Is assisted suicide (esp. doctor assisted) an oxymoron?

It’s not a selfish thing. It’s about trying to find a way to do it that will be successful and hopefully as pain-free as possible.

Selfish in what way? If they are suffering from a terminal illness and in constant pain, they may turn to a doctor who can simply up their morphine drip to the lethal dose so they can die now instead of later. Why is that selfish? I call it mercy. The doctor doesn’t have to do it – it’s their choice in the end.

But 1)why the doctors? Arrange for someone else to help or “help”.
2)What about the society as a whole, down the line?

The decision is completely that of the nearly departed. I think @Seaofclouds is right that having made that decision, they don’t want it to sort of work and be surviving with additional disabilities from the attempt. And the pain… make it stop.
Preferably by legal means. But certainly folks have been anaesthetizing ourselves to death as long as we’ve have means of knocking ourselves out.

I’m not arguing what would feel better for the individual who wants to die. I’m sure I would rather not suffer if it were me, but that is beside the point isn’t it, when it comes to the big picture?

@flo Why not a doctor? Asking just anyone to help could lead to an unsuccessful attempt. Depending on what the person and their helper did, the person could end up being in more pain, agony, or end up with a lot more problems. I’ve seen numerous failed suicide attempts and most of the time, the person comes out with some kind of negative effect from the failed attempt.

What about society? I don’t understand what your concern is. We all have a right to die with dignity and it should be on our terms, not anyone else’s. I’ve dealt with a lot of patient’s at the end of their life and I’m honored when I can make their last moments as they want them to be, rather than what their friends, family, or whoever else want them to be.

What is the big picture concern that you have? Are you afraid people will be lining up asking their doctor’s to help them kill themselves?

Listen to what the association of handicapped people say, and the anti side in general.

@flo Perhaps you can explain it to us in your own words so we understand where your concerns are coming from.

No. It’s your weapon of choice.

@livelaughlove21 I did in my detail and my 2 responses after that.
By the way people can just stop eating and drinking, no need to involve anyone else at all.

@flo Do you know how long it takes to die from not eating and drinking? Do you know what it feels like for those people to starve to death?

@flo You didn’t explain anything. You only asked questions, but when asked what your concerns really were, you told us to basically look up what other people have to say about it.

And the suffering involved in starving to death is horrendous. They want it quick and painless, not slow and agonizing.

They want it quick and painless, not slow and agonizing. There are many ways of doing it fast and painless. Alcohol and pills is just one.

@flo Alcohol and pills can fail (and often do) and the person can be left with some serious medical/physical issues after the failed attempt. The same can be said for a gunshot. That is why people want to be able to go to their physician for other means that are known to be more successful.

Selfish? Selfish because they want it done efficiently and painlessly in a clinical environment with no mess for the family to discover and clean up?

This is selfish: Hemingway waits for his wife to go shopping, grabs his shotgun and instead of going out into the woods to kill himself, he sits against the wall in the foyer where she is sure to see him first thing when she opens the door, and blows his brains out all over the wall and onto the carpet. What a prick.

@Espiritus_Corvus Excellent point. Selfish would be doing it yourself and letting your loved ones find your body. If a doctor does it in the hospital, there’s no risk of your wife having to clean your brains off the ceiling fan.

There are many ways of doing it fast and painless. Alcohol and pills is just one.
I think you are thinking of a healthy, or at least, a fully capable person.
What if the person was too sick or in some other way incapable of swallowing pills or using a gun?

Hang out in a chemo lab or nursing home & you may expand your mind. We treat criminals & dogs better than our terminals.

I’m so sick of the whole suicide is “selfish” bullshit!
What’s SELFISH is another dictating that someone “should” remain alive when they are suffering.

IMO doctors “should” do whatever their patients ask.
If I ASK to be out out of my misery and nobody will help, I’ll damn sure find my own way.

Yes, it is an oxymoron.
Suicide (Latin Sui, self, caedere, to kill) means to kill ones self. It does not mean to have somebody do it for you.

That would be another word.

Why not eliminate “suicide” entirely and go for ” right to die”?
“Suicide” is an archaic and negative term, just like “faggot”& “Nigger”.
Seriously….it’s about time we drop the word entirely and replace it with the RIGHT TO DIE and drop all the bullshit, negative, taboo crap surrounding ones RIGHT to decide, when and and how they choose to end THEIR own life!

I remember reading a story about an airline pilot who tried to blow his brains out. He botched the job, and ended up blinding himself.
I would go to a doctor to make sure the job was done right.

