posted
the man is like 80 years old is dying of I think Hepatitus C or Alzheimers forget which listen to heavy metal music so my brother is going to write appreciative letters so that he dies well.
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The news of Jack Kevorkian's impending death appear to be greatly exaggerated.
His lawyer has been making the same appeal for early release for *four years in a row*, saying his health is so frail he may not have much time left.
The lawyer is free to make whatever claims he wants to the press. The parole board, who probably had access to Kevorkian's actual medical records, can't release confidential information.
But the fact that they turned the appeal for early release indicates Kevorkian will be alive and suddenly reinvigorated when his parole date ccomes up next year. And I'll bet this ailing, "frail" guy will find plenty of energy for media appearances and hitting the talkshow and lecture circuit.
Posts: 4344 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
To equate helping someone who doesn't appriciate being alive end their life with forcibly taking the life of someone who appriciates and loves their life is to belittle what murder actually is.
Just like equating jump-out-of-the-bushes rape with "Ya know.. I said no and we did it anyway.. maybe I was raped."
I don't think Dr Kevorkian is a murderer. But he was convicted. After trying him a half a dozen or so times they finally got a jury with enough people on it who concidered one just as bad as the other and they convicted him. And in general, you can't let a convicted murderer out of jail just because they don't feel well.
All that being said, I hope history comes down on Dr Kevorkian's side.
posted
Pix. I don't. Facilitating suicides was only part of Kevorkian's agenda --
quote: Under extraordinary circumstances like these I feel it is only decent and fair to explain my ultimate aim. I emphasized that it is not simply to help suffering or doomed persons kill themselves - that is merely the first step, an early distasteful professional obligation (no called medicide) that nobody in his or her right mind could savor. I explained that what I find most satifying is the prospect of making possible the performance of invaluable experiments or other beneficial medical acts under conditions that this first unpleasant step can help establish - in a word, obitiatry, as defined earlier. From: Prescription: Medicide, by Jack Kevorkian.
And then there's this (giving examples of his ideas for a "brave new world")...
quote:A full-term infant born with spina bifida, paraplegia, and hydrocephalus is transferred, once proper consent and authorization have been obtained, to an obitorium for research hitherto conducted in rats be researchers interested in the hepatic metabolism of prostaglandin. Test material is given to the anesthetized infant by stomach tube. Two hours later the abdominal cavity is opened, and the intact stomach, small intestine, and liver are removed separately for preservation and subsequent processing for chemical analysis. Meanwhile the infant's heart and lungs are removed for transplantation elsewhere.
The above fanciful events credibly exemplify several almost self-evident points. First, obitiatry would make it possible to conduct daring and highly imaginative research beyond the constraints of traditional but outmoded, hopelessly inadequate, and essentially irrelevant ethical codes now sustained for the most part by vacuous sentimental reverence. Second, the proposed innovation should be extolled by animal rights advocates, because it would eliminate the need for animals now sacrificed unnecessarily in many aspects of academic and industrial research. As a corollary, the advocated practice wold minimize inadvertent human pain and suffering in the conduct of experimental clinical trials of new drugs, devices, or procedures by serving as an intermediate buffer stage between those trials and the first probing experiments on laboratory animals. Finally, taken together, these advantages not only represent a substantial easing of the strain on research budgets; but much more importantly, they help accelerate the medical progress so highly prized in our time. (p. 9) Kevorkian, Jack. The last fearsome taboo: Medical aspects of planned death. Medicine and Law, vol. 7, pp. 1-14
posted
sndrake: He wasn't convicted of advocating infanticide. He was convicted of Murder.
He didn't commit infanticide either. He just wrote about it.
We *do* have free speech in this country. And while I find your quite from "The last fearsome taboo" horrific, I don't find helping sick people, who want to die, end their suffering to be a bad thing.
Posts: 7085 | Registered: Apr 2001
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there is little evidence that "sick" people become suicidal for reasons any different than the reasons that non-sick or disabled people become suicidal. I understand libertarians who want to end compulsory treatment for people declared a "danger to themselves" - carving out a special class and calling for "assistance" actually flies in the face of real libertarian thinking.
