a limited set of the worst cases; those are now effectively solved and everything else jumps up a level. There is now a new set of worst cases. How long before someone catching the common cold gets put to death? You may say this is ridiculous but the worst case justification means that the cold WILL eventually rise to the top, and there WILL be arguments like "giving evolution a helping hand", or "for the benefit of the species", and as we will by then be routinely applying AS there'll only be a low bar to jump.

If palliative care isn't producing sufficient quality of life, we can put people into a medically induced coma (IANAD so there may be good reasons we can't, but idk). There they stay until (a) a cure or treatment is available, or (b) they die naturally anyway.

Obviously this needs sensible public healthcare in place. Where medical treatment is expensive and life is cheap, this won't work. I'm in the UK where healthcare is provided by the state and we have the luxury of considering life to be priceless.

For those who say we euthanise animals - well society in general doesn't want to pay for their healthcare and doesn't consider their lives to be infinitely precious. Also there is the question of how much they understand what is happening to them; maybe the terror of being hooked up to a machine would make their QOL effectively non-existent anyway.

No. It should never be legal. You will see an increase in people trying to get power of attorney over their spouse, or relative, so that they can advocate for assisted death, when that might not be what the patient actually wants. I don’t want to see abusive people having the power to legally murder other people.