@flo, it’s about dying with dignity, not some drawn out horrible painful death. And don’t throw in the crap about handicapped, this is NOT euthanasia, this is about control over one’s own life and death and having some dignity.

And Doctors are not forced to assist, but they, more than most, understand the need for dignity when dying, not the indignity of tubes in every orifice and a giant bellows to make one breathe. Doctors only assist so when the patient is terminal.

I guess, @flo, what we really want to hear is what right do YOU have to tell someone they can’t do this, and what would you tell a loved one who was terminal and in agony. Would you say “no, you have to keep suffering.” ?

@flo “Listen to what the association of handicapped people say, and the anti side in general.”

Are you confusing assisted suicide with some Nazi-like eugenics program?

I think nurses and doctors actually do assist their patients in death. And to me it is a form of euthanasia.

The problem is we as people do not really get a choice of when, we have to wait until our bodies are completely almost shut down, some people do not have the strength mentally or physically for that.

Choosing a time of death seems much more in control and some people like that better.

Usually if a doctor says you only have such and such of a time to live, unless you find alternative treatments that bring on cures unfortunatley they are pretty much on mark.

When my father was diagnosed with esophageal cancer after they opened him and did the exploratory surgery and found they could not take out the growth otherwise he would of died instantly because it was attached to something significant I forget what that was now, but anyway, they gave him 16 months to live from that time. He also did chemo and radiation more than once which did nothing but made him suffer more. He actually suffered the entire time from the moment he was told it was cancer until his body shut down.

He died exactly 16 months later. And it was the nurse who helped him die.

No way is it selfish. Everyone should have the right to die. What would people rather happen? A qualified doctor putting a patient to out of their misery by injection? Or that same patient having to kill themselves by jumping in front of a train? The train driver having to live with it, the passengers having to live with the image, the person itself having to be do desperate to do it in the first place because society won’t help?

Personally I believe assisted suicide for the elderly and the terminally ill is never a cowardly or selfish act. Suicide is cowardly when it is used as an escape for one’s problems.
Assisted suicide harms no one physically aside from the person wanting suicide. There are many reasons why people opt for assisted suicide. There are many people who would want to die,but their disease, handicap, or condition will not make it possible for them to commit the act themselves. When such people ask for help in exercising their right to die, we must respect their decision rather than considering it as a selfish act.

@josie the word is euthanasia.
.

In January 1980, one of my parents’ neighbors looked out the window, on her charming, short tree-lined suburban street and saw what she thought was a big dead dog lying in my parents’ driveway.

She called the police.

My mother had given the housekeeper the day off and then driven to the village for marketing and a trip to the beauty parlor, planning to be away for several hours, a rare event due to my father’s health. When she came home, she saw the police cars in front of the house.

My father, suffering from Parkinson’s and the beginnings of meds-induced dementia, chose that morning to drag himself down two flights of stairs, walk outside, lean his cane against a retaining wall and lay his glasses on top of the cane. Then he situated himself on the gravel, put a pistol in his ear and pulled the trigger.

Unbeknowst to us, one of his brothers had provided the gun and the ammo. My dad had told my mother about this and about his intention to shoot himself when things got bad. She didn’t believe him. And he certainly hadn’t been interested in discussing this project with any of his three adult children.

He left a carefully-worded note absolving my mother of any shared responsibilty.

The ripple effects in the family continue to spread after over 33 years.

I struggle thinking about what’s right in these situations…
What about the fact that your life itself is extremely lucky? Think of all the people who weren’t born that never had a chance in life or had other mental or physical problems, and now you’re just seemingly taking that for granted by voluntary killing yourself. That’s what I struggle with. The same thing goes for abortion but that’s another story.

@gailcalled That is awful, I’m sorry that happened to your family. The effects of a suicide on the family is just being explored. Kubler-Ross was one of the first to seriously address it.

One of the benefits of doctor assisted suicide is that one gets a chance to terminate with their loved ones, give the individual family members a chance to absorb and understand the situation, and in some cases debate it calmly. The impact of unexpected, violent suicide on a family is immeasurable.

Since Hemingway’s little stunt in 1961, there have been seven suicides in that family (Ten, if you count preceding suicides). When a member of a family does this, especially a patriarch or matriarch, it seems to make the option of suicide easier as a way to deal with personal problems such as social embarrassment, drug abuse, and not just painful, terminal diseases. Some of the suicides in the Hemingway family were due to terminal illnesses, etc., but others were due to chronic depression, a treatable disease that appears to run in that family.