Here's something worth a read, from a staunch libertarian who believes in the right for *anyone* to commit suicide, but thinks that "assisted suicide" is a sick joke:
quote:"Liberty," declared Lord Acton, "is the prevention of control by others." Either the state controls the means for suicide and thus deprives persons of a fundamental right to self-determination, or the individual controls it and assumes responsibility for the manner of his or her own death. Kevorkian urges us to delegate responsibility for suicide to physicians, promising benefits to those who "need" it. However, since need is defined by the doctor, not the patient, the result is enhancing the prestige and power of physicians, and diminishing the autonomy of individuals, often at precisely that moment in their lives when that is all they have left.
And with that, I'll have to bow out for now. I have a ton of work to get done for tomorrow. Somehow I feel confident that the conversation about Kevorkian will continue in any case. My absence might actually enhance some parts of it. Posts: 4344 | Registered: Mar 2003
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This is something I've always been curious about: For those who support assisted suicide in certain situations (terminal illness, or uncontrollable pain, or whatever the criteria), why the distinction?
I can only speculate, because I oppose it for all, but all I've been able to come up with is that there are some situations where suicide is considered "good" - whether that means it's a rational decision in the face of adversity or actually a beneficial decision. Somehow suicide has been divided into two categories: worthy of assistance and not worthy of assistance.
I can't articulate how limiting availability of assistance can be reconciled with an individual choice justification without some worthy/unworthy distinction with respect to suicide being made.
Is there another way to reconcile those two views I'm not seeing?
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
I really don't have much of an opinion on this myself, however if a injured soldier on the battlefield looks like he is going to die a slow painful death most officers/nco's who know the man usually put a buttlet into his head to end the suffering if this allowed/or tolerated under battlefield conditions then why not in the hospitols? Although I'm iffy on ending the lives of say patients in a coma but a patient in severe pain and is coherent and lucid enough to request assisted suicide at least is worthy enough to merit consideration. I am very well a believer in the Hypocratic Oath of "Do no Harm" but when would denying harm int he end does more harm then good?
Looks like a have an opinion afterall...
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Oddly enough, Blayne, there *have* been reports of American soldiers killing wounded combatants in Iraq and calling it a "mercy killing."
Thing is - none of those "mercy killings" have been their own comrades. They've been Iraqi insurgents - the motive of "mercy" in those cases is highly questionable, but it's led to light sentences for the soldiers who have argued that this was their motivation.
My guess is that with our own troops, heavy narcotics and sedation will be used (which might hurry death), rather than the less expensive bullet.
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posted
I live in Oakland County where he was convicted, and where I'd imagine he's most famous.
I wouldn't be okay with him being let out of prison. If he's suffering or dying in prison, give him a canister of CO2 and let him solve the problem himself. My opinion of him has changed somewhat over the years, and I don't necessarily view him as the mass murderer that many do (most of my family in the area, and many, many friends), but his lawyer, Geoffrey Fieger can burn in hell.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:This is something I've always been curious about: For those who support assisted suicide in certain situations (terminal illness, or uncontrollable pain, or whatever the criteria), why the distinction?
I can only speculate, because I oppose it for all, but all I've been able to come up with is that there are some situations where suicide is considered "good" - whether that means it's a rational decision in the face of adversity or actually a beneficial decision. Somehow suicide has been divided into two categories: worthy of assistance and not worthy of assistance.
I can't articulate how limiting availability of assistance can be reconciled with an individual choice justification without some worthy/unworthy distinction with respect to suicide being made.
Is there another way to reconcile those two views I'm not seeing?
I can attempt to field this one, Dag, but bear in mind that my mind isn't exactly made up on the subject, and my opinion is in no means definite.
Okay, where to begin...
Well I think one difference in assisted suicide versus regular suicide is that in one, a person is in actual physical pain and terrible discomfort.
