Often times, when an animal is very sick and their quality of life diminishes, we humanely euthanize them. So why is it that we do not do the same for human beings?

Patients with Alzheimer's are not going to get better. Why wait until they are in the fetal position trying to remember how to breathe on their own, and let them suffer that way? If, though, assisted suicide were legal, at what point would it be acceptable to say "Okay this is the right time, suffering will be endless from this point."?

Do you feel that it would be okay, allowing for special circumstances? Or, are you against it, and why?

It's a tough question. Life's a terminal condition for everyone, after all.

I think that people who are of sound mind should be allowed to die peacefully and with dignity. Alzheimer's patients... I don't know. They're usually not of sound mind. I guess that would underscore the importance of having a living will, to make your wishes known in the event that you're mentally or physically incapacitated and can't communicate your wishes.

Euthanasia is a different story. It's a bit of an ethical minefield. I'm not sure how I really feel about that. I guess it's up to the people involved to make the decision (parents, children, caregivers, doctors, etc.). Only they know the specifics of the case and whether or not euthanasia is appropriate.

I think people who wish to do it should be allowed to, mostly because I think it's stupid to try to prevent someone from doing it legally when it's not exactly rocket science to do it in your kitchen, or to keep someone from doing it by the fact that they're too broken and non-functional to perform the act that a healthy person could easily manage. I'm less certain about just pulling the plug on people, but on the other hand I'm not one of those people who has a moral issue with "killing is always wrong" either so I tend to lean towards "whatever the consensus is." With infinite resources these days I'm not sure if we couldn't keep a heart beating and lungs pumping long past the time when everything inside would normally be turned to dust, and if you're some guy with infinite resources that wants that sort of thing I don't think it's my place to tell you no, but in a practical sense people don't have those resources and at some point most people are just occupying the time and money of people who could be helping people who will one day get better.

In a broad moral sense, I am torn on this issue. Philosophically, I want to say that it is wrong, but the more emotional part of me wants to say that a person should be allowed to die with dignity.

In terms of the Hippocratic Oath, however, I don't think it is allowed. The Hippocratic Oath says "first, do no harm." Assisted suicide is harm, even if there is the potential for more harm due to the progression of the disease. A doctor's job is to keep a patient alive and healthy; if a patient is able to live without life support, no matter how unhealthy, a doctor assisting the suicide is going against their duty. I don't have the same problem with a doctor pulling the plug on someone unable to live without life support (presuming it is what the individual or, if the individual is braindead, the family wants), particularly if brain function is gone. In that case, it takes active work to keep the patient alive and some cases (particularly braindeath) it doesn't seem to really be "life" anymore. In the case of braindeath, the person is still living, but everything that makes them who they are is gone.

I like the points that were brought up.

While, no, its not impossible to keep a suicidal person from committing suicide, it may be better to ease the suffering of the act itself. It would also control the failure rate. We have all heard of suicide attempts that didn't turn out the way the person expected it to.

I do not think that a suicide doctor should be used for just any reason (i.e. depression), but I do believe that a person should have this choice in the case that they do become terminal and lose their right to decide. But mostly, I don't think this burden should be put off on families. More specifically I am talking about hospice patients. It sounds nice when the nurses say that its for everyone to say their final goodbyes, but more often than not it just doesn't happen that way. The family is left with a dying loved one, that they often don't know how to properly care for (with medical equipment that they've never used before), even with the nurses that help. Then they have massive guilt from wondering if they did everything they could to keep said family member comfortable. I know the horror of it, not only because I lived through it recently, but also from hearing other families tell their stories. Do you have any idea how much morphine they stock you up on? Then the nurse says "Give him/her as much as you think they need. Dosage doesn't matter anymore, because really, what harm can it do at this point?" So what are they saying? Certain patients can build up a tolerance to morphine very quickly, forcing higher and higher doses up until the person passes away (quite likely from overdose) and then the family is left with the guilt knowing they gave those doses. What I'm wondering is, who bears the bigger burden?

The only thing wrong with death is being forced into it unwillingly.

I do have a problem with doctors removing life support from terminal patients, only because I think an overdose of morphine would be much a better way to go than dying from thirst or being unable to breath. And hell, you can take me out the back and shoot me before you remove a feeding tube and starve me to death.

Well, yeah I'd have to agree with you there. Starving to death would definitely not be the way to go for me either. But technically by that point its better for the person not to eat anyways. Food creates energy, when really its better for the person to remain restful. All patients by that time will refuse food, feeding tube or not. Coma or not.

I think its cruel to keep a terminal patient alive using machines, but that is just me. But its also cruel to send a person dying of lung cancer home to their family with the maximum number of oxygen tanks at full capacity, and its still not enough to get their breathing to a comfortable level. Especially when that person is really tired after fighting for numerous years and really just wants the pain and discomfort to end as soon as possible. And has a sound enough mind to voice that clearly.

