Assisted Suicide.

• Cynic wrote on 2011-09-23 07:18
  Frankly, I think the current law is stupid. If someone is suffering that much, why the hell do you make them wait 2 weeks? It's sadistic and gross.
  If someone doesn't have the strength or will to do it themselves, they depend on their Doctors to do it for them; not pussy-foot around it and make them sigh papers and waste time, leaving them in pain.
  
  Such incompetent Doctors these days. I'm definitely finishing my M.D. degree so I'm qualified to help these people; it's the least I can do, since everyone else is too damn selfish to do it themselves.
• Zid wrote on 2011-09-23 07:44

  Quote from Cucurbita;595784:

  No questions asked?
  
  I don't think so.
  
  I'm against suicide 99.9% of the time. The only time where suicide is a viable option is if there is no chance for recovery, and your suffering is at its absolute worst.
  
  I don't mean psychological or life suffering. Those are painful too, but its never impossible to recover and lead a proper life again.
  
  On the flip side, if you're in a situation where its impossible to recover medically, and you are suffering while you slowly wither away, I can accept assisted suicide. What else can the person do other than feel excruciating pain for a while until he passes?

  
  
  ^ My view. I can't sit well with "No questions asked". That's like the ability for doctors to do whatever they want on a patient for treatment with "no questions asked", or vice versa.
  
  EndlessDreams brought up good questions too.
• Bride wrote on 2011-09-23 09:23

  Quote from Cynic;596322:

  Frankly, I think the current law is stupid. If someone is suffering that much, why the hell do you make them wait 2 weeks? It's sadistic and gross.
  If someone doesn't have the strength or will to do it themselves, they depend on their Doctors to do it for them; not pussy-foot around it and make them sigh papers and waste time, leaving them in pain.
  
  Such incompetent Doctors these days. I'm definitely finishing my M.D. degree so I'm qualified to help these people; it's the least I can do, since everyone else is too damn selfish to do it themselves.

  
  
  for someone who says
  
  

  Unless someone means something to me, I will never actually care. I can say I care, and I can feel sorry for them, but not enough for it to be.. real. Sincere.

  
  
  it's interesting you'd become a doctor to help out strangers you don't know
  
  anyway endlessdreams made a few good points, especially this
  
  

  What you are saying is that Doctors should be like puppet to their patients. They should risk their licenses, which they spent a good portion of their lives on, to help a patient would possibility illegal/immoral acts just because the patients wants it?

• Navy wrote on 2011-09-23 14:58
  Yes, whether the person is in pain/dying or not.
  
  I think everyone should have the right at life
  but if they no longer wish to live, they should have the right to die.
• Sumpfkraut wrote on 2011-09-23 15:47
  Watch all parts please.
  [video=youtube;bxQYTFIZi8A]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxQYTFIZi8A[/video]
  That is everything.
  
  The exact legal formalities are less interesting to me though.
• Claudia wrote on 2011-09-23 16:37
  Certain circumstances, but who's the one to decide what those circumstances are?
  
  The general consensus, from doctors and the world in general, seems to be that mostly the elderly should be allowed to commit "assisted suicide".
  What about younger people who are suffering? And to what degree of suffering is "enough" to warrant assisted suicide?
• Leopher wrote on 2011-09-27 16:57
  I am uncertain about this subject.... I have thought of it before.
  
  I think at the very least the person should be evaluated for mental health. If they are sane and have philosophical reasons for wanting to end their own life then it might be wrong to try and stop them... but I'm not sure about whether or not it would be best to actually help them.
  
  As for the people who are in allot of pain and do not want to deal with it anymore, I think it is preferable that they be given coping resources. The ideal thing would be to increase their coping resources as well as alleviate some of the pain, but this is not always possible.
  
  I think the family and friends of the individual should also be considered, but I'm not sure how you would factor this in. Having a family member or close friend commit suicide can be quite painful, and helping a person to commit suicide may create more pain than it actually gets rid of.
• Claudia wrote on 2011-09-27 17:28
  But if people are in a lot of pain, why should we help them "cope"?
  Chances are, if they're considering or even thinking about assisted suicide, the pain that they have to deal with daily is to the point where it's debilitating and overwhelming, even if they're been managing their pain.
  