Would Hemingway have chosen suicide so easily if his father, Clarence, hadn’t paved the way by putting a bullet in his own brain in 1928? And would Clarence Hemingway have killed himself over financial embarrassments if his mentor and father-in-law, Ernest Edmunds, not repeatedly attempted to blow his own brains out (with the same pistol that Clarence used to kill himself 30 years later)? And would Margaux Hemingway have considered her own suicide on the 35th anniversary, minus a few hours, of her famous grandfather’s suicide?

We all have responsibilities to the people who love us. Suicide does not end with the initial victim and this must also be considered if this is considered an option.

I don’t think you have a very good understanding of many end-of-life realities, @flo. Many people at the ends of their lives are on a sort of autopilot. For example, my uncle, who died last month after two years of gradually increasing severe incapacity, both mental and physical, expressed several times in his lucid moments, “Why can’t I just die?”

On a cognitive level, he wanted to check out. But he didn’t have the physical capability to take his own life, and when he lost much of his cognitive ability his body took over and, because this is what bodies do when they can, it made him live. For me or any of his other family to have “assisted” in the checkout process would have been viewed by the State of Connecticut (and at least 48 others, or all 49 if we count Oregon and I didn’t follow the state-mandated process there) as murder. First degree murder in all probability. Not many people are willing to take on that risk or the cost of that defense in what could be an open-and-shut murder prosecution.

Your idea that “alcohol and pills” would work is, frankly, absurd for many people at the ends of their lives. When you can’t even swallow without great effort, “taking pills” is difficult at best. In any case, where do you suppose those pills can be obtained in a non-criminal way? Or administered, to someone who can’t even open a pill bottle? Some prosecutors love to take on those murder cases, as they are commonly called, because the convictions – aside from the scruples of jury members who understand the issues – can be fairly easy to obtain.

In another misconception of yours, “having a short time to live” is not much of a justification for suicide. Why would anyone want to hasten the process if they have enjoyed their life and aren’t in great pain or discomfort? But on the other hand, being told that “except for the pain you’re feeling, which we can’t seem to treat adequately [or which the DEA threatens to prosecute doctors for treating adequately and with appropriate drugs], you could live a long life”. Who wants to live a life of unrelenting pain?

As for “why doctors?” Why not doctors? After all, we have veterinarians humanely end the lives of our pets, because they know how to do it; they have the facilities, the equipment and the skill. I suppose I could have my mailman kill my dorg for me, but the idea doesn’t much appeal to me, no matter how much it may appeal to the mailman. Doctors know the body, and know what it will take to end life. I thought Jack Kevorkian, for all his flaws, had a good idea in his vision of an obitiatrist who would specialize in human euthanasia.

@dxs Why should people with terminal or degenerative illness, who only have pain, loss of physical and/or mental functioning and loss of dignity, endure that if they do not wish to?

@flo

“Why doctors?” You ask.

Because they are trained professionals.

@Darth_Algar I know! It seems terrible if some people are, as @CWOTUS says, on “autopilot”, then it’s not even worth living. I hate forming an opinion on these topics because I’m torn on them. This is partially because I grew up in a religious background, so it’s an internal bias that I’m trying to get rid of. Euthanasia was never even considered with terminally ill family members since my family is so religious. Hopefully I’ll never need to vote on them or anything…I need to have a big persuasion from someone to help me form my opinion haha.
But how would a doctor feel about killing a patient? Will (s)he be required to by law? I’m being off topic here. Excuse my digression….and ignorance.

Why on Earth would the doctor be required to?

@Darth_Algar Who said a doctor was required to? There is a difference between saying, “you must have a Doctor” and saying “all Doctors must do this.”

@Darth_Algar I mean support the process.

I guess I have to find the anti side’s point and post the link. My own words won’t do it justice, @livelaughlove21.

Added:
Here is one that is short and sweet. http://www.growthhouse.org/mortals/mort2526.html

Here is another one.
http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/09/the-implications-of-assisted-suicide/?_r=0

“Many people fear that physician-assisted suicide will create a climate in which some people are pressured into committing suicide. The very old, the very poor, or minorities and other vulnerable populations might be encouraged to hasten death, rather than to “burden” their families or the health care system. Again, this is not a genuine choice, but a social issue, one that stems from how our society cares for its elders and for the poor, and whether minority groups can get good health care. In either case, making suicide available does not solve the underlying social problem. Even for those who have adequate financial and social resources, having physician-assisted suicide available could create a troubling new situation. Seriously ill and disabled persons could feel that they had to justify a choice to stay alive. They could feel that suicide is, in some sense, “expected” by family or friends. As a society, we have never asked people to justify their being alive, and it seems likely that asking them to do so would run risks of being quite difficult or demeaning.”
That is from the 1st page 2nd paragraph of the first link above (growthhouse.org) which presents the argument for the pro side as well, on page 2.