A person in a normal suicidal situation is primarily suffering from emotional pain.
Emotional pain is an awful awful thing, but by its very nature, it pretty much always recedes with time. This isn't true of the kinds of physical pain which assisted suicide patients are dealing with. You can't tell them that their pain will ever go away.
You are correct that a lot of the distinction is because we don't recognize suicide driven by emotional reasons to be a decision capable of being made of a sound mind.
If emotional pain does not go away over time, the cause is almost always going to be chemical in nature, and so can be cured or alleviated with new drugs and treatments. By its nature, depression is an illness, and suicidal thoughts are a symptom. If we can cure the illness, the symptom should go away. Even if we can't treat it, it is still an illness, and it prevents us from recognizing the decision to take your own life as a rational one.
Of course, a large part of it is a matter of quality of life. When it dips below a certain threshold, then even people with sound mind will choose to not continue to live. When you go day after day with nothing to look forward to, nothing can bring you joy, and each day is spent in agony or terrible discomfort, and you have no hope for recovery, and you know you are going to die soon, I would argue that wanting to die is probably the MORE rational than wanting to live.
If someone gets a broken arm, and requests assisted suicide, then of course we are going to turn him down even if it is legalized.
If someone loses a child, or some other tragic loss, and comes in and requests suicide, it is an easy determiner that she is not of sound mind and would be turned away.
But when an 80 year old woman has terminal cancer, who is in unspeakable agony, who is incapable of feeling joy in her life, who is expected to die in under six months requests assisted suicide, I have a very hard time understanding those who don't think she should have that right.
I'd be interested in hearing your reasons for denying her, and those like her, that right, Dag (and others).
Don't get me wrong, I don't have any squishy feelings for Kevorkian. I know very little about the man, his beliefs, or his work.
A discussion of assisted suicide should have very little to do with one particular man.
Posts: 5656 | Registered: Oct 1999
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1.) You believe it is society's responsibility to prevent irrational suicides but to allow assistance with rational suicides.
2.) The definition of irrational suicide is something for the legislature to decide. (I'm inferring this from your willingness to turn down some applicants for legalized assisted suicide.)
3.) The rational suicide is based on the existence of pain/suffering and the likelihood of recovery from that pain/suffering.
4.) Based on 2 & 3, the legislature will quantify the pain/suffering and likelihood of recovery thresholds that justify a legal assisted suicide.
Is that a fair summation? I want to make sure I'm understanding your position before I reply more thoroughly.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
It seems to me that there are five main categories that make suicide "worthy" of assistance. That is to say, I've heard all of them expressed as reasons why assisted suiced (AS) should be allowed.
1. Permanent, severe physical pain.
2. Physical/mental trauma. For example, becoming a quadrapalegic or suffering crippling brain damage.
3. Severe depression.
4. Suffering from a terminal illness.
5. Brain dead/coma/vegetative state. My medical terminology isn't so hot, so I don't remember the differences between these.
Another good question to ask, I think, would be who should be explicitly denied the "right" (privelege? opportunity?) to AS. The only category that leaps to mind for me would be parents with minor children.*
Also, I think my views on Kevorkian run parallel to yours, Xavier.
*Am I wrong in assuming that the minor children themselves would be automatically barred from obtaining AS and are not legally able to give medical consent?
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quote:Physical/mental trauma. For example, becoming a quadrapalegic or suffering crippling brain damage.
This is where I start to very much fear assisted suicide. When we allow it only for specific categories, we are, in some sense, saying these lives are not worth the protection that other lives are.
I can see this statement coming from two directions. The first is the idea that a rational person wouldn't consider suicide the proper choice in other circumstances, presumably because it is only in these circumstances that we will rationally consider death to be better than life. This is the tact I see Xavier taking (please correct me if I've misspoken).
The other is the outright idea that such lives are not as valuable - something clearly present in sndrake's quotations of Dr. Kevorkian.
Although I think the latter is reprehensible and the former can be arrived at via good intentions, I still find both views to be dangerous, because both call for the codification of the value of particular human lives into law. This is one of my two primary objections to assisted suicide being made available only to certain types of individuals.
