quote: Tourtelot said the band was aiming to raise awareness that physician-assisted suicide should be legalised in Florida
Excuse me while I barf. I'm sure all the free publicity has nothing to do with it.
I have mixed feelings about physician-assisted suicide, but stunts like this and Kevorkian's BS make me sick. It certainly doesn't advance the cause of dying with dignity, rather the opposite.
Posts: 6316 | Registered: Jun 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
I would like to know the definition of "dignity" from a band that has performed stunts that include throwing live rats in a blender. (Yeah - after checking several sources, that particular claim seems to be true.)
Posts: 4344 | Registered: Mar 2003
| IP: Logged |
I understand the Catch-22 of giving the publicity that the band is craving, but I wouldn't be so quick to shrug it off as "self-correcting."
Laying aside the potential problem of copycats, the Surgeon General's Call to Action on Suicide expressed major concerns about media portrayals of suicide, specifically glamorizing or romanticizing it. The report was (sarcasm on) courageously (sarcasm off) silent on the impact of media portrayals and treatment of assisted suicide.
Right now, it's been a real bonus for pro-euthanasia groups. They're getting interviewed by the press, shaking their heads over how wrong this is, and getting to say how reasonable their own groups are.
If it goes on long enough, some of the pro-euthanasia groups can undergo a change in public perception, since the "center" of any issue is defined by the extremes. Kevorkian did this for euthanasia groups in the 1990s.
Hemlock (now known as "end of life choices") contributed over 40 thousand to his defense. They know a good thing when they see it. They probably can't believe their luck over the situation "Hell on Earth" has created.
Posts: 4344 | Registered: Mar 2003
| IP: Logged |
It's the old gladiator and promoter deal. The gladiators do the dying, the promoter rolls in the money. Promoter hires more gladiators, lather, rinse, repeat.
If someone wants to commit suicide, that is one thing. But if someone wants to stage it as a promotion for their rather ludicrous (really now) band, there's something terribly evil and criminal about that. There are folks over at the "Bum Fights" video company going "No, we don't know those guys and man, they are sick."
And is it just me or does anyone think the Kevorkian was possibly the most audacious and successful psychopathic serial killer ever? He actually had people begging for him to kill them. He was the center of the country's attention. One of his assisted suicides was filmed and shown (with the death edited out) on 60 Minutes during his interview. And he escaped prosecution and openly thumbed his nose at the authorities for a very long time.
I've always felt he played us and prayed on those who were terminally ill or suicidal.
Posts: 2848 | Registered: Feb 2003
| IP: Logged |
I was interviewed on a morning radio show in Tampa. (6:45 CT, with two people yammering at me) One of the only real points I got to make was that this stunt was a logical extension of Mike Wallace's blatant ratings grab with the taped death of Thomas Youk shown on 60 Minutes.
BTW, it's a common misperception that Kevorkian's body count consisted of people who were terminally ill. Only a small minority of people who died at this hands were "terminal" in any conventional sense of the word. A "typical" Kevorkian client would be a woman with a chronic health condition like Multiple Sclerosis, middle-aged. You can read about the documentation of this and how the press consistently misrepresented this by going to The All-Too-Familiar Story.
If you really want to get disgusted, here's an excerpt from a journal article he published just a couple years before he started his assisted suicide advocacy. I had the pleasure of ambushing one of his lawyers with this during a debate - he'd never seen it. It was the first time I ever saw a grown professional turn fire engine red because of something I'd done.
posted
You're right and that is disgusting. That lil twerp of a psychopath got to basically murder people. And just like most psychopaths, his internal logic seemed flawless in his own eyes.
Posts: 2848 | Registered: Feb 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
Maybe it's my British Stiff-upper-lippedness or just naivete but i really hope this is just some terribly misguided attempt at promotion. Even though it may have backfired on Hell on Earth. I remain astonished that there are people who would get off on watching someone die on stage at a rock festival, and thats saying nothing for the intended suicidee! And my parents thought Ozzy Osbourne was bad!
What sort of dignity or compassionate awareness can this possibly bring?
Posts: 200 | Registered: Mar 2000
| IP: Logged |
It's all about spin - if you actually delve deeply into Kevorkian's writings and his practices, he's a very unlikely hero. Nevertheless, he became one. To a lot of people.
For what it's worth, our group just sent a press release to the St. Petersburg Times, Tampa Tribune and the Tampa office of the AP. Since they've been quoting pro-euthanasia groups in coverage, you'd think it would be time to hear from a group on the other side, wouldn't you? I wouldn't place any bets just yet.
posted
Yeah, I'm bumping the thread. But I have a good excuse.
