| We hope you enjoy your visit. You're currently viewing our forum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our community, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile, sending personal messages, and voting in polls. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free. Join our community! If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features: |
- Pages:
- 1
- 2
| Assisted suicide. Yay or nay? | |
|---|---|
| Topic Started: Jul 30 2009, 04:48 PM (421 Views) | |
| Paper | Jul 30 2009, 04:48 PM Post #1 |
Member
  ![]](http://209.85.62.24/static/1/pip_r.png)
|
In the UK, assisting someone to commit suicide is a crime - however it is legal in Switzerland. Under UK law, someone who assists someone to end their own life in another country can be imprisoned for up to 14 years, yet none of the assisting who have returned have been prosecuted. The law is considered ambiguous which has sparked a need to clearly lay out policies. Here is the article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8177343.stm Should we have the right to decide how to die? One reader answers:
Another reader disagrees:
What are your opinions? What would you do if you were paralysed neck down? Personally I believe assisted suicide should be legal, but that a rehabilitation programme (including living with illness and counselling) be necessary to go through, after which the person is allowed to choose to end their life. The danger is that the person has external pressures on them - they should be educated and encouraged to discuss such matters. I say this because, take for example, a person who is paralysed. Some might argue that living trapped in a non-working body is not really living at all. However, as many have shown, with time and rehabilitation it is possible to over come such obstacles, especially with today's technological advances and to look at life in a different way with just a changed meaning. I think only those with such illnesses can choose for themselves. However, we need a system which protects these people. |
 |
 
|
| Fission | Jul 30 2009, 05:05 PM Post #2 |
SRS BSNS
|
In the words of Jesus (i.e. South Park Jesus), "I'm not touching that with a 26 1/2 foot pole". |
|
|
|
| Nicola | Jul 30 2009, 05:23 PM Post #3 |
|
.....
|
I think it's fine that lady that has been featured on the news can now be assured her husband won't be convicted for helping her to die. Ultimately it is her choice. If she chooses to live the remainder of her life with her husband until such time as she cannot do anything for herself and thus ends her life in Switzerland, that is her prerogative. Having met quite a few people now who have debilitating illnesses, I can understand why people want this as an option. We've also got someone who is 'Locked in' in a ward above where I work. Their mental status is like any other person. They can hear, see, think, but just cannot move at all. I can't even begin to imagine how utterly agonising that is, not being able to convey any thought or emotion, not being in control of yourself at all. I agree with you Paper, that this route is really only something that people should choose if all options have been extinguished. I'm a fighter, so I'd probably hang on for ages while paralyzed, hoping to beat it in some way or another. I can imagine it would definitely start to grate on my state of mind, though. I think I'd be too much of a coward to make that sort of decision, and even then I think it's one of those things that you can't really decide until you're in that position. I take that sort of stance on a lot of things. |
|
|
|
| Lindsey | Jul 30 2009, 10:13 PM Post #4 |
<3
|
Another great reason for a living will, I think. |
|
|
|
| Deleted User | Jul 30 2009, 11:58 PM Post #5 |
|
Deleted User
|
Nobody has the right to tell anyone what to do with their own body. If somebody wants to kill themselves to end their suffering - whether from an incurable disease, a curable one, a broken fingernail, or a dislike of the music kids play today - it's nobody's business but theirs, so if they want help doing it, that should be legal as well. You can make arguments about risks of coercion and all that, but there are risks of coercion all over the place, from government propaganda luring or bribing people into the military, to doctors convincing people to spend their life savings poisoning themselves with toxic chemicals and radiation. Oh, as far as the being paralyzed thing, I'd like to believe I'd try to tough it out if it happened to me, but I think it's something you can't really say for sure until you're in that situation, just like whether you'd help a person end their life. |
|
|
|
| Paper | Jul 31 2009, 11:59 AM Post #6 |
|
Member
|
Only a year ago, had I become paralysed I would definitely have considered it a living hell. But having watched The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, a film produced from the writings of a locked-in man, I reconsidered. His goal was to write a book - and well even trapped in his state he managed to do that. I realise it's not completely impossible to keep on existing with help to communicate in some form.