The other is the objection I have to assisted suicide whether limited or not, which is that I don't find it possible to safeguard the decision adequately, assuming one wants to stop temporary suicidal urges from being fulfilled.
I'd also be interested to see how an equal protection challenge from someone not fitting one of the categories demanding access to assisted suicide would play out, although I think I could guess.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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1.) You believe it is society's responsibility to prevent irrational suicides but to allow assistance with rational suicides.
I think that the burden should be on the government for what it has the right to restrict. Perhaps that is why this sentence did not exactly jibe with me. I would phrase it perhaps as: "I believe that it is society's responsibility to prevent irrational suicides, and to not prevent assistance with rational suicide. Its a very small and perhaps petty change, but it was necessary for me to sign off on the statement.
quote:2.) The definition of irrational suicide is something for the legislature to decide. (I'm inferring this from your willingness to turn down some applicants for legalized assisted suicide.)
I would hate to try and determine a purely objective standard, if that is where you are going with this. If would say that a set of guidelines would be laid out in the legislature, and then each patient would be evaluated on a case by case basis. We could try and throw out some gray area examples, but I don't know how productive that would be. I'd generally err on the side of letting the person perform the suicide, but I could see a law erring on the side of not letting it happen. It is very much a trade-off.
quote:3.) The rational suicide is based on the existence of pain/suffering and the likelihood of recovery from that pain/suffering.
In part. I'd imagine that being diagnosed with a terminal condition (or not) would be a heavy aspect of the guidelines. A twenty year old man with terrible suffering with a six month life expectancy would be considered different from a twenty year old man with a 60 year life expectancy. Perhaps that would be folded in with the "likelihood of recovery", since a lot can change in medical technology in time.
But there are other things which affect quality of life than physical pain. I'd give different consideration to someone who was in terrible pain and bed-ridden than I would to someone who can move about and perform daily functions.
I'd also add that in determining if a suicide is rational, you'd have to examine the state of mind of the patient. Talk to them, talk to their doctors, talk to their family. If they are rational in other other aspects, and are of sound mind, then it is likely a rational decision.
quote:4.) Based on 2 & 3, the legislature will quantify the pain/suffering and likelihood of recovery thresholds that justify a legal assisted suicide.
Like I said above, I'd assume a workable law could be made which does not need to say that if the pain reaches above this point, and the likelihood of recovery is less than this point, then it is legal. We have thousands of laws on the books which don't have strict objective measures of things.
I'd like to think that the decision for whether to fulfill an assisted suicide would be made by the patient, the doctor, and the patient's family. Only when the doctor and the family are in disagreement would the guidelines of the law even come into play.
I'm entering some uncomfortable territory here, where I feel it is necessary for me to basically draft a fool-proof law in order to debate legalizing assisted suicide. I can't do that, and I shudder to think about how I just described a hypothetical legal scenario with someone who could most likely tear it to shreds. I felt that's where your objections would come from based on your clarifications, and so felt obligated to try and head them off.
I can tell you right now that's not a debate I am going to win . I'm not a lawyer, and I am not a politician. If you address this post by showing me just how misguided I am about legal issues, there isn't much I can say in response. I am just a human being who recognizes that there are people whose rights are being violated by forcing them to live out the rest of their lives in insufferable agony. I think it is both cruel and inhumane.
I don't think the answer to tricky legal issues is to just keep the whole issue illegal. That isn't fair to those who we can point to and say unquestionably: "That person should be allowed to say whether they live or die!"
Posts: 5656 | Registered: Oct 1999
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quote:This is where I start to very much fear assisted suicide.
For what it's worth, I find that one to be the least compelling.
quote:When we allow it only for specific categories, we are, in some sense, saying these lives are not worth the protection that other lives are.
I'm not sure I understand. What are these lives being protected from? Is this kind of a seatbelt situation?
quote:The other is the outright idea that such lives are not as valuable - something clearly present in sndrake's quotations of Dr. Kevorkian.
