Voluntary euthanasia or is this subject taboo?

You mean assisted suicide, yes? Not taboo. Just an uncomfortable topic.

I believe many folks feel like vulnerable people may be rushed into or cajoled into agreeing to end their own lives.

Do you mean people of all ages or just the very elderly? Does a 25 year old quadriplegic have a lesser value of life than an abled bodied counterpart? Should a competent elderly person choose for themselves the type of quality of life they want? Brain damaged children? Coma patients? Who are we as a civilized society decide a human beings quality of life?

I think the main reason to avoid deciding the fate of another person's life outside of government responsibilities, if to avoid regrets you may develop as a result. ArmyRetired asks who are we to decide a human being's quality of life? It the continuity of life that is tricky. If life is sacred, that puts a dent in the arguments for war, the death penalty, and some medical procedures. If we as a civilized society make decisions about who shall live, then should we include people with severe disabilities, severe dementia, etc? We seem to sort of accept some situations when hastened death is acceptable. I sure hope that when my time comes, if I'm in great pain, that I go out on a carpet of morphine, versus huge suffering. I'm from a state that allows medically assisted suicide and it seems that some of the people are content to have the means available but decide to die a natural death instead. Hospice can be a big help, too from what I hear.

I think there is some validity in the "slippery slope" argument, as AR points out how can one person decide for another when their life has ceased to have value? I am also uncomfortable with the idea of those who do not have a terminal diagnosis being able to ask another to administer lethal medication without at least having had a full psychiatric work up. I believe in aiding those who have a life limiting illness though, as long as stringent safeguards are put in place.

Damocles, the problem is, how do you know what they want? Unless they made their wishes in writing a long time ago, in a specific manner, there is no way to carry out the unknown.

And even if they did make their wishes known, what if they've changed their mind?

Can't believe the HOSPICE KILLED MY MOM crowd is not here yet. This is a good question. There are also debates, more like screeds really, on 2 other threads about hospice currently on this forum. There are many folks who seem to feel that we should all be keep alive with feeding tubes, more chemo, dialysis, surgery, and by any and all heroic measures for as long as we can keep a heart beat, regardless of the expenditure of money and resources, but God forbid we give anyone morphine which might speed up the precession of dying. Never mind that the lions share of medical costs are expended in the last 6 months of life in the US.

I feel that each individual should be able to determine when they want to end their life, whether it's to to old age infirmities or a horrible debilitating illness at a young age. But the politics and policies of our time are driven by the fundamentalist beliefs that life begins at conception and only God should end a life, no matter how horrible and painful that life might be.

I wonder how many of the righteous who preach against hospice and assited suicide have ever had the family pet put to sleep humanely by a vet but 98 year old granny gets a feeding tube and no morphine.

Oh, gosh, windy. I hope you didn't open the floodgate for them to come in.

Assisted suicide is allowed in places such as Oregon. Maybe other states will allow it in the future. I personally find the idea distasteful for one reason -- it involves someone that will assist. I do wish that people had the means to end their own lives if they choose without involving another person. I know I couldn't assist anyone in killing themselves, so I wouldn't want to subject anyone else to that trauma.

I guess that is what Dr. Deaths are for. Kind of gives me the shivers thinking of doing that for a living, though.

Hemlock Society,
Compassion and Choices.. (I think)
you'd have to google them.

What if your parent asked you to assist? Happened to me, I understood, but how in the world could I possibly do that?

Just because it is legal doesn't mean we all need to take 'how to' lessons, there will be others who are willing to help. And if our loved ones have access to compassionate professionals they won't have to ask family members or hoard medications in the hope that they can figure out a combination that will get the job done.

This subject is so rife with what ifs and red tape. Unless you can have a team of doctors declare that you are in your right mind and nothing more can be done for you at the exact time you want to end your life there will always be controversy and loopholes.

This topic seems to constantly come up on this message board. Haven't we talked it to death already. No pun intended.

Yea Gershun...I'm not exactly dying to talk about it much more either......Pun intended.

