While I'm aware of the various slippery slopes (and who might be greasing the plane), I can't help but think that a few people could have been spared quite a bit of suffering had euthanasia been available.
While I'm aware of the various slippery slopes (and who might be greasing the plane), I can't help but think that a few people could have been spared quite a bit of suffering had euthanasia been available.
So when he relayed this story, my internal reaction was more of a nod, "yes, that's how it tended to go back then," a bit like hearing old stories of the agonizing, inevitable deaths of those who contracted rabies, because by then it was just another data point in a straight line. That's not immoral at all.
Immoral, to me, is hiding this sort of thing from the people to whom it will happen, because if you do not know, you cannot plan around it. Being uninformed removes agency, and that's what we're discussing here -- do we allow other humans legal agency over their deaths, since they haven't any over their births?
It is a sensitive personal decision whether you want to know what may happen to you in detail, or not; and nobody should make this decision for someone who is affected by disclosing graphic stories. Most people would therefore be too considerate to pass on such stories, so your friend may be a bit of an „outlier“. That’s all I wanted to say.
1) I consider this the largest: the decision to reproduce or not. First off, it runs the risk of burdening offspring with the exact same condition. Then there is the "can I even manage to raise offspring?" question, at least to the level of the average parent?
2) Similarly, seeking a partner to raise that offspring with. Imagine you had a spouse who had been kept unaware of the situation, and so you were unaware of the situation, and then you were rather suddenly burdened with taking care of someone through a prolonged decline. Would that have seemed fair to you, not to have known?
3) The rest of life planning is almost trivial next to the first couple of issues, but you think about retirement, how one's life is spent given the expected years, and so on.
Non-disclosure is a horrifying trap for more than just the patient. I would find someone who would not disclose to be inconsiderate, frankly, similar to in kind, though not in degree, as someone not warning you of a danger in a road you are about to drive down.