It frustrates me to no end that a doctor, who is in the business of helping people, could say it goes against his/her ethics to shorten the length of suffering, but oh "its okay if you, the daughter/wife/husband/grandchild, gives them too much morphine *wink, wink*".

What if a perfectly healthy teenager is depressed and wants to die? I would think assisted suicide would be bad in that case. I don't think it's always right to respect their wishes to end their life.

People who want to die will find a way to do it - whether it's assisted or not. With assisted suicide at least you have a doctor there to make sure the person feels as little pain as possible.

In situations of terminal illness where the quality of life is poor due to pain or reduction in mental function, I see no problem in allowing someone to end their life. Make it so they have to have seen a psychiatrist who can make sure their reasons are good and not a matter of depression or whatnot (and if it's something like a deteriorating mental function situation, it's something they can do while they're still functional enough to say, "Yes, I know what's going to happen to me, and I don't want to live like that - when the time comes, I want to just go to sleep and not wake up").

"First, do no harm" as an argument against assisted suicide, IMO, doesn't work. I think it is more harmful to a person to keep them alive through horrible pain, unable to control their bodily functions, get out of bed, or speak to their loved ones, than to allow them a dignified and painless end to their suffering.

I've had many pets in my life, and been with a lot of them to the vet so they could get "the shot" once they were too sick, badly injured, too old to walk more than a few steps without falling, etc... I can tell you that while it's always a sad moment, there's not one time where I have not thought "man this is how I would like to die when the time comes". One single shot, and they drift away peacefully within 10-15 seconds.

So yes, I am for assisted suicide, and euthanasia, but I agree that it would have to be regulated. I just think it's actually cruel to keep people on life support for months when you know for sure that they will die anyway. I'm not talking about coma here, as they could wake up years later, but I'm talking terminally ill patients who's body is so deteriorated that they can not live without life support, in a forced coma so they don't hurt... what's the point of keeping those people "alive"?


Assisted suicide would not even have anything to do with a perfectly healthy teenager. Assisted suicide and euthanasia are considered to be for people who could not do it on their own to start with, that's why it is "assisted". The depressed teenager could kill himself if he wanted too. Now I'm not saying we should just shrug and let him, we should direct him to the available help and ressources, I'm just pointing that perfectly healthy individuals would not be part of any law or code of ethic pertaining assisted suicide and eutanasia.

Damocles, thank you for linking me to that movie! I had no idea they made one. How interesting that Al Pacino is playing Dr. Jack Kevorkian. I will definitely have to watch it.

I'm a history teacher, and teach about the Holocaust. I have a two-fold point. First, Hitler called it "life unworthy of life" and took it upon himself and his minions to extinguish that life. Obviously a bad solution. So I would not be against it if would could put in place some very clear guidelines and strict rules. It should be everyone's right to end their life when they choose. However, as the sibling of a sister who committed suicide at age 24, I know that the repercussions to the survivors can be horrendous. So we must tread VERY carefully.

My second point, which you just reminded me of with your thread, and the mention of Alzheimer's--Holocaust survivors are, in increasing numbers experiencing Alzheimer's disease. And the delusion that most frequently comes upon them is that they are back in the camps. I can think of nothing more horrific--you survived once; it is just WRONG that your brain should take you back there in the years you should be enjoying, free of care. If they could know this BEFORE they lost their cognitive skills, I am pretty sure they would choose to die before they had to relive that horror. But I am not ready to make that decision for them.

I actually opened up this thread to point that out as well. It's a good movie.

Some says it's the time when the patient is diagnosed as brain dead.
I am against euthanasia, no matter the patient is willing to receive it or not.

In case the patient is unconscious, who have the power to decide the life and death of the patient is very debatable.Still remember Terri Schiavo, who was a vegetable?Terri's husband wanted her to die peacefully through euthanasia. However, Terri's parents argue that Terri should be kept alive. Finally, Terri's life was ended by removing her feeding tube, an action based on a decision from a local court.

Indeed, with our technology, brain dead patient can not recover. However, with stem cell technology, brain cells might be grown in the future.

I think if someone is truly brain dead then it doesn't make much difference to that person as they aren't suffering.

But it is cruel to force people (or animals) who have some awareness to go on living when they are experiencing never ending intolerable suffering.

So although in practice it would be extremely difficult to regulate, in theory assisted suicide should be an option in any caring society.

It happens every day now, it's just not regulated.

If the brain is dead then it doesn't matter if they can grow new brain cells or not, that just means they might eventually be able to create a new person out of the dead one because the rest of the meat is working fine. It would be like putting a new hard drive into the computer. Just because it looks like the old computer doesn't mean it has the same information inside it any longer. Until we're able to make backups of the brain and reinstall the stuff that makes people the people they are, we're likely to just end up with people who aren't any more the old person than a random stranger.