By a strange coincidence, there was an AP story issued on Kevorkian this afternoon. It was about the latest appeal of his conviction for second-degree murder.
The good news: the appeal failed and he's still likely to be in prison til 2007.
The bad news:
quote: Kevorkian has said he assisted in at least 130 deaths. Michigan banned assisted suicide in 1998 to stop Kevorkian from helping terminally ill people die.
I hope people reading this thread recognize this for the garbage it is.
Background: As a representative of my organization, I've been in contact the the Michigan AP office at least 5 times over the past year and a half - about the same issue. They got copies of the New England Journal of Medicine and other studies assessing the "terminality" of people who died at Kevorkian's hands. They've admitted describing his body count as "terminally ill" is inaccurate. Each time they swear it won't happen again.
Guess what my first call of the morning will be tomorrow.
posted
Item 1: Yeah, a suicide on stage and as a publicity stunt is disgusting, and this is a case in point.
Item 2: Kevorkian did assist in non-terminally ill patient suicide, and probably deserves his jail sentence for that.
Item 3: Assisted suicide is sort of like abortion. It'd be a lot better for everyone involved if it were legalized and regulated. Including putting limits on what counted as terminally ill patients.
Because there are many people out there who aren't going to make it and deserve to die in peace...especially given that the medical bills for keeping them alive and in pain can quite possibly ruin their families lives as well as their own.
Posts: 54 | Registered: Oct 2003
| IP: Logged |
quote: Item 3: Assisted suicide is sort of like abortion. It'd be a lot better for everyone involved if it were legalized and regulated. Including putting limits on what counted as terminally ill patients.
There are many problems with the assumption you're making, but the most basic one is this: Your statement suggests a belief that legalizing assisted suicide or euthanasia for a narrowly defined group of people will somehow result in fewer "mercy killngs" or whatever term one uses that fall outside of the legislation. There's no evidence to support that belief.
quote:Because there are many people out there who aren't going to make it and deserve to die in peace...especially given that the medical bills for keeping them alive and in pain can quite possibly ruin their families lives as well as their own.
People already have the right to avoid pain, even if it means being sedated to the point of being unconscious. In people with terminal illness, death can come quickly and painlessly. But they don't die on schedule - you need barbiturates, not opiates, for that. Personally, I get really queasy when folks start talking about how terminal illness, severe disability and chronic health care conditions can ruin families' lives - with a "hastened" death offered as the solution.
In all fairness, your comments were limited to terminal illness. Trouble is, if you're going to talk about emotional and financial drains, you'll have to cut months or more off people's lives to realize significant savings. Imagine the dollars that can be saved by the early death of someone with quadriplegia, for example, what with all the supports they need.
Posts: 4344 | Registered: Mar 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
The moment that you say it is okay for someone to die, you devalue their life. You also take the first step to saying that it's okay for others to take their own lives as well.
People could be pressured into it by their loved ones if it were legal. The family might not pressure at all, but the person might feel obligated to make it easy on their family, and attempt their own death.
Life, any sort of life, has value. When you say it's okay for one person to die, you're making it so that it'll be okay for others to die.
I think I'm talking in circles.
But it's like when you give something away in a large crowd. You give one person something, the rest want it, too, and you have to give stuff to them. We say it's okay for one person to kill his or herself, then we're saying it's okay for people to kill themselves, if their self-value is deemed low enough.
It's a long, slick path. Paralyzed? Quadriplegic? Mentally ill? Mentally retarded? There would be cost-benefit analysis. Is it worth it to keep these people alive in our society? If they don't kill themselves, do we devalue them MORE, make them an underclass of those who don't have the honor to make the sacrifice?
*shrug*
All I know is, that in my field, you cannot for a moment believe that any person is better off dead. Often, you are that person's only lifeline. They already believe they're better off dead and so is everyone in their life. If you believe that too, then they're right. As a human being you cannot let them be right in that instance.
Posts: 14745 | Registered: Dec 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
There is a lot of validity to that, and you have to be careful.
However, what gives you the right to make that decision for them? The value of a person's life depends very much on their own perception of that value, and if their opinion is that they are worth more as a happy memory than as a sad present tense problem, who are we to say that they aren't?
I'm not saying its not a delicate issue, because you're right. Jumping in to fast and saying that "This person is better off dead" is wrong. The thing is, I'm not asking to be the one to make that decision. I'm not requesting the ability to mandate that everyone with a painful, terminal disease be killed.
Because its not my decision. By the same token, its not your decision or right to say that they must live.
Posts: 54 | Registered: Oct 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
It is. Because if we AGREE with them, then we are contributing to the sense of worthlessness and making how they feel a self-fulfilling fantasy.