There are two kinds of suffering in life. Physical distress and mental anguish. The former cannot always be fixed, so it's understandable why someone might choose to end their life in order to die pleasantly rather than experience complete pain before death. The latter is more tricky. On one had you get locked-in people who feel their life has become purposeless. The question is, do they really want to kill themselves, or do they feel there is no other option? What would be worse, to continue to live, suffer mentally and try to find a purpose or to die in absolute despair? Take for example a person who feels sad because they are constantly being bullied. After a while, they might become extremely sad and then eventually suicidal if it continues. Now let's say you spot them trying to kill themselves. What would you do? Attempt to talk them out of it or just walk idly by, "it's their right to choose"? Actually, this person was me. I was suffering depression, but looking back I'm glad I didn't die. The idea of allowing anyone to go to a clinic to take their life for any reason scares me, especially when people are only suffering depression - a debilitating but curable disease, which inhibits rational and positive thinking - a fact (and disease) that is poorly understood by mainstream society. A while ago a teen threw himself off a building. Police had just managed to convince him not to, when a group of youths down below in the crowd heckled "jump! jump! stop wasting our time". Consequently the teen jumped and died. I was surprised when friends said to me that "the youths don't deserve punishment because the teen had made his selfish choice" - as though the teen had one day rolled out of bed and decided today might be a nice day to die. Where do we draw the line? How much mental anguish does someone have to be in? How do we even measure and compare that? Edited by Paper, Jul 31 2009, 12:00 PM.
|
|
|
|
| Deleted User | Jul 31 2009, 09:23 PM Post #7 |
|
Deleted User
|
I would definitely at least talk with them, and probably try to talk them out of it. If that didn't work, I'm not sure what I'd do, but it would probably depend on what information the talk provided. I've also dealt with depression for 20 years or so now, and have seriously contemplated suicide many times in the past, but it's usually only a fleeting idea anymore. Mostly because I realized such thinking would always end in the same result, which is not death, but me feeling stupid for thinking such things. The truth is that I haven't committed suicide not because somebody tried to talk me out of it, which many have, and not because somebody proved how much they loved me and would miss me, etc., which many have, but because I'm stubborn and jaded and cynical. I don't like "quitting" or "giving up", and I just know that if I did kill myself, whatever the reason I had for doing so would have been resolved shortly (if not immediately) after, thus meaning I took my own life for nothing because I was impatient. In case that was confusing, I'm saying if I was suffering some horrible incurable disease and killed myself on Monday, a cure would likely be found that following Wednesday, or maybe even later that evening, just before dinner. And along those lines of not wanting to be a "quitter", when I think of people who've been through a lot worse than I can even imagine and haven't given up... what an amazingly whiny little &@^!& I'd have to be to kill myself over the relatively minor problems I've had so far!? (I love that I found a way to legitimately stick that link in there so I didn't have to make a topic about it!)  Somebody talking to you might have helped, or drugs or therapy might have helped, but I'm not interested in any of that for my own issues. I'm glad whatever methods you chose seem to have worked for you, but from my experience, most therapists need therapy much more than I ever will, and few of them seem capable of thinking outside the box or seeing the big picture or escaping from the brainwashing of their parents and church and government and don't have much of a grasp on what living or happiness or truth really are, they just exist and play their roles and make their money and spend it and get old and die. And if there's one good thing about Scientology, other than the amusement factor, it's their distrust of psychiatrists and the drugs they prescribe. I've had several friends and know of others who have either committed suicide because anti-depressants made them suicidal even though they weren't suicidal before, or increased their suicidal urges, or caused them to beat the $##* out of their girlfriend even though they never would have done that without the medication and they became suicidal because of the guilt from it, etc., so I "just say no" to allowing myself to be experimented on with woefully under-tested and often definitively toxic drugs so the pharmaceutical company CEO's and "doctors" can further line their pockets and have their toilets gold-plated. And if anybody ever tries to drug me or restrain and confine me by force, etc., "for my own good", they'll be putting their own life at risk, so I doubt I'd try to do such things to anyone else. As far as the kids in your story, that's a bit of a tough call, but I think it always comes down to being the individual's responsibility for their own suicide, just as with any homicide or any other crime, whether they've been taunted or tempted or harassed or abused or coerced or whatever. We are all, ultimately, responsible for our own actions, or lack thereof. So the kids who taunted him to jump should be no more legally guilty in his suicide than a cruel parent would be for a serial killer's murders, despite any influence they had. I would hope they'd feel morally guilty and ashamed for it though. That is, unless the kid was one of the many people who don't deserve to live and whose death would greatly benefit society and even the planet itself, in which case, congratulations might be in order. |
|
|
|
| dark lord war | Aug 1 2009, 01:40 PM Post #8 |
|
Member
|
Nobody deserves that. Death is the wrong punishment for anything. As for suicide it is up to that person what they want to do. It should not be illegal. I am all against this. People should be able to do whatever they want to do. That teen wanted to jump, he should jump. It is their own decision. |