There are certainly many ways people can end their own lives, if they wish. The slippery slope happens to be slippery...so much so that a government could end up deciding that older people of a certain religion, or ethnicity, or body size, or (fill in the blank) are no longer fit to be occupying a hospital bed when another "more PC" person, or a member of a certain religion or ethnicity, or body type "ought to" be occupying that hospital bed, and bed getting the drugs or therapies or doctor. If the government gets involved with sanctioning legal suicide then sanctioned euthanasia of helpless Jews, blacks, Catholics, evangelical bakery owners with a conscience (insert any minority group here), all of these taxpaying US citizens who supposedly have 1st Amendment rights to practice their religion, or other Constitutional rights, suddenly become mere detritus to the all-powerful government elite. Do we really want government deciding every aspect of our lives? I know I could kill myself if I wanted to. But I don't want someone else deciding for me, because I am a minority member. Or I might change my mind, while I was unable to communicate in writing or verbally. There is a good book out there, came out this year a man who was supposedly comatose, abused by his caregivers (as in, repeatedly raped). He was aware, but could do nothing to stop the abuse. What if he had signed a prior "euthanasia release " but 2 years into his supposed coma, change his mind? Wouldn't it b3 murder to euthanasia him?

What ever happened to those obamacare death panels? I have a long list I'd like to submit.

Mallory, while it's true people have been committing suicide since the dawn of time for some of us finding a way to do the deed would be far from simple. Shoot myself? Well, there is no easy access to guns where I live, it's messy, and my dad's cousin tried to kill himself with his rifle and ended up in the psych ward and ended his days in a nursing home,
Pills? But what is a lethal dose/combination? You'd think that info would be easy to find on the internet but I have searched and it it surprisingly difficult. Wouldn't want to be like those poor souls who botch the job and end up in worse shape than before and unable to try again.
Hanging? nah Drowning? god no Death by vehicular accident? Same problem as trying drugs, you may survive, and you may endanger others. Well, there is always gassing yourself with the car exhaust, providing you are still physically able to get yourself to the car and find a way to hook it all up.
Or we could just do what Oregon has done, offer a compassionate means to die painlessly for those who ask for it. I vote for that one.

....Just stop eating and you'll be gone in a few weeks.

But seriously folks. It could be made very simple. We are already able to express our end of life directives in a legal and binding way through living wills and other documents. There is no reason a person should not be able to state that when the quality of life is no more we can have our deaths assited rather than drug out for hours, days, weeks or months.

I strongly believe in the hospice system. We fully and legally accept that a judgement has been made that death is imminent. We abide by the patients living will. I do hospice volunteer work. But it is very difficult to watch the dying process even with compassionate care and comfort. Why should the dying and their families be drug through this process of death watch.

And keep in mind, any life ending directives would have been authoized by the patient, not the government, death panels, or greedy relatives. You have strong religious convictions about life and death? Fine. Don't fill out a living will. Have your life drug out to the very end until "God" takes you. But keep your beliefs to yourself and don't attempt to dictate to the rest of us how we should live or die.

Windy, I have strong convictions about people not being killed without whomever is responsible being held to account in this world. I don't presume to be privy to God's view of the matter, though I have a modicum of confidence that His judgement will be both true and compassionate and, who knows, eventually revealed to us.

As - I've forgotten her name and I don't want to confuse her with someone else, but you know the one, the lady on the thread about hospice shuffling her mother (and everybody else's mother to hear her tell it) off this mortal coil uninvited - anyway, her. As she points out with rather more justification, ends are currently hastened; and let's not be naïve about it, we know they are. That's a side effect of effective palliative care; it is justifiable in terms of patient interest; and as things stand any question of intent is scrutinised and end of life care teams are held to account.

Introduce meaningful legislation that allows assisted suicide to take place in anything but the most rarefied circumstances, and what will happen is that that critical scrutiny will be bypassed and instead there will be a rubber stamp process. Inconvenient old ladies will get hurried along and no one will be answerable. Give it time, and it will become normal. In a century, our descendants will look back and shake their heads at our insistence on forcing tired old people to finish the course.

The point about the patient authorising the directives would be reassuring, if only the systems that are supposed to ensure that people doing this are acting freely and with informed consent were anything like as effective as they ought to be. Same currently applies to wills and POAs. Are these documents always signed by a person making a free and considered choice? In a pig's eye they are. But the law assumes so.

Relatives don't have to be monstrously greedy to want to be rid of their dying loved ones. They could just be bored, or squeamish, or have a pressing appointment elsewhere. Seriously they might: you know how it is, the child lives on the other side of the world and really thought it would be all over by now and has to start weighing up whether they'll need to change their return flight and how much is that going to cost... They could be like my sister, and be broken-hearted at the thought that their intelligent and fastidious mother would - in mother's own words - "never want to get like that." We are not good at waiting. And especially not when we're uncomfortable.