@dxs What exactly are you asking? Are you asking if doctors would be required to perform this? Or are you asking if doctors would be required to support it? Ether way I can’t see any earthly reason why a doctor would.

@flo I really don’t think that will become an issue unless the doctor’s are the one’s pushing for it. As long as it remains something that is driven by the individual, it should lead to an issue like the one you mentioned. The choice is there now, the only thing that would change would be the options available for following through with that choice.

@Darth_Algar, doctors have already been doing this for a long time. It’s always done under the radar, with no explicit conversation and nothing in writing, because of course it is totally illegal. But doctors can, when they know the patient’s and family’s wishes, either over-prescribe painkillers at a lethal dose (but one which won’t be officially questioned as long as the family or medical examiner don’t insist on an investigation into the death). So, obviously, this only happens when the people involved know each other very well and there is a high degree of trust all around.

Doctors can also legally prescribe potent sleeping aids for patient or family administration and be sure they know the dangers (hint, hint, wink, wink) so that when the time comes the competent patient may be able to self-administer the correct lethal dose.

This is all, obviously, far from ideal and either explicitly or implicitly against the law, but doctors understand human suffering, and many understand that “do no harm” means to limit that suffering, according to the wishes of their patient.

@CWOTUS Yes, and? I was addressing a specific question to a specific user in regards to a specific post of theirs.

Assisted suicide is not an oxymoron, the decision is what matters. If we provided an un-manned alternative, a-la suicide booths from Futurama, that would be a non-issue.

Unfortunately we don’t, and the issue becomes muddied by non issues like “Why would you need help” or “Why do you ask someone else to carry the burden of the action” and similar bullshit.

Someone who has decided, really decided, to commit suicide and is capable, does and that’s it. If they don’t, it’s usually because they’re not physically able to.

At that point it’s just a matter of finding a willing party that accepts that everyone is free to dispose of their life however they want, if they’re of sane mind to do what they’re physically unable to.

It’s fairly similar to BDSM in that sense. The dominant is just acting with permission from the submissive, they’re responsible, but not infringing on the rights of the submissive, which, had they not been wllingly waived for as long as the submissie wants, would be an issue.

So, @flo, you don;t argue against assisted suicide itself, but rather against the potential pressure of people feeling coerced to ask fro assisted suicide. But that is a side issue, you still have not addressed what I asked, which is what would you tell a relative in agonizing pain that was debilitated and had no quality of life, but was faced with an extended agonizing death? That they have to suck it up and suffer because someone else might someday feel coerced?

Maybe the real evil is that people like you @flo emotionally coerce people to not relieve their suffering but that they must agonize in pain because of your disapproval.

no. “Assisted Suicide” is not an Oxymoron.an Oxymoron has two words that mean opposite. and here assisted complements suicide.
Rather Involuntary Suicide is an oxymoron!

”“...do no harm” means to limit that suffering, according to the wishes of their patient.”
Except we all know how many people poisoned their spouses their family members to death, to be able to get their hands on the inheritence, etc. So, the wish would be of these persons not the brainwashed or guilted patients.

Added: For every case that is done from truly a good heart/intention there are plenty that are not.

@flo now you are conflating murder with assisted suicide.

And you juts answered your question about why it should be a doctor, not a family member or neighbor.

Will you please answer the question I posed asking what you would tell someone who is suffering?

And of course, as we all know, murderers go around declaring/wearing signs that say “I’m a murderer posing as an altruistic person, who just wants to end the suffering.”

@flo I hope you have no relatives that rely on you for mercy, for evidently they shall receive none at all, but be left to die in painful agony for as long as it takes.

@flo There is a difference between a murderer killing people of the murderer’s choosing and people choosing to ask a doctor to help them kill themselves. If you can’t see that, then I’m not sure what else we can tell you.

@flo Added: For every case that is done from truly a good heart/intention there are plenty that are not.

Citation needed. Very much needed.

I’m sorry to break it to you but you can’t fake a terminal illness, and in the countries where it is allowed, you need to be terminally ill or disabled while still being of sane mind to get euthanised. There are checks and balances and your comment just strikes me as high octane paranoia.

Doctors can tell if you’ve been poisoned. It’s called diagnostics and it’s like a good 60% of curing an ailment.

So many articles on the topic.