I agree that this is reprehensible.
quote:Although I think the latter is reprehensible and the former can be arrived at via good intentions, I still find both views to be dangerous, because both call for the codification of the value of particular human lives into law.
What value would it set it at, X and X amount of pain and suffering? I'm not quite sure how this is worse than awarding monetary damages for wrongful death lawsuits.
Perhaps I've gone about this the wrong way. My honest, gut reaction to this question is that anyone has the right to do what the want with their lives, which includes ending it. Except for the cases of parents with minors and minors themselves, I don't see that anyone has the right to stop a person from committing suicide. I honestly don't see how AS is different from someone hanging themselves.
Posts: 2907 | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Xavier: I am just a human being who recognizes that there are people whose rights are being violated by forcing them to live out the rest of their lives in insufferable agony. I think it is both cruel and inhumane.
First of all, I disagree that preventing someone -- anyone -- from committing suicide is in any way a violation of their rights.
But even if I were to agree that it were, shouldn't the emphasis be on pain management, NOT on killing them off? Making their lives better, not ending them?
I have known several people who lived years after they were expected to die (by multiple doctors, and in one case twelve years after being given a 4-6 month prognosis), often in extreme pain. And in that time, they saw children married and grandchildren born. They got to meet grandchildren who would otherwise never have had the opportunity to know them. They affected lives of non-relatives too, of course. Friends, neighbors, caregivers.
Might they have chosen death when they were given that diagnosis? Perhaps. And what a terrible loss it would have been if they had.
Even if someone does have only months to live, and even if they may spend much of that time sedated or otherwise medicated to deal with the pain, how arrogant of you to assume there is no point to their life, and that they have nothing left to gain -- or to give.
Life is precious. Every moment and every instant.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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quote:Like I said above, I'd assume a workable law could be made which does not need to say that if the pain reaches above this point, and the likelihood of recovery is less than this point, then it is legal. We have thousands of laws on the books which don't have strict objective measures of things.
When I said quantify, I was speaking of legal quantifying: reasonable, undue burden, clear and convincing - exactly what you're speaking of here. None of my objections relate to the problem of deciding who is in what group. My objections stem from the idea that there is a right group. That is, something about this life makes us accept death as better.
quote:I felt that's where your objections would come from based on your clarifications, and so felt obligated to try and head them off.
Not at all. I'm comfortable with standards.
quote:I don't think the answer to tricky legal issues is to just keep the whole issue illegal.
Again, that's not at all where my contentions lie.
quote:What value would it set it at, X and X amount of pain and suffering? I'm not quite sure how this is worse than awarding monetary damages for wrongful death lawsuits.
Because there we are attempting to - in a recognizably imperfect manner - provide compensation. It's not a statement of value or a decision about who lives or dies. Whereas with assisted suicide, we really are deciding what lives are worth.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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quote:Even if someone does have only months to live, and even if they may spend much of that time sedated or otherwise medicated to deal with the pain, how arrogant of you to assume there is no point to their life, and that they have nothing left to gain -- or to give.
I am not deciding. Nowhere does MY opinion factor into this.
I support THEIR right to decide.
Frankly I don't know how you could get what you said from what I said.
Posts: 5656 | Registered: Oct 1999
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posted
But you are deciding the opposite for other people - those who will be denied the option of assisted suicide under your plan.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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quote:But you are deciding the opposite for other people - those who will be denied the option of assisted suicide under your plan.
I don't see how this is a contradiction. Supporting those who are of sound mind the right to end their lives, but not supporting those not of sound mind the right to end their lives.
Posts: 5656 | Registered: Oct 1999
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posted
No, it's not a contradiction. But it's still categorizing lives into those that might not have enough left to be worth living and those that do.
You've essentially created a presumption that suicidal thoughts by a person with a life of a certain 'quality' indicate an unsound mind. So even though you say you are relying on whether the choice is rational, you're presumption of what makes the decision irrational is still based on valuing lives.