The difficulty lies in getting to the real-time wishes of the dying person. What they felt about wanting a clean and dignified end some time before they faced it may not be what they feel about it now, when it's happening. I don't think it can be done, or at least not well enough for the certainty you need to have before you make the decision to kill another person.

It's one thing for people to step outside guidelines and then have to make a very good case for why they did it. It's another to relax the guidelines so that they don't have to prove a thing. That's what I'm afraid of.

Country, while I appeciate the discussion, and you make some interesting arguments, I stand by my position.

You listed many things that can go wrong, be misused, fraudulent acts, speeding Granny's death cause she's a burden etc. You apparently feel that wills and poas are not to be trusted. Is there fraud? Contention and lawsuits? Hell yes, but it's the legal foundation we have worked with for hundreds of years.

You make wills and end of life directives when you are of sound mind with the intent of your wishes being carried out when you are no longer of sound mind. I would venture a guess that your paperwork is in order. I respect your opinions and your many comments on this forum.

Being the sensible person you are, you have raised questions about the pitfalls of ending life. But I'll venture another guess: I'd bet if you were at my death bed, knowing my stated wishes and you were my legal designee, I think you would instruct hospice to pull the feeding tube and give me the largest dose of morphine allowed by law. And if you come across some nutty relative of mine yelling that I could have a few more days of gods intended life, please call security.

This whole business of taking your own live is such a slippery slope. I used to date a man who was an alcoholic. I accompanied him one night to an AA meeting just to be supportive. He recognized a friend of his in front of us. He tapped him on the shoulder and this person turned around. The whole right side of his face was gone because of a botched suicide attempt.

So if you can't do the job yourself and do it right, don't try. By the way, this man was in his twenties. When it comes to deciding quality of life, then there is the whole "oh, I am so depressed, life isn't worth living anymore" type of thinking. Hell I am super depressed these days missing my Mom. I think I have the right to off myself.

I don't know. Like I said yesterday, this topic is so tedious.

Weren't there twin brothers somewhere in EU, they were blind and deaf (?) and both felt their lives were just not worth continuing....this was in 2014 (?) and they did both take their lives and their government supported them. No charges filed against the doctor (s) that supplied the poison medicine.
There are also reports of elderly citizens in some EU countries that are euthanized, and it is accepted as normal.
I don't know if I could accept this, because it is a half a millimeter away from euthanizing those who are not PC, or speak out against the government can (now) be prosecuted as domestic terrorists. And with all the digital storage of every one of our phone calls, texts, emails, and donations, all of these are being stored in huge data banks, in Utah and elsewhere. The government is doing this. I'm not making this up. Some day they might just decide all Catholics or all Mormons or all Irish or all Italians are threats, and must be euthanized to protect the "rights" of the PC crowd.

Yeah, if Donald Trump wins the election.............

Huh???

That's what I'm talking about Mallory, we need those death panels! Your death list is much shorter than mine...........But mine would be more specific.

Willco, Windy! ;)

I agree to Gladimhere, same thing happened to me....NO WAY could I assist, all I could do was stay up with him, a week later he was at the hospital and I asked about hospice, that was the beginning of the end

There is a big difference between assisted suicide and euthanasia. I will never agree with a system that allows taking someone elses life, no matter how pitiful it is thought to be.

Just to be clear, I am not in favor of euthanasia, and do not have a "death list ". And I am very wary of assisted suicide because it is very close to euthanasia. If someone at age 60 signs a document saying they wish to have assistance in suicide, in the event they cannot carry it out, in case they get alzheimer's, and then 25 yrs later they develop dementia symptoms....and someone drags out this 25 yr old document -- but at some point the person had changed their mind about wanting assisted suicide.....well that is a problem.

Or, someone at age 60 signs an advance assisted suicide document for certain amount of incapacity, and 25 yrs later, the world government has become radically changed and the doctors have been forced to make drastic choices....they might decide to do away with those who had in the past promoted assisted suicide, even thought they don't have an incapacity, because, well, they're in favor of suicide...so they misinterpret and broaden that and make it apply to the new world situation. Or maybe population pressures make it "favorable " to begin a systematic pruning of old people. Who are they going to start with?