Rather than check every one of the references cited in the statements made in the article you cited, I ran a check on just one of the citations and then the author, Robert D. Orr, MD, CM. The reason I did this was because of this paragraph:

“The Dutch example: Other supporters of PAS/E offer a more pragmatic defense of their position, suggesting that the Dutch have proven that regulated euthanasia can work; however, it is not always used as a “last resort.” In nearly 20% of cases available palliative measures were declined by the patient; 60% of cases were not reported truthfully; 50% of cases did not have the required consultation; and—most worrisome of all—25% of patients who were given a lethal injection did not request euthanasia.”

For reference, he gives an article from the Journal of Medical Ethics written in 1999 by H. Keown and J. Jochemsen titled Voluntary euthanasia under control? Further empirical evidence from the Netherlands. It is stated in the abstract that the article was based on a Dutch survey published in 1996. The survey encompassed the years 1990 to 1995.

The problem is this: In 1984 the Dutch Supreme Court ruled voluntary euthanasia was acceptable, provided doctors followed strict guidelines. But, under Dutch criminal law, physicians could still face prosecution. Relatively few doctors took the risk to assist patient’s in their suicides until after the fall 2000, when the Dutch parliament voted to formally legalize the practice, making the Netherlands the first nation in the world to do so. There was much better research done after 2000 that was available to Dr. Orr for his article. Why did he not use newer studies involving more patients and better documentation?

The survey was taken before 2000 when doctors felt safe enough to actually report truthfully on instances of intentional ending-of-life. It is very easy to give a fatal dose of morphine to a severely weakened patient. In hospices all over America, this happens unintentionally during attempts at palliative care—attempts at relieving endstage pain—and it is customary to list the death as caused by the disease and not the morphine. It’s a technicality, as the alternative would be to withhold the level of dosage required to kill that sort of pain, and leaving a patient in pain is not palliative care. But in the Netherlands at this time in the Netherlands, a doctor could be at risk either way. So, there was necessary gross under-reporting of intentional end-of-life procedures on the part of the doctor’s, as admitted more than once in the survey, to wit:

“Although 41% of cases (1,466) were reported in 1995 as opposed to 18% (486) in 1990, it remains true that in both years, as in every year in between, a clear majority of cases has gone unreported. There was, in short, no official control whatever over the majority of cases of euthanasia, assisted suicide or the termination of life without explicit request.”

In my opinion, this skews every stat that is deduced in the survey and makes it worthless, except for one important thing: As the survey states, it is suspected that there were many undocumented doctor-assisted suicides in the Netherlands between 1990 and 1995 which were never officially reported, the number of which no Dutchman will ever know. And that is not good.

So, the most glaring statistic quoted by Dr. Orr in the article you cited, that “25% of patients who were given a lethal injection did not request euthanasia, is not only nowhere to be found in the survey’s conclusions, it is a conclusion which is impossible to reach if the number of patients who received lethal injections was unknown. This also makes it impossibel to determine if “nearly 20% of cases available palliative measures were declined by the patient,” which I find highly unlikely if no other alternative to pain management was offered, including death.

Which brings us to Dr. Orr. Why would he cite such an erroneous statistic? Robert David Orr, MD, CM. Let’s take a look at him.

He’s an MD, a doctor of Medicine, and a CM, a Canadian degree designation allowed to physicians who are Masters of Surgery. So, he’s a Canadian surgeon. He earned his BA at Houghton College and his MD at McGill University. He has been a medical professional for forty years. Named Vermont Family Doctor of the Year in 1989, he has served as Director of Clinical Ethics and professor of family medicine at Loma Linda University. He has been s director of Clinical Ethics at The Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity and director of Ethics at Fletcher Allen Health Care and the University of Vermont College of Medicine. Very respectable and definitely the type that could write an article that would be welcomed at a respected medical journal.

Dr. Orr is also the Adjunct Professor of Clinical Ethics at Trinity College of Divinity, the evangelical divinity school at Trinity International College. While there, he has coauthored a book, coedited another, contributed eight book chapters, and written nearly one hundred articles related to clinical ethics, the ethics consultation process, and issues in terminal care.

He has also written a book, Medical Ethics and the Faith Factor: A Handbook for Clergy and Health-Care Professionals which is an argument against euthanasia based, not on medical science, not on medical ethics, but solely on Christian theology.

One of the many articles he has written over the years on the subjects of terminal care, abortion, and public policy for the Journal of Christian Bioethics, titled The Role of Christian Belief in Public Policy“is a good example of his approach to all things medical.