  I mean, look at some diseases, like acromegaly, which my dad has. He's pretty much always in pain, and takes multiple pain medications to help alleviate that. But still, they don't always work and since his body grows tolerant to them, he has to switch to new medications every once in a while that can have some nasty side effects. Sometimes, I even wonder why my dad puts up with it, because I probably would've given up already. (And he's also diabetic and has to deal with insulin as well.)
  
  So, once my dad, or anybody else who deals with pain, whether it's chronic or not, has exhausted all of their options as far as keeping the pain at bay, should we just have them continue to suffer, or grant them the right to die?
• Leopher wrote on 2011-09-27 21:28

  Quote from Claudia;601275:

  But if people are in a lot of pain, why should we help them "cope"?
  Chances are, if they're considering or even thinking about assisted suicide, the pain that they have to deal with daily is to the point where it's debilitating and overwhelming, even if they're been managing their pain.
  
  I mean, look at some diseases, like acromegaly, which my dad has. He's pretty much always in pain, and takes multiple pain medications to help alleviate that. But still, they don't always work and since his body grows tolerant to them, he has to switch to new medications every once in a while that can have some nasty side effects. Sometimes, I even wonder why my dad puts up with it, because I probably would've given up already. (And he's also diabetic and has to deal with insulin as well.)
  
  So, once my dad, or anybody else who deals with pain, whether it's chronic or not, has exhausted all of their options as far as keeping the pain at bay, should we just have them continue to suffer, or grant them the right to die?

  
  
  Firstly, what's a "right"? Secondly, why would we have the authority to grant or un-grant one to begin with?
• Chiyuri wrote on 2011-09-27 21:50

  Quote from PoLkaTulK;601535:

  Firstly, what's a "right"? Secondly, why would we have the authority to grant or un-grant one to begin with?

  
  
  The definitions of Rights differ from one belief to another so if we take into consideration that there is multiple understanding of what "rights" could be, we can't really say what is what...
  
  On a personnal level, I don't understand what I just explained much.. From as far as I can remember, I knew what universal rights exist, how they work and their limits.. So I really can't understand how people have different understanding for it.. or how they are unaware of something like that, which I was always firmly aware of like it's natural to know it.. Anyway if I was to answer your question using my natural inborn beleif of what rights are, Universal rights are given to every being who possess a soul, Individuals or groups cannot remove other people's rights. You may grant others rights over yourself and remove these rights you granted. To go against's someone's universal rights result in you losing some of your own rights to let other people resolve the problem without going against any rights(since the problem just lost their rights from the action they just did)
• Claudia wrote on 2011-09-27 22:19
  So I guess that sort of brings us back to the first question: What determines eligibility for assisted suicide?
  
  Is it based off of age? The person's condition? Their disease/injury/disability?
• Leopher wrote on 2011-09-27 22:31

  Quote from Chiyuri;601559:

  The definitions of Rights differ from one belief to another so if we take into consideration that there is multiple understanding of what "rights" could be, we can't really say what is what...
  
  On a personnal level, I don't understand what I just explained much.. From as far as I can remember, I knew what universal rights exist, how they work and their limits.. So I really can't understand how people have different understanding for it.. or how they are unaware of something like that, which I was always firmly aware of like it's natural to know it.. Anyway if I was to answer your question using my natural inborn beleif of what rights are, Universal rights are given to every being who possess a soul, Individuals or groups cannot remove other people's rights. You may grant others rights over yourself and remove these rights you granted. To go against's someone's universal rights result in you losing some of your own rights to let other people resolve the problem without going against any rights(since the problem just lost their rights from the action they just did)

  
  
  Okay, thank you. So there are certain unalienable rights that are common to all people (I would deem all "people with souls" unnecessary since it is likely that if you believe people have souls at all then you believe that all people have souls)? One important question might be: is the right to end one's own life one of these unalienable, common rights?
  