There are moments in people's lives when they become irrational. In those moments, others have to care for them until they are rational again.
Posts: 14745 | Registered: Dec 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
That is our perrogative (sp, I know) as a friend. Not as a society.
It is also egotistical of anyone to assume that they can know what life is worth when the life about which they are speaking is going through something that they haven't gone through. Yes, you have to try and talk your friend out of it. But in the end, if she is terminally ill, and in pain, then perhaps you also owe it to them to give them support in their decision. Once you have pressed them and know that their decision is not made lightly.
Posts: 54 | Registered: Oct 2003
| IP: Logged |
quote:However, what gives you the right to make that decision for them? The value of a person's life depends very much on their own perception of that value, and if their opinion is that they are worth more as a happy memory than as a sad present tense problem, who are we to say that they aren't?
Why should we limit it to just people who are terminally ill then? Or disabled? Or old?
If it's really about individual autonomy, then shouldn't your logic dictate that anyone with a serious wish to commit suicide be given assistance to do so? People attempt suicide on their own all the time. The vast majority of attempts aren't successful. A lot of the means people use are both painful and messy.
What's the logic of giving doctors legal immunity in facilitating the suicides of just the ill, old or disabled? So that only this select group can attempt suicide without fear of pain or failure? That doesn't sound like autonomy or respect to me at all.
posted
I would not support any human being in an attempt on their own life.
I would help to rid that person of pain whether it be psychological, physical, or both.
But as a society, if we devalue one life, then we also begin to devalue others.
And I would hope that, despite my anger and frustration and own hopelessness, that my friends would argue that my life IS worth something, even if I can't see it because of the splinter in my eye.
Posts: 14745 | Registered: Dec 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
I fail to see how ending a life a few months before the inevitable cheapens it. Especially if it eases the passing.
As for
quote: If it's really about individual autonomy, then shouldn't your logic dictate that anyone with a serious wish to commit suicide be given assistance to do so? People attempt suicide on their own all the time. The vast majority of attempts aren't successful. A lot of the means people use are both painful and messy.
What's the logic of giving doctors legal immunity in facilitating the suicides of just the ill, old or disabled? So that only this select group can attempt suicide without fear of pain or failure? That doesn't sound like autonomy or respect to me at all.
Allow me to state again. I realize that this is a difficult issue. But it is not one that is black or white, as you are attempting to make it. There is room for different shades of rightness or wrongness here.
All life is not sacred and pure, and all death is not terrible and painful. There are varying measures of hope, there are varying states of worth. To me, saying that everyone who wishes to die shouldn't be allowed to kill themselves cheapens the accomplishments of those who thought they wished to die, but overcame, and their friends.
To me, life is cheapened by unremitting pain and despair. If death is coming anyway, why not greet it as a friend?
If death is not coming, then yes, you should rise up and overcome.
This is not a black and white issue. It is not simply about right or wrong, life or death. To simplify it so much cheapens it.
Posts: 54 | Registered: Oct 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
If life is cheapened by unremitting pain, then it's better to not treat the pain, but to end the life instead?
If someone has unremitting despair, rather than treat the cause of the despair, it's better to let them kill themselves?
Life is cheapened when people are deemed as worthless either in their own eyes or in other people's eyes.
How do we know if suicide eases the passing? We can treat the pain without being the actual cause of death. We can treat to remove psychological pain, or at least lessen it so that it isn't irrationally insistent upon death.
Posts: 14745 | Registered: Dec 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
There are writings of cancer patients for whom no amount of pain killers can dull the pain.
If you're talking about making them comatose, whats the bloody difference? If they are alive, but unaware, for the rest of their life, what have you gained them?
For the psychological pain, if that is the only issue, then you're absolutely right, they shouldn't get to kill themselves. If the only things wrong is that they've got hurt feelings, they can be treated.
But not everything can be treated. My father is a Doctor. I've heard dozens of stories of things that simply cannot be cured or allevaited. How about those cases?
Take for instance my great-grandmother.
She lived to the age of 105. For the last 15 years of her life, her mind was sharp, but her body was not. She couldn't hear, she couldn't see, she couldn't walk, she had trouble breathing. She could barely talk. She coudln't smell. She had to have help eating. For 15 years.
You know that sensory deprevation is a popular form of torture and punishment in jails, prisons, and intelliegence communities around the world? And that most people can only stand a few days at most before being driven mad?
My great-grandmother suffered 15 years of sensory deprivation.
And thats all that I remember of her. I don't remember the sharp, intelligent, agile women who brought her family healthy and intact throught the great depression, who accomplished so many things. All I remember is that pitiful woman who couldn't recognize her own son until her had literally yelled into her ear.