“It seems intuitive to the believer that God intended through instruction in the Law to define morality, intended to lead humankind to “the right and the good.” Further, God’s love for humankind, exemplified by the incarnation, atonement and teachings of Jesus, and empowered by the Holy Spirit, should lead to a better world. Indeed, the Christian worldview is a coherent and valid way to look at bioethical issues in public policy and at the bedside. Yet, as this paper explores, in a pluralistic society such as the United States, it is neither possible nor desirable for Christians to try to force their views on others. Still, it is obligatory for Christians to stand up and articulate their views in the public square. We should try to persuade others using either prudential or moral arguments. While we must be willing to live with “the will of the people,” at the same time, we must not be intimidated into accepting the position that our voice is not valid because it has a religious basis.”

Well, sorry, Dr. Orr. Not this time. This still being America, I think I’ll take my chances with the “will of the people” and I think your attempt to subjugate that with your weak holier-than-us justification as disgusting, especially coming from a medical professional with such a spectacular history.

Dr. Orr is most certainly a good doctor. He is probably a very fine man. But I suspect his religious beliefs may color his thoughts on these important subjects to the point of bias and it shows. A man who fabricates statistics to fit his personal philosophy cannot be taken seriously on any subject, and certainly not something as important as public policy concerning euthanasia.

So, the investigation ends here with only these two items examined. I suspect I would find a lot more foolishness in this man’s writings, and constant surprise that he is ever published, but I’m already tired of this and I’m not getting paid. But the next step would have been to investigate these journals in which he is frequently published in order to detect if there are agenda-driven organizations behind them.

None of this hypercaffeinated polygraphia was done to disparage you, Flo. I did this because every time one of us reads that a “study” or “survey” or “trial” proves or disproves something that is really important to us, it needs to be taken apart right down to the footnotes. You wouldn’t believe how many of these respected experts rely on the fact that people, or even editors in this case, never do. And this is how they lie, and cheat, and actually affect government policy and ultimately our lives through their audacious mendacity.

@Espiritus_Corvus Excellent, standing ovation!

@Espiritus_Corvus
1) the word impose in your post.
2) Imagine he were an atheist.or someone who didn’t disclose that they were theist.

In addition to the other artcles in this thread in my posts:

1)http://dredf.org/assisted_suicide/assistedsuicide.html
2) Humanist’s point of view

@Espiritus_Corvus The Dr. along with other anti killing people (let’s not sugar coat) groups and individuals, are no more imposing their opinion than the pro killing people are. And I haven’t read it I just posted here is an article.

@Flo I have much more confidence in an physician who doesn’t allow their personal beliefs to cause them to act unethically or against patient’s wishes under good clinical practices, especially in such sensitive areas as abortion and euthanasia. I also have much more confidence that their opinions will not be influenced by anything other than the science of medicine and what is best for the patient in accordance with the Hippocratic oath. I normally have confidence that even the most religious physicians will act ethically, however flags are raised when hold teaching positions in schools of divinity and they write papers advocating change in public policy based on their personal religious beliefs and not necessarily what is best for the patient.

And when their personal beliefs are so strong that they are incapable of competently delivering unbiased medical care to the public, or carrying out legal procedures sanctioned by the profession uninfluenced by their personal philosophy, or willing to lie about facts in the studies they cite in arguments in journals so important that they influence public policy and therefore our private lives—not only in our health care delivery system, but in our freedom to get specific procedures. I find this abhorrent. It is an abuse of the public trust and their competence is in question and therefore their license to practice should be also.

Dr. Orr is a perfect example of this kind of physician. Will you ever take seriously a scientific article written by him on medical procedures that you know his faith will not allow him to consider only one side of the issue? After it has been seen that he has invented facts to support the tenets of his faith at the cost of scientific examination of that issue?

Could any of his other personal beliefs outside of his Christianity—say a strong, unfounded opinion about a certain treatment or procedure where although there is no rational reason behind this opinion and he is unwilling to hear argument contrary to it—cause him to be blind to facts and standard operating procedures in his practice? This is the definition of a loose canon. And when the trusted individual attempts to force his personal beliefs on the public through publishing lies in journals so respected that they are used in arguments forming public policy, it is nothing short of megalomania.

With your extremely limited knowledge of medicine, could you accept a man like this to be your doctor and trust that he will not let any of his personal beliefs negatively affect his decisions or even the options he allows himself to entertain in his delivery of your health care?

Edited:
@Espiritus_Corvus Just demonize one particluar person. Do not address the arguments cited in the other articles by non-religious groups individuals against killing people.

@flo I would like you to show me where the word Impose is found in my post.