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posted
Only if available to everyone, or at least if the standards for providing aren't based on assuming that a desire to end a "good" life isn't rational.
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quote:So even though you say you are relying on whether the choice is rational, you're presumption of what makes the decision irrational is still based on valuing lives.
You make the leap that me judging a persons quality of life to be low means I value their life less.
This is not a valid logical step.
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posted
Might I point out that if you're able bodied and have nothing physically wrong with you, you don't need ASSISTED suicide?
Posts: 7085 | Registered: Apr 2001
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quote:Might I point out that if you're able bodied and have nothing physically wrong with you, you don't need ASSISTED suicide?
What if you want to do it via drugs, which, according to much of the advocates' reasons for allowing assisted suicide, is more peaceful.
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quote:Only if available to everyone, or at least if the standards for providing aren't based on assuming that a desire to end a "good" life isn't rational.
I think I can agree with that.
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posted
Perhaps the confusion is simply a semantic one.
I can (subjectively of course) judge the quality of life of an individual to be low.
If someone is in permanent agony, and cannot move from their bed, and is never visited by any family members, and are terribly unhappy, I would judge their quality of life to be very low.
I can't imagine you'd judge any differently, unless we are using different definitions of "quality of life".
But, if someone were to take this persons life against their will, I would not think the crime any less horrible, or any less a murder. I don't consider the person with a low quality of life to be any less valuable as a human being.
You make it sound like judging someone's quality of life means that I think they are less of a human being, or have less right to live, or something else similarly despicable .
Perhaps that's not what you meant by "valuing lives", but the way you stated it gives the term negative connotations that I don't think should apply to what I am saying.
(Note: A person with the same conditions I mentioned above could very well have a reasonable quality of life. Perhaps they love listening to birds, or mozart, and perhaps they have friends who visit them. Perhaps their pain medication works some of the time and they have some good moments. Whatever. I'm not saying that someone in that condition necessarily is going to prefer death. Just that if someone in that situation would prefer death, I think that's a perfectly valid decision, and that I don't think we have the right to stop him/her.)
Posts: 5656 | Registered: Oct 1999
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posted
I didn't think I was going to engage on this thread, but I'd like to post what I see as a fundamental point.
Dagonee, we have legal mechanisms for establishing whether someone is of sound mine to make certain decisions for themselves. These mechanisms are not entirely dependant on the decision the person wants to make. In the discussion here, the rationality of a person is not based on whether or not they want to end their life, but on the legal standard of whether they are rational enough to make decisions for themselves. Obviously, the desire to end one's life is taken into account in that weighing of rationality... wishing to end one's life counts against rationality in our current legal understanding of "being of sound mind," and there's no reason this couldn't continue to be the case if someone decides to end his life.
If we judge someone of sound mind to make medical decisions for themselves, or to make decisions about the execution of their estate, etc, then shouldn't we assume that they are also of sound mind to make the determination that they want to end their life? And if we operate in this way, we're not making the decision based upon the particular value of the life in question, but rather the state of mind of the person in question.
The question that needs to be addressed from a legal perspective is "Is it always irrational to desire to end one's life?" If that is answered "no" then a non-conclusive weight can be given, in determining rationality, and a person judged rational could make the decision to end his life.
If we do make that determination, that it is possible to rationally desire to end one's life, then care needs to be given to examine the state of mind of a person wishing to end his life, rather then the quality of that life. If a person has rational reasons for desiring to end his life, then by itself the desire to end his life should not count heavily against his rationality. On the other hand, clinical depression could easily be used as a criteria to decide that a person is not rational. But it already is used in determining whether a patient is of "sound mind."
Posts: 4112 | Registered: May 2001
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quote:Perhaps that's not what you meant by "valuing lives", but the way you stated it gives the term negative connotations that I don't think should apply to what I am saying.
I think there are some assumptions I'm making that may need to be explicit.
First, I'm assuming that the reason for prohibiting something via the coercive force of harm is that we think that something causes harm.