|
|
|
| Paper | Aug 1 2009, 06:26 PM Post #9 |
|
Member
|
I think depression itself is a tricky disease. Using the CBT model, general depression can be best thought of as a habit in which the suffer becomes accustomed to thinking in a negative and irrational thinking style that by its very nature can become worse left untreated. So for instance, the suffer might, after a depressive episode, feel that they were merely being stupid/selfish/weak and blame themselves. As a result they might feel shame, weak and embarrassed, which prompts more negative thoughts and continues in a spiral like this - effectively making the sufferer's view point of the world totally negative. As such, you can't merely talk someone out of thinking negatively. The end result of the depression is that they feel completely isolated, helpless and unable to see a positive past, present or future. And at this point they will begin to contemplate suicide. Ultimately those who do kill themselves do so out of desperation rather than because they feel they are giving up. To them it's the only way to escape a situation and accompanying pain - to them there are no other solutions. Of course, all of this is not the sufferer's fault! They are merely trapped in a negative way of thinking, blaming themselves due to their own misinformation about depression. Listening (rather than talking) and medication (which sometimes does the opposite) can provide temporary relief. A permanent solution is to change the habit of negative thinking into a positive thinking habit. That can be done by your own life experience, by help with a therapist/therapy group, or hypnotherapy etc etc etc. I never went for the drug option and I think too many doctors today prescribe it willy nilly. I found therapy, which is free with the university, helped me A LOT. I think cognitive behavioural therapy needs to be part of our health service, but a lack of understanding in society prevents this from happening. Psychology is a relatively new science, but also a science particularly difficult to study in because it deals with emergent cognition, behaviours and emotions from a very complex organ - the brain. I can't agree with that rather biased 4 minute documentary. One need only need scan the brain to see that there is a clear difference: 
Not so. That parent couldn't have ever reasonably predicted that their bullying might turn their child into a serial killer. Those kids were capable of and did predict that taunting would cause him to kill himself. Had they said nothing rather than something, the kid would probably be alive today. Lack of understanding someone's medical condition should be no excuse for escaping liability. They are partially responsible for that kid's death and should be punished as an example to others who might think of doing the same. Otherwise, why "feel morally guilty and ashamed" if you aren't?! IMO, it's disgusting behaviour and people who toy around with people's feelings knowing that there is a real posibility they might kill themselves are murderers.
As I explained in this post. Someone who is suffering depression would not normally want to kill themselves. It is the disease which affects their ability to rationalise, so no, we should not just let them kill themselves. What a terrible way to die - in complete mental isolation and despair. It's funny that should we see someone suffering from a physical disease, we are keen to help. When we see someone suffering a mental disease, we are very slow to understand and help. We lock up those who we label insane and those not locked up are sane. According to our society, there is no middle ground, no one exists in between sane and insane. But it's just not true and that's what people fail to understand. Edited by Paper, Aug 1 2009, 06:29 PM.
|
|
|
|
| OcelotJay | Aug 2 2009, 07:23 AM Post #10 |
<3 mine Miaow
|
Your initial statement relies on complete ignorance, and this isn't 1843.  There is an overwhelming number of cases documented where a child's upbringing - specifically one involving regular abuse, physical and/or sexual - has led them down the path of becoming abusers themselves, ending in rape, torture, serial assault or even murder. This stuff features regularly in the news, and the internet is handily available to make the topic of parental abuse pretty accessible. Ignorance simply isn't an excuse. And parents who are abusive don't feign ignorance of what their actions could do to their child's mental health or how it could affect their future; if they held such considerations, they wouldn't be abusive in the first place, would they? It doesn't take a genius to deduce that a poor upbringing tends to have negative implications more so than positive ones.  That aside, I don't believe the teens mentioned can be absolved of guilt. If a group gathers around a fight and taunts them on, when that fight ends in somebody being bludgeoned to death the jeering crowd can hardly be allowed to just walk away feeling bad. Much the same applies to what happened with the teenager that jumped; goading someone on in such a fragile state is barely all that different to pushing them off the edge. The problem comes with how do we treat or deal with such influences? In your post you absolve abusive parents of guilt or blame; if something is historic, do we ignore it? Do we say "this is the benchmark - any influences past so many years can be ignored" and only look at the most recent or direct influences? Measuring guilt is no easy thing. Events of such significance don't occur from one tiny thing, they're usually the result of years of small occurrences linked together like a chain. Those teenagers goading on a suicide were wrong for doing it but you have to also consider what led to the teen being up there in the first place. Chances are, when you look for someone to blame you'll probably find a whole history of people who did the wrong thing, said the wrong thing, didn't act when they knew something was up or hell, find people who were responsible for his mental condition or contributed towards it. Those teenagers may have helped him to snap into jumping, but I doubt they were the reason he was up there in the first place. 
