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Originally Posted by Calgaryborn
I don't see how the level of competency would improve with more doctors able to issue drugs to kill one self. You've got Doctors who are very good at their craft and others who hand out drugs like candy or miss obvious things that causes people's deaths. There would be doctors who would quickly get the reputation for being sympathetic to suicide and others to be avoided.
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I disagree. Doctors are not either good at their craft or lousy for their entire careers. Doctors learn new techniques and develop their skills in every other field. This field would be similar in that doctors could improve the process to lessen pain and terror.
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As far as a study showing misuse of the suicide laws in Europe; I don't know of any. How do you measure family pressure or prove clinical depression post-mortem? Given the occurance of senior-abuse or parent-abuse in our country, along with the fact that inheritances are often involved I don't know how one could believe it wouldn't occur. In America with limited health care coverage even more pressure would be added.
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All of your concerns are based on anecdotal evidence. If you can't measure these things, then why are you talking about them? Perhaps they are extremely uncommon and the only reason you hear about these cases is that their rarity makes them interesting.
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Actually that is the purpose of all kinds of laws or regulations. That is the very reason the government regulates drugs in Canada.
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If that were the case then kitchen knives, cars, rat poison, guns, baseball bats, tools, etc., would all be banned. You are right to think that is the reasoning behind the banned substance laws in this country and I would submit that those laws are among the most nonsensical and ineffectual in the criminal code.
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I think it is a lot harder to decide whether or not to fight a terminal illness than you think. It is easy to do when your life isn't on the line. But, to push that button that you know will be your last act or to eat your last meal knowing you are going to die in a half hour is quite a bit harder. We see people endure all kinds of invasive treatments just to stay alive a few more months. I'll bet more than a few of them might have looked at death differently when it wasn't on their door step.
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Giving people a choice is not the same as forcing people to make that choice. If people don't want to go through with it, then they will be free to change their mind.
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There is also the issue of when you kill yourself. If you are give 6 months to live you might be dead in 4 months or 2 years. How much of that time you still retain a high quality of life you don't know. Will the date be earlier because of the cost of treatment or because of the effect you are having on your loved ones? Will you make that decision even though your scared to death and don't want to die? Do you make the decision because you are suffering from depression which is a natural stage in the grieving process?
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What is wrong with wanting to end your life to avoid the cost of treatment or the process of treatment? The point is to give people that choice, not protect them from it.
I would imagine that if I were scared of death and didn't want to die that I would not make the decision to die. I get your concerns, but they exist outside of state run conditions just as they would within them, so other than taking measures to ensure that the patient has opportunities to speak with psychologists and other professional health care workers (which I think would be a good idea) why deny people the choice?
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I think that opening that door would invite much abuse and undue stress. It also gives doctors and hospitals the conflicting tasks of preserving life and taking life.
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Of course there would be stress related to such a decision, but there is also the choice to avoid needless suffering.
There is no doubt that to allow euthanasia would result in a complex addition to the role of doctors and hospital workers, but that doesn't mean that they would be incapable of coping with that complexity.
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Do we as a society provide easier avenues for the ill and the elderly to die or work to improve their quality of life?
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This is a false dilemma. You can't always get better and if you don't want to go on struggling in pain, you should have the right to decide to die.
The people who want to fight to the end regardless of the chances will still be free to do so, but the people who don't (who do exist even outside of the purported family members/death cheerleaders) would have the option of dying at the time of their choosing when they have made peace with the decision.