Now, when you say "Just that if someone in that situation would prefer death, I think that's a perfectly valid decision, and that I don't think we have the right to stop him/her," I'm still operating under the assumption that there are people in other situations you would prohibit from killing themselves.
It is this prohibition I'm most interested in speaking of. If the standards involve the quality of life, and a sufficiently high quality of life (however we define that) means that preventing suicide prevents a harm, then it seems to follow that a suicide that ends a life of sufficient quality is a harm.
It also seems to follow that a suicide that ends a life of insufficient quality is either not a harm or not as great a harm, because otherwise it, too, would be banned.
So this is where I'm arriving at the valuing of life paradigm: the ending of life X is a harm sufficient to use the coercive force of law to prevent. The ending of life Y is not. I see that as making an implicit statement that life Y is not worth as much, in some fashion, as life X, even if we're not going to allow ending life Y against Y's will.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
It's not making an implicit statement that Y is not worth as much, as much as it is acknowledging a statement on the part of person Y they they don't feel their life to be worth as much.
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quote:t's not making an implicit statement that Y is not worth as much, as much as it is acknowledging a statement on the part of person Y they they don't feel their life to be worth as much.
Ah, but X is making that same statement that they don't feel their life to be worth living, too. If it were up to the person alone, then we wouldn't have this divide between who may receive assistance and who may not.
Paul, I need time to digest (I was still digesting your email at this point). The immediate point to make is that your system will not have the attribute of Xavier's system that I'm currently discussing. It will require me to shift some mental gears to comment intelligently on it.
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posted
No need to withdraw. I just didn't want you to think I was ignoring you. This is between review problems, so my focus is limited. Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
Ahh, I think I understand your argument better now, Dag.
The danger you're concerned about isn't establishing a value of life as equal to X amount of money or Y amount of money. It's about the relative value of one life as compared to another.
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quote:Originally posted by Paul Goldner: The question that needs to be addressed from a legal perspective is "Is it always irrational to desire to end one's life?"
I agree. And in my opinion the answer is always yes. By definition, the desire to take one's life is irrational.
And if it is not irrational for a terminal patient to desire to take his life, then it is just as rational for someone with chronic depression (and despite Xavier's blithe dismissal of depression as treatable, that is simply not true for a not-insignificant number of patients), or bipolar disorder, or any other condition that they can reasonably expect to affect the remainder of their life. And I certainly hope no one is claiming physical pain is worse than emotional pain on any absolute scale.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
"I agree. And in my opinion the answer is always yes. By definition, the desire to take one's life is irrational."
By who's definition?
Here's a hypothetical situation. You're terminally ill, and in non-trivial pain. You're likely to live another three months, but because of your illness, you are in the hospital and the cost of your stay is several thousand dollars per day, that isn't covered sufficiently by your health insurance. Lets say the total cost that isn't covered, between now and your death is likely to be 300,000 dollars. The total assests of you, and your children, are 250,000. Would you rather choose to die now, and not bankrupt your children, and end your pain, or would you rather die in three months after wiping out the total savings of both yourself, and your children, while suffering through signficant pain?
I'd argue it would be perfectly rational to desire to end your life painlessly, after saying goodbye to your family, in an effort to preserve some quality of life for your children.
"And if it is not irrational for a terminal patient to desire to take his life, then it is just as rational for someone with chronic depression"
No. Its not. Being someone who suffers from chronic depression, there's simply no comparison, either in kind or degree, between the common circumstances I describe above, and my own situation.
Posts: 4112 | Registered: May 2001
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posted
I suppose I should add that being rational is not dependant upon the conclusion reached, but rather upon the method used to reach the conclusion. Unless you can show that its impossible to reach the conclusion that one's life should end using any logical method with any valid premises, you can't argue that its by definition irrational to end one's life... thats a conclusion, and in order to be irrational, either one of the premises needs to be false, or the chain of logic needs to be invalid.
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posted
As a short aside, I don't think the question of whether one's decision to end one's life is rational is at all relevant to the moral calculus here, unless one has already decided that it is moral to allow a rationally-arrived at decision to end one's life.