|
|
|
|
| Lout | Aug 2 2009, 09:18 AM Post #11 |
Member
|
It's a difficult one to answer what is right and what is wrong, I believe that choice should be there (I also live in the UK by the way) because if my dog was so ill that he had no quality of life left I would be expected to make the decision to have him put to sleep at the vets. But if my wife were in a similar condition I would be classed a killer if I were to do the same thing (although not at the vets of course). |
|
|
|
| Paper | Aug 2 2009, 11:48 AM Post #12 |
|
Member
|
OcelotJay I'm not sure I agree. Clearly there is a distinction between guilty actions (actus reus) and guilty minds (mens rea). My focus was not that of absolving the parents/bully/whatever of any guilt, but that the majority of even bad parents don't wish to push their children to death. Determining whether they were truly guilty of intention is virtually impossible, never mind determining if they are guilty in action. Both of these are very tricky and present many questions as you say. But the case of the kids goading him to jump is clear cut - there's no question about it. They had both an intention and acted at trying to cause the teen to kill himself. The teen was clearly not going to jump and then the kids, obviously disappointed at the show, goaded him to. In this case, the kids clearly were the benchmark between the teen's life and death and they realised the potential of being so and exploited it. I'm not saying they were the sole reason for him considering suicide. They were however, in this case, a major and deliberate influence for him choosing death. It is apparent to me that they bare some, but not all, responsibility for causing his death, and so deserve punishment for it. You might ask, what is the difference between these kids goading the teen to jump and a friend driving an ill person over to dignitas to commit suicide. Again, both guilty actions, one only has a guilty mind. The guilty mind is significant in determining guilt, where as guilty actions must be judged on merit vs damages where good intentions (good minds) are involved. LagerLout, ah but animals aren't capable of asking for euthanasia. Whereas humans are - and so presents the problem! Edited by Paper, Aug 2 2009, 12:03 PM.
|
|
|
|
| Montanae | Aug 4 2009, 02:12 AM Post #13 |
Member
|
OK...I personally believe that assisted suicide should be legal. Perhaps the person can't do it themselves, they should have help. I do, however, believe that counseling, and that rehab should be available, and that the person that chooses to give up their life should be encouraged to take said counseling, or rehab. They should know that there are other options, other than suicide. But, while I do believe that they should have counseling, I don't believe that it should be mandatory. Because, in some situations, it is for a pride reason. Such as the person with only a couple months to live. They don't want the disease to be the thing that takes their life, so they ask a friend. They shouldn't have to take counseling, because it is not a simple thing of the mind, and they realize that they have other choices, and they are not being pressured. With them, it is something as simple as pride, and pride is a strong factor in life. Do I believe that they should talk with someone about their problems? Yes, because pride can drive people to do some pretty abnormal things. But for these people, I don't think that it should be mandatory. And if they still plan to go ahead with the suicide, then they should sign a paper saying that they asked for such person to help them kill themselves. That way you can distinguish the assisted suicide, from the cold blooded homicide. And I do think that it should be legal because, it's going to happen anyways. It's not like you can stop it. The best thing to do, is just make it legal, but make the person have documentation of the assisted suicide. And I agree. Sometimes they do just need to be shown that there is a reason to go on. But if they do choose to go ahead with the suicide, they shouldn't be pressured into changing their minds, and we should accept it graciously. |
|
|
|
| Jia | Aug 5 2009, 07:14 PM Post #14 |
|
我爱我的国家
|
I am for it. Sorry? |
|
|
|
| Paper | Aug 6 2009, 12:02 PM Post #15 |
|
Member
|
Forgiven? |
|
|
|
| 1 user reading this topic (1 Guest and 0 Anonymous) | |
| Go to Next Page | |
| « Previous Topic · Community Chat · Next Topic » |
- Pages:
- 1
- 2
3:44 AM Nov 24