I had nightmares about nursing homes from visits to her, not because of any of the abuses you hear about, but because of the sheer hopelessness in my great grandmother's eyes.
you can't cure or alleviate old age, and at a certain point, all dignity is gone from it.
So I don't believe you have much of a point.
Posts: 54 | Registered: Oct 2003
| IP: Logged |
quote:If the only things wrong is that they've got hurt feelings, they can be treated.
I don't believe you have much of a point, either. Mental illnesses, especially the more severe types, are biologically based. Just as old age is.
Do you propose that we also allow the mentally ill to commit suicide? After all, they do find themselves in positions of indignity, often for the majority of their lifetimes.
Posts: 14745 | Registered: Dec 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
Congratulations, you answered almost none of my post. YOu're still making this a black and white issue. Its not.
Once again, I never said this would be easy. And no, I didn't say that mentally ill patients should be allowed to commit suicide. They're not terminally ill, their situation is not hopeless.
If you insist on making people's decisions for them, you could at least offer some better solutions.
Posts: 54 | Registered: Oct 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
I'm not making this a black and white issue, OTHER than not believing that death is the answer in any case.
I've also watched family members suffer from alzheimer's. I've watched them become entirely different people.
But I've also watched my great grandfather die from a broken heart, six months after his wife died from cancer. She was eighty-five. Him, eight-six.
I've had a good friend suffer from a stroke. He's lost that spark that is himself, he's lost his life's work. He moves now, an empty body.
You can treat pain. You can treat the pain of cancer. You can allow dignity to people. You can even treat pain to the point of death, but only dosing for the pain, not dosing to cause death. But when you entertain the possibility of allowing someone to kill themselves, you already view them as dead. And that person can see it in your eyes, and they know that they no longer have worth to anyone, not even themselves.
Posts: 14745 | Registered: Dec 1999
| IP: Logged |
quote: And that person can see it in your eyes, and they know that they no longer have worth to anyone, not even themselves.
That person often cannot see anything in anyone's eyes. Or hear anything in anyone's voice. Or see anything. Or hear anything.
There is no dignity in life without involvement of soul.
quote: I'm not making this a black and white issue, OTHER than not believing that death is the answer in any case.
Thats pretty much the definition of making it black and white. Death is bad. Life is good. End of story. End of thought.
I also still maintain that you're attempting to force your moral set on other people, which I find wrong. Your rights end when theirs begin. They have a right to the pursuit of happiness. When there is literaly no earthly way for there to be happiness (and I don't mean that to be a particularly easy qualification to meet), then they have a right to choose death.
But I think we've exhausted our own stores of arguements. We're both arguing circles, and neither is making a dent upon the other. So unless someone new comes in, with new ideas, I 'm done.
Posts: 54 | Registered: Oct 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
Oops, I started a new thread about this same thing but in the wrong forum, I moved it to this forum and discovered this thread, I promptly deleted my thread(and called myself an idiot). Damn, I guess that marks me as a newbie.
posted
I'm sorry for my ignorance but many of you have made mention to someone named Kevorkian. i'm unfamiliar with who this is. Could someone please fill me in?
Posts: 200 | Registered: Mar 2000
| IP: Logged |
I'm tied up with quite a bit of stuff this morning, but the short answer is that Kevorkian is an ex-pathologist who made himself famous by facilitating the suicides of at least 103 people. Contrary to public perception, most who died at his hands weren't terminally ill - most had disabilities or chronic health conditions. A few had no identifiable medical condition at all. He overplayed his hand in 1998 when he had 60 Minutes air a tape he made of his actively killing a man who had ALS - he used the same combination of drugs used when death row prisoners are executed.
I wrote a summary of studies done on characteristics of people who went to Kevorkian. (Mac, you might find it interesting as well. It reinforces a lot of what you've been saying about suicides.)
posted
Far from forcing my moral set on others. My friends and my clients know that I believe that they are worth living. They know that I will do anything that I can do keep them alive. They accept that in the social contract that is either friendship or the therapeutic relationship. When both parties agree to a contract, that is not forcing my morals on anyone.
Besides, if I was forcing anything, it's values, not morals. Posts: 14745 | Registered: Dec 1999
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Wall Bash]](graemlins/wallbash.gif)
![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
![[Evil]](graemlins/evil.gif)
![[Mad]](mad.gif)
![[Blushing]](graemlins/blushing.gif)
I moved it to this forum and discovered this thread, ![[Hat]](graemlins/hat.gif)
Go Mack! ![[Wink]](wink.gif)