Which is really the question to be answered, isn't it? If it is moral to allow someone to end his life if the decision is arrived at rationally, then we can come up with a way to safeguard that process.
I see the primary difference between Paul's test and Xavier's test as being procedural v. substantive. In Paul's test, if the procedure used to reach the decision is adequate (for some definition of "adequate"), then assistance should be provided. In Xavier's, if the decision itself is good enough (for some definition of "good enough"), then assistance should be provided.
This is why the views are so very different, even though they look very similar.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
I'd like to add something constructive to this discussion, but thus far, between Stephen and Dag, anything I could have said has already been said.
I'll keep watching in case I can say something helpful, though. Posts: 2849 | Registered: Feb 2002
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posted
Paul, the problem with that example is that you are now equating financial obligation with quality of life. There have been many people who have thought that they were better off dead for monetary reasons, usually because of insurance money, but we don't allow those people to kill themselves, do we? We sure don't pay on the life insurance policy if they do.
The problem with assisted suicide (and I am in between on the subject, to be honest) is that it places a lesser value on a handicapped persons life by definition. We don't consider them to be worth as much as a non-handicapped individual, so we "allow" them to end their misery. I don't believe all of that, not for all situations, but I understand that argument these days, where I was not aware of the possibility when I was younger.
I was a strong supporter of the right to die when I was younger, and I still don't consider people who strongly believe in it to be evil, or demonize them as others sometimes do. A lot of people have been in horrible situations where they felt helpless to stop the pain a loved one felt, and there are some very strong arguments that can be made for their position.
But I also understand a little more about the other side of the argument, a side my own pain blinded me to when I was younger. I am not really sure what to think at this point, although if I had to decide I would probably support the right to die movement, based on my own personal experiences.
But that in no way invalidates the concerns of others. It will never be easy, nor would I wish it to be.
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What do we make of people who have suffered a sudden trauma? Those who suddenly find themselves parapalegics, or quadrupalegics. People struck with sudden deafness. Any sort of disability like that.
Of course the person is going to be depressed after such an injury. The adjustment is hard and painful, and I don't envy anyone going through it. But it's a consistent fact (no, I don't have the link to the study I read anymore) that a person dealing with a sudden injury will underestimate their new quality of life and will underestimate the amount of time it will take to adjust.
That is to say, a person who becomes, say, quadrupalegic will be naturally depressed. They will think their new quality of life will suck. They may want to die. But the time of adjustment to their new situation will be quicker than they think, and their new quality of life will be higher than they guessed (self-rated "before" suppositions and "after" realities).
Do we allow a newly-paralysed woman to have access to assisted suicide? She hates her new life and thinks it will be horrible and painful. She has "good" reasons. Yet we know her outlook will change, almost for certain.
Again, I am very sorry, but I can't locate this study for you all. I read it many years ago in an offprint article that was circulating my l'Arche community.
Posts: 2849 | Registered: Feb 2002
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posted
No, you need to look at the basic premis of your argument. You may not have said it explicity, but it was very specifically implied when you meantioned amounts and his families future fiscal responsibility.
I doubted that you intended to equate it completely, or even intentionally, but the argument you posed supporting a right to die was very clearly based in financial circumstances. Not just in passing, but as one of the major reasons for his choice.
So if he had more money his life would be worth more, and he shouldn't consider it?
You specifically said that you thought his childrens financial well being (his estate) held more value than his life did....at that point. Or at least you strongly implied that you thought it would, and because of that you would "understand" and agree with his decision.
His life, as much of it as is left to him, was not as valuable as his money and property. If it was then you would not write him off so lightly, nor allow himself to do so without a fight.
posted
Kwea- You need to look again. The argument I am making has absolutely ZERO to do with how I think a person's life should be valued, and 100% to do with how a person values his own life. I am not valuing someone with low net worth as having less worth then someone with high net worth. I am saying that a rational person should be able to choose to end his own life, for whatever reason he chooses.
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