That's assuming that the damage is truly severe of course. I guess everyone could stand to forget Junior High School and what ice cream tastes like without lasting permanent damage to the persona... I just don't think those are the people who qualify for the term "brain dead." I'm willing to entertain contrary information from medical/biological professionals though. It's far, far outside my realm of expertise.

That's largely my opinion as well. It's determining when it's right that's the big problem.

That's assuming that information is actually stored in the brain cells themselves and not elsewhere (such as in an energy field, or maybe "the soul", if you want to get spiritual). But even then, you'd run into the same problem. If the energy/soul/etc. has left the building, putting new brain cells into the head won't make much difference. It would be sort of like if your computer crashed and deleted your operating system. Adding more memory chips won't actually restore the missing software.

So... yeah. I guess I was sort of agreeing with you.

Although I'm not sure how one would would regulate to ensure the safety of the patient, I am in favour of assisted suicide. The problem as I see it though is not only ensuring that the patient is of sound mind when they make the decision, but to ensure that they are not being manipulated into making that decision.

When suicide/euthanasia debates have come up in past, I have related my own personal story. It will still be on the forum somewhere, so I won't tell it in full again but the short version is that I have a particularly nasty case (the worst my specialists have ever seen) of a chronic neuropathic pain condition called Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS). It's not terminal but affects most of my body - I'm in severe pain all the time and on so many different drugs to try (often unsuccesfully) to control it that it that it's not funny. My heart is affected too, as is my stomach - I'm around 5'4" and weigh just under 33kg (72lb). On a good day I get of the house with help. On a bad day, I can't move. I'd be much more comfortable with my life knowing that should every day become a bad one, the opportunity to ask for help to die is open to me.

My biggest concern is with how easy it would be to manipulate someone. When you're really sick and in pain, it's easy to be convinced that you're a burden on your family and it would only take one or two unscrupulous people to take advantage of that. Just my two cents.

How can people know that the unconscious patient does not want to live?
Is it not cruel to kill somebody?
What gives relatives or doctors the authority to end somebodies' life?

How can people know that the unconscious patient wants to be kept alive?
Is it not cruel to maintain someone's body alive by means of artificial support?
What gives relatives or doctors the authority to forcefully maintain somebody alive?

On a side note, I didn't just say that to be annoying, just to show that the issue is indeed more deep than what we might think at first glance.

Is it fair to totally disallow assisted suicide and euthanasia because it could potentially be abused? Sure there are gray areas, and a lot of cases would probably have to be considered on a case by case basis, but to totally disallow it?

I personally believe that to forbid assistance to end one's life to someone who consciously asks for it because they just can't live with the suffering anymore, or they don't want to wait until they are so bad that they can't even ask for it anymore... I think that to forbid them assistance is in itself unethical.

Talk to your lawer about drawing up a "living will". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanc...ive#Living_will

This is something EVERYBODY should have, yet very few people know about.

They should be allowed the choice to die should they not be living healthy and well enough to make decisions. A mentally ill patient that makes decisions on his own should not die whether the person with a brain injury that leaves him brain dead should be allowed to die as long as he's not convinced into taking his own life without permission when he is still able.

You know there is one guy who work a book, "How to Die" and it was very controversial. He advocated suicide for people who don't want to live in pain and suffering (aka old people) and there is a part in which they put a plastic bag over their head and tied it off. One late show comedian said, "Is he trying to keep his head fresh?"

I mean, unless assisted suicide is legal, I guess what they need to try to do is to create suicide machines for old people as well as those who don't want to suffer more pain and suffering anymore. Complementary from Futurama.

I saw the bag thing on an episode in nip/tuck (only watched two seasons, the lady stuck to the couch was too much for me).

I've heard its a good way to go, but if I weren't dead at the time, I'd be embarrassed to be found with a plastic bag over my head. And how could I ask someone I love to assist me with that?

That's my main issue with this. I think that the act itself to be carried out by a doctor, not family members. Doctors should make this an option when a patient becomes terminal and is still in a good frame of mind. The choice should be made ahead of time, with counseling and lawful consent, not when the patient is in unbearable pain that morphine doesn't help, and are screaming out "kill me" but by then its too late. They are stuck suffering, because everyone thinks that by then the patients mind is too far gone to make that kind of rational decision.

Well yeah, it has to be a medical professional because otherwise you'd just be giving people a recipe for murder.

"Her? Oh yeah... She um, tripped. Horrible pain. I took her out back and put a bunch of bullets in 'er."

I want the people who can pull the plug on other people licensed and subject to board reviews and such, not just "Nephew Tim."