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this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2023
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I think you should be allowed to, and I’ve been vocally pro right to die for a long time, but I think this is bad. Medically assisted suicide isn’t meant to be done like this because doctors are better at it, but because they’re the ones with access to lethal drugs whom the terminally ill who are unable to end their life by their own hand will interact with that have the least to gain from their death.
Medically assisted suicide needs to emphasize assisted over suicide. Drug addicts have the capacity to obtain and administer a lethal dose of a drug. I might be ok with them being allowed a safe place where a DNR order that they set up for that experience will be respected so they can OD.
But the general rule in medically assisted suicide is the patient should have to prove that they are terminally ill with no hope of recovering and a sufficiently painful decline and then once approved they should have to do every part of the act that they are physically capable of. Furthermore the final “go” signal should require the patient to explicitly trigger. The physician should be as hands off as possible.
It needs to be treated with this weight. It needs to require a person dying of cancer to fight for it. Otherwise able people might begin dispensing “mercy” where it is less than enthusiastically wanted.
Why should that be the line? Why should a patient have to be terminally ill in order to have the right to die? Why should irremediable suffering not also be considered as a standard?
I think that is the standard if I’m not mistaken. I haven’t looked too closely though, I could be wrong.
The article states “irremediable physical and/or psychological suffering” as another standard that’s being used for consideration here, not just whether a person’s condition is terminal.
It’s not the right to die, it’s the right to assistance in it. I believe we all have the right to kill ourselves. Terminality is associated with a cascading of symptoms and suffering. It’s not “you can’t be helped” but “your pain is going to be increasingly unbearable and constant and likely you will begin losing certain faculties as you wait to die.” It’s also associated with the need for physician assistance to suicide. I can go out, buy a bunch of pills, get a weapon, find a bridge, whatever. A terminally ill patient probably can’t. Things like loading a needle of too much opioid is going to likely be difficult by the time you’re declared terminal. And terminal comes with the understanding that it’s too late for a miracle cure, even if it gets invented tomorrow it’s highly unlikely to get to you in time. Irremediable doesn’t come with that security. And that may sound ridiculous but miracle cures have happened, notably with antibiotics.
lol, there’s no such thing as “miracles” and antibiotics don’t cure addiction— nothing does. It’s a lifelong condition that not everyone has success with. Why should you get to decide who gets relief from irremediable physical and/or psychological suffering rather than trained physicians and psychologists? You just assume that, for someone in that position, it would just be easy for them to commit suicide themselves, but you’ve clearly never been suicidal. It’s never easy. And clearly it’s difficult enough that people want state assistance to do it safely and humanely.