“Do not address the arguments cited in the other articles by non-religious groups individuals against killing people.” What? Where have I called anyone a demon? Where have I evoked the supernatural in any of my criticism?. Are you sure you’re on the right thread and addressing the right poster?

And Flo, if makes you feel any better, go ahead and refer to euthanasia as killing people. Now what? How does that help your argument? By chasing away the squeamish? Good luck on that.

Just gas the bastards. lol

@flo Imagine he were an atheist.or someone who didn’t disclose that they were theist.
Seems to me like that’s the absolute least of the issues here. The fact that he flat out made up that 1 in 4 euthanasia procedures were done against the patient’s will seems more of a glaring fault.

Might be just me but when you have to make bullshit up to prove your point, you don’t have much of a point to prove.

Also, ok, let’s imagine his blatant lying was not ideologically mandated. Now what? It’s still false.
________________________________________________________________________

Do not address the arguments cited in the other articles by non-religious groups individuals against killing people.

Leaving aside, for a moment, that you posted 3 links, 2 of them work, and 1 has been thoroughly dissected, which means at least 50% of the data you submitted to persuade us has been proven unsatisfactory, if he doesn’t address the other half, i think i will.

Let’s give a look at the footnotes of Ms. Golden’s Article, shall we?

First footnote: a list of organisations that share their position. appeal to authority, not much to see here.

Second footnote: Source for a quote in the article, cited as “Personal communication” in 2002 based on an article published 5 years prior. Weird, but ok.

Third footnote: I’m so quoting this one directly “There is a consensus among doctors that the vast majority of suicidal wishes among the sick and elderly are due to treatable depression.” U.S. Catholic Conference, 2001.

Since fucking when has the US catholic conference had any bearing on medicine, any sort of reliability in the matters of medicine and/or any obligation to quote sources for their throwaway comments?

That’s right, never. But we do quote that DIRECTLY. Nevermind that there should be peer reviewed studies that point that out, if that were the case! Iet’s quote a completely unrelated random comment from an organisation that is ideologically biased against the issue from the get go.

Fourth Footnote: The footnote itself is just a brief summation of the findings of a study on elder abuse. That, in itself, is not particularly interesting. Let me draw your attention to the use that has been made of that study in the article itself, instead:

“Also very troubling, research has documented widespread elder abuse in this country. The perpetrators are often family members (National Elder Abuse Incidence Study, 1996). Such abuse could easily lead to pressures on elders to “choose” assisted suicide.”

Keep in mind, the study does not corroborate this in any way. This is just “there is this issue, and this issue is bad, and it could conceivably lead to this thing being misused therefore we should be against it.” If i wanted to get rid of an elderly person so badly, i’d just give them the wrong dosage of whatever they were taking and let nature take its course. I’m so not going to pressure them into asking someone else to kill them, there are mandatory psych evals if you get euthanised and i don’t much like the idea of being sent to jail.

Regardless of my future plans, though, i just want you to assess the deliberately misleading use of a completely unrelated source. The study does not address the topic of assisted suicide, she just quotes that there is this issue and then say “this could lead to people wanting to be euthanised”.

Euthanasia is not candy. They don’t give it away. People need to be sane of mind to be able to ask for it, and to prove that, they need to be evaluated. Do you honestly think a competent psychologist can’t tell when someone is being pressured?

And last but not least, the most deliberately misleading bullshit of them all, the last footnote: And again, this one is unremarkable, but the point it’s meant to substantiate is atrociously misleading. Ironically enough, the source for the data is in the article, not the footnote, but let’s leave it there, it’s not a concern as the source is, again, blatantly misused.

“While the proponents of legalization argue that it would guarantee choice, assisted suicide would actually result in deaths due to a lack of choice. Real choice would require adequate home and community-based long-term care; universal health insurance; housing that is available, accessible, and affordable; and other social supports.”
Very true, and that’s why the rest of the western world has that, but that’s beside the point.

“In a perverse twist, widespread acceptance of assisted suicide is likely to reduce pressure on society to provide these very kinds of support services, thus reducing genuine options even further, just as Herbert Hendin observed that widespread use of euthanasia in the Netherlands has substantially decreased pressure there for improved palliative care, by decreasing demand for it (Hendin, 1996).”

THIS one. This is absolute bullshit. Palliative care is, as its name clearly states, useless. It’s a way to prolong life in spite of suffering and make it tolerable. The only competition to palliative care is the lack of need for palliative care, either because you’re healthy, or because you’re dead. A sudden drop in terminal illness would also reduce the demand for palliative care, ironically, since only terminally ill people have any need for palliative care.