  Edit: Sorry, I should clarify. I know that you did not use the term "unalienable", and thus you may actually believe that these "universal rights" are alienable. I was merely putting my understanding of what you were saying in question form for conformation.
  
  

  Quote from Claudia;601591:

  So I guess that sort of brings us back to the first question: What determines eligibility for assisted suicide?
  
  Is it based off of age? The person's condition? Their disease/injury/disability?

  
  
  I think that it does not bring us back, or at least not until we have discussed what you personally were referring to by "rights" (be it unalienable rights common to all men, or merely "the liberty to do or forbear", or something else), as well as whether or not any individual has the "right" to end his own life, and whether or not people outside of said individual have the "right" or "duty" to aid or restrain the individual.
• Kazuni wrote on 2011-09-27 23:26
  Ending your own life is indeed your inalienable right, but others are not required to spend their money (drugs cost more than you'd think) and time to help you die quickly and without pain.
  
  I have mixed opinions about this. There are so many different situations... terminal patients, people with lifelong physical pain, the elderly, and the people with mental pain. Imo, mental pain is by far the hardest to judge of all.
  
  I definitely agree with the above posted law for terminal patients, but I can't figure out exactly what should be done about the rest. How do you know when someone is in enough pain to warrant expensive drugs spent on them? What about the people who are in perhaps the same amount or even more pain but still hold onto hope?
  
  There's no way I think a no-questions-asked policy would be acceptable. Pain is something we all have to endure at some point in our lives, having a cheap cop-out like that will just inflict more harm than it'll help.
  
  Also, doctors should by no means have to break their own moral codes or do something illegal for the sake of one patient. One doctor can save hundreds, thousands of lives, and losing their license over granting one patient's (somewhat selfish, tbh, if they knew the consequences) wish, doesn't exactly balance that out.
• Navy wrote on 2011-09-27 23:39
  Some people say suicide is one of the most selfish things one can do
  but I think it's even more selfish to force someone who is in an unbearable amount of pain to just "deal with it" and suffer
  
  imagine you have a dog or cat who broke it's back and cannot move
  is in a lot of pain
  has to be cleaned up constantly because it ****s all over its self
  wouldn't you want your beloved pet to not be so uncomfortable
  so miserable
  in so much pain anymore?
  
  ^- that describes a good amount of dying elderly people
  some people in those hospitals aren't at the brink of death
  some have months and month to live like that before they die naturally
  
  I find it cruel, it's sickening to force someone to live like that.
• Chiyuri wrote on 2011-09-28 11:54

  Quote from PoLkaTulK;601609:

  Okay, thank you. So there are certain unalienable rights that are common to all people (I would deem all "people with souls" unnecessary since it is likely that if you believe people have souls at all then you believe that all people have souls)? One important question might be: is the right to end one's own life one of these unalienable, common rights?
  
  Edit: Sorry, I should clarify. I know that you did not use the term "unalienable", and thus you may actually believe that these "universal rights" are alienable. I was merely putting my understanding of what you were saying in question form for conformation.
  

  
  
  what you define as your "life", "existance" and whatnot is within what belong to only you. One of the Universal rights is the right to own material and immaterial stuff that aren't already owned. In a way "life" is somewhat a material belonging since life only exist as long as you have a physical body.
  Hence your lfie belong to only you. You may do what you want with it as long as it doesn't go against the rights of other people. Hence you can end it if you want.
  Since it belong to you, you may also give other people rights over your life, for example, giving them the right to end it. Only the people who you gave that right may use it. You can also remove that right you just granted them if you decide so.
  If you go against the rights of someone else, more than often you will lose your right for "life" temporarely. This give the chances for other people to... remove you.. without causing them any lost on their rights.
  
  As for the first questions of soul = people.. It depend on what you mean by people. as far as I can tell spiritualy, an human baby doesn't seem to have a soul until somewhere after one to two years of life. Hence before they reach somewhat minimum one year, they are on the same level than animals of all sort.. They do not have universal rights.
  Of course unnesasary pain would cause a negative flow in the world which is bad for every living beings. Causing unneeded pain to beings without rights would be going against the universal rights of people in the world.