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Comment by nicoburns | Hacker News Reader

Excellent. Hopefully the UK will be next, and it gets extended so tht it doesn't only cover terminally ill people. Luckily I'm still young and healthy so I've got plenty of time until I'll need this, but I'll be pretty upset if not available when I do.

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It's been hard enough to convince countries to legalize assisted suicide for people are terminally ill that I think we're unfortunately very far away from the entension to people who aren't. Aside from the religious angle, what are the biggest arguments against assisted suicide for people who aren't terminally ill?

Allowing anyone to end his life it's the same as stating that we fully own our ourselves. If we accept that axiom as valid then there is no moral argument against free market of organs nor consensual cannibalism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armin_Meiwes).

> If we accept that axiom as valid then there is no moral argument against free market of organs

Indeed, there isn't.

Ah yes, I had some delicious human flesh in Belgium, for which I payed with a kidney.

In all seriousness, surrogate pregnancy is (thankfully) illegal in Spain.

You are not choosing 'if' you want to die, you are choosing 'when' you want to die. That is fundamentally different from selling a kidney.

I was interested in selling a kidney to help a guy pay for life-saving surgery but found out it wasn't legal. Probably for good reason. I could donate instead though.

I had thoughts like this too, but honestly, some slopes are indeed slippery. Once you normalize the practice of selling your own organs, the market will readjust - the value of your organs will become a part of your net worth, and you'll be pressured to sell them in situations where you'd prefer not to.

It's one thing to have an option to donate your kidney to save someone's life, it's another when selling your kidney will become the only way most people can afford mortgage.

You are correct.

To be honest, for many millennials selling their organs and/or body products in supplement to a full time job may already be necessary to get a mortgage where they'd be willing to live before they're so old they couldn't expect to pay it off.

I just realized this sentence could be fairly easily interpreted to mean I'm selling someone else's kidney haha. I wouldn't do that, as immoral of a person as I may be seen to be.

Interesting. Probably taking a leap here but now I’m imagining a scenario where this life-saving surgery guy is the buyer of your kidney and you’re bummed you couldn’t make money from it.

Not sure what you mean exactly by this. Either way I wanted to give something to save a guy's life, didn't want the money as such.

Parents might be talked into it by children who are eager to inherit their assets. When someone pointed this out to me it made me reconsider.

That's why the decision to allow assisted suicide is taken by two separate medical professionals following two requests by a person in pain. I think it's safe to assume that said medics (who swore a hypocratic oath, no less) will not just hand those over to whomever asks.

I mean, that can already happen, no? What difference does it make being able to commit legal suicide instead of 'illegal' suicide by downing some pills?

I guess because one is technically murder and you'd have to do it yourself, whereas the other you can get someone else to do it and you'd get away scott free and with less guilt.

Why wouldn't both be murder and the guilt just the same?

They are both murder, but I think he's talking about legal guilt. If the assisted suicide you deniably talked your predecessor into was legal, you are legally guilty of no crime.

As someone who moved to Germany, I feel like I understand this better now. Many people here a real stickler for rules even when they make absolutely no sense at all. Many seem to actually care whether a law was broken before they care to consider whether the thing itself is good regardless of legal status. Avoiding the feeling of legal guilt is probably a thing here more than I thought it could be.

The only points this makes me reconsider is the legal right to murder your own children and having criteria for who gets to have children in the first place.

> Aside from the religious angle, what are the biggest arguments against assisted suicide for people who aren't terminally ill?

Suicide is a permanent action for sometimes temporary circumstances. Plenty of folks who attempted suicide—because they saw no way out of their current situation—and failed are glad they ended up failing.

But that's already true of unassisted suicide. With assisted suicide, at least the person will be required to see a practioner (in my version of it, anyway) who might be able to diagnose and treat/address the temporary circumstances.

> Batters said she’s heard from hundreds of Canadians who have concerns about the clause. Many have told her they’ve suffered from mental illness, and would have chosen to end their lives if the option had been available to them before they recovered.

* https://ipolitics.ca/2021/03/17/assisted-dying-legislation-a...

> Plenty of folks who attempted suicide—because they saw no way out of their current situation—and failed are glad they ended up failing.

The counterpoint is also true though: there are people who live long and persistently miserable lives. To me that is even worse than a premature death (I'd much rather be dead than permanently miserable).

When is time to legislate not much else than that in Spain, but religion (catholic) is an important asset in politics there.

Conservative parties and catholic church feed back each other.

Unfortunately, in the US, people have to rely on 2nd amendment rights to have such option.

Without guns, all other methods I know of are painful and non-instant: hanging, drug overdose, cutting veins, suffocation, what else?

It’s just sad that terminally ill people have to use a method that will put stigma and shame on how their live ended, doing it in secret and with mess. Instead of a legal and graceful procedure, going away surrounded by family.

> Without guns, all other methods I know of are painful and non-instant:

Suffocation with inert gas (e.g. N_2) using mask with exhalation valve is safe, painless and leads to very fast loss of consciousness. Distress associated with suffocation is not caused by missing oxygen, but by excess CO_2, so it does not happen if a person can exhale freely. It sometimes happen in industrial accidents, people lose consciousness without noticing anything.

Isnt that way too scientific and a long process to die? Guns are easy. One bullet in the head and goodbye world.

It's (relatively) long but painless. It would be hard to arrange, but only because it's illegal to provide such services. I dream of a day when such such services are provided by healthcare providers.

Without guns, all other methods I know of are painful and non-instant: hanging, drug overdose, cutting veins, suffocation, what else?

At Dignitas they have the person drink a cup of barbituates. There are a few videos of this entire process on YouTube if you're curious enough to watch such a thing. It appears to be generally painless.

But you can’t obtain these controlled drugs legally, while legal gun purchase is protected right.

> an oral dose of an antiemetic drug, followed approximately half an hour later by a lethal overdose of 15 grams of powdered pentobarbital dissolved in a glass of water

The train hop is quiet common, but also a very unfair thing to do to the conductor.

Jumping in front of trains is pretty instant and more likely to kill you than guns.

Debatable, not to mention traumatizing to the Train's operator.

I wonder why you couldn't just use anaesthesia.

That way you can do organ removal at the same time.

With international travel becoming so accessible I'm kind of surprised that suicide tourism (akin to medical tourism) isn't more of a thing. I wonder if there's a tacit understanding that opening that door would have diplomatic consequences.

FAFAIK, this is possible in Switzerland. However, the same safeguards apply there: the patient has to make their case and a doctor must assent to the request.

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