You know who needs “universal health insurance; housing that is available, accessible, and affordable; and other social supports.”? Everyone. There is not a single soul except for the higher midde class and the 1% who could not eventually benefit from these things.

The reasoning is atrocious, the logic barely qualifies as wishful thinking, falling into outright false parallels and i would even say deliberate fearmongering, which couldn’t be more evident already, except if we then move on to the paragraph titles and we find even more gems like:

Feel free to read these in a bombastic trailer voice for maximum effect
– Managed care and assisted suicide – a deadly mix.
– Fear, bias, and prejudice against disability.
– Supposed safeguards are illusory.
– Other alleged safeguards.
– So-called “narrow” proposals will inevitably expand.
– Claims of free choice are illusory.

Which could be more subtle only by strapping a neon sign reading “We are afraid of things, be afraid, be very afraid” to the forehead of the readers, and yet, actually do a good job of prepairing the reader for what’s in the actual paragraphs, I.E. a lot of people being afraid that it’s not going to be done properly and that nobody gives a shit about the law, and that even if the safeguards are in place they’re not going to work and so on.

If you ask me, this is precisely why nobody who is trying to make this work gives a single, solitary shit about these articles.

If you come from a place of distrust for the institution, then why the fuck are you taking part in its policymaking? Nobody cares what you say if anything that is said to reassure you that it’s going to work is immediately dismissed with a “we don’t trust that it will”.

You’re cutting yourself off the whole process by keeping your position so stubbornly because, once it’s clear that you won’t ever be constructive about this, you’ll just be ignored.

Also, this article pulls the same shit as Dr Orr’s, using outdated Dutch studies when more recent ones that debunk their point of view coming from the same source are available, in yet another glaring case of disingenuous information filtering, surprising absolutely no-one.

So, that’s why I ignored the second of your aticles. Thoughts?

Let’s just call it “killing people”. When we appeal to emotions we’re in the right and don’t have to argue logically, factually or without bullshit, right?

@Darth_Algar The best part about the whole thing is that, honestly, why would calling it killing people change anything?

I am not against killing people for the right reasons. Killing someone because they’re a threat to me or to society, killing someone because they are not willing to keep on living but are unable to stop themselves and so on, and I say this while being in a relationship with someone who had suicidal tendencies and was depressed.

There is a massive, massive difference between the clear headed “I’m done” and the hysteric “i’m going to jump, i can’t take it anymore”. When someone has suicidal tendencies they acting irrationally, pick dumb methods, never pull it off correctly, they’re not thinking, they’re just feeling like they want to die.

Someone who goes through the effort of being evaluted on their desire to die because they’re unable to do so themselves is not the same. It takes effort, it takes a decisiveness that suicidal depressives never have while they’re ill.

My soon-to-be-fianceé has tried to kill herself 4 times when she was younger, 3 of said times we were already together. She never acted ationally about it, she was scared, she felt like living was too much for her, she feared making us suffer for her, she was a mess of inconsistent feelings that ranged from self loathing to desperation to hate to anger and so on.

Do you think someone who lashes out at their then boyfriend of two years, unprovoked, only to break down and cry as soon as he leaves, would be considered sane enough to choose their own fate?

Nope.

And that’s the whole point. These debates are just bullshit because, as anyone who has had these experiences could tell you, suicidal people are either fucking easy to spot or dead. People being bullied into something, are easy to spot, too. If you screen patients and have them evaluated before going through with assisted suicide there won’t be issues.

And as soon as you assert this, the reply is only going to be “that’s not true because people/shrinks/doctors/whoever are corrpted/callous/shit and therefore they won’t give a fuck and they’ll just kill people willy nilly.”

Which BTW is the jist of both articles @flo linked, mostly.

What can we say to that? You don’t want to believe us? Fine. We don’t need to persuade you. Reasonable people need persuading, unreasonable people unwilling to be persuaded need only to be ignored.

@Thammuz Totally agree. I beleive people are capable of making a conscious decision to be done, and do not have to be suffering from depression. The right to die falls into the “my body, my choice” mantra. Big dif. between being of sound mind and making that choice, which it IS, a choice, vs. emotionally unstable hysterical, depressive, drama induced impulsiveness.

What are the 3 categories of people who have a position on this topic?

@Espiritus_Corvus I almost apologized re. the word impose. and then I bumbed into your statement in the second to last paragraph: “And when the trusted individual attempts to force his personal beliefs on the public…”

http://mdwhistleblower.blogspot.ca/2009/09/physician-assisted-suicide.html