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Comment by DanielleMolloy | Hacker News Reader

It’s a complex subject, but these rulings are a direct result of our nihilist materialist pseudo-rational thinking and easily seem to get out of bounds. There unusually seem to be complex interpersonal relations involved too.

Belgium allowed a 24yo with severe depression to “decide” for assisted suicide (this seems to be frequent, I’ve heard of a similar case of a student this year), and the Netherlands wants to allow childhood euthanasia soon (it is already allowed for those over 12). Decision makers seem to believe that they are rational and ruling out religious moral opinions on these subjects, however we seem to be gravitating towards the buddhist nihilist view that life is suffering, and that our reason to live is to end suffering by vanishing.

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> the Netherlands wants to allow childhood euthanasia soon

Doctors in the Netherlands want this simply as a better alternative to palliative sedation, which is already legal in NL and many other countries in the world.

Some children are terminally ill, and they are palliatively sedated when the parents and doctors agree that this is the best thing to do. The difference between palliative sedation and euthanasia in these cases is small, in the opinion of many Dutch people and doctors. Some quotes from a report[0] from the Dutch Association for Pediatrics, to give you an idea of what kind of cases we're talking about:

> 'Well, yeah, he had a period during which he was screaming from pain: "Help me, just help me!" That was truly horrible to see, that someone is really hitting his own head while begging for help. That went on for three days. Every time I called for a nurse and they could only increase his medicine further. And at one point a nurse came and said bluntly: "yes madam, your child has a brain tumour. Of course he is in pain". Well, I thought: "okay I guess"'.

> 'He didn't want to be sedated, because he said: "then I can no longer say whether I am in pain" [...] So we postponed that, but in the end he needed so much medicine that we asked him "do you want a little sleep medicine now?", and by then he wanted it". Child, 4 years old'

[0] http://download.omroep.nl/nos/docs/280919_euthanasie.pdf

You are giving examples of the complexity of this topic when it comes to individual cases, which I do acknowledge and am aware of. However you did not acknowledge / wage them against the many complex loopholes euthanasia laws are opening, which I tried to point at.

As you say, we do already have palliative care. Why not improve much further on this front instead of opening all the legal loopholes, which can easily lead to more suffering in the end (if one wants to play this “sum of suffering” thinking game)?

> [...] we do already have palliative care. Why not improve much further on this front

Because it simply isn't possible in some cases. That's also what the doctors in the PDF I linked to state, but it's Dutch so I can't blame you for not reading it of course.

1. "Parents and doctors acknowledge different kinds of physical, existential and psychosocial suffering. This suffering cannot be treated fully with medicine"

2. "There are cases of severe, untreatable suffering in children for which no treatments are applicable. [...] In two cases, the decision was made to not give food and fluids to a physiologically stable child."

3. "Multiple children with metabolic, neurological and neuro-oncological disorders had difficult to treat epilepsy in the final phase of their life. Different parents describe the process of dying of their child as 'inhumane' and 'traumatising for the child'"

etc. etc.

You are clinging to generic fictional arguments and refuse to acknowledge that every case is individual.

What's your definition of "palliative care"? Should the goal of palliative care be to maximize the vegetative lifespan of a patient? Or should the care focus on making a patient's last few hours/days a meaningful experience for all involved?

Thinking about individual cases I’ve heard of during my time in NL (one being relatively close, a young depressed student) is what has lead me to the opinion that the floodgates have indeed been opened - which is what people have been warning about.

I’m otherwise not sure how you perceive me right now, but you might be attacking your straw man.

The goal of palliative care is increasing the quality of a dying person’s life with dignity and as little pain as possible, and allow them to make the best of the time that is left to them. Instead of opening euthanasia floodgates that just lead to difficult individual situations (such as not wanting to be a burden to one’s family, a very common feeling) I do believe we need more research in this direction.

To be honest, I perceive you as a zealous idealist that refuses to acknowledge that the world isn't perfect, and instead chooses to oppose any form of legal empathy with mere handwaving about moral conundrums.

I have no interest in debating someone who thinks that "floodgates" are a convincing argument.

In the PDF I linked to parents state how they stood in the hallway of the ICU, far away from their 3 year old daughter, because they could not handle her screams any longer. The doctors had advised them to go away. They were not with her when she died.

Doctors have experienced firsthand that palliative care isn't always possible in the last phase of life. But nonetheless the commenter wants "more research in [that] direction", and talks about "increasing the quality of a dying person's life".

So yeah, whatever. I'm glad most people in my country know better.

Many people in your or your neighboring country now seem to be very surprised by cases opponents have warned about before, such as Tine Nys, or this grandma with dementia who was opposing the jab and had to be kept down by her family until her last moment. The family members likely feel confident and „rational“ about their murder because the procedure was backed by the local public discourse. (A cynic may see parallels to widow burning, which is also backed by some local clan discourse.)

With such cases in public awareness I don’t understand how the cases you translated here for us (thanks for that, btw) don’t lead you to the conclusion that there must be more research into palliative care, and instead that one should be allowed to put an end to a human life that is more suffering than living. You list graphic descriptions of situations where the first is not possible yet so the latter would likely have to apply, and I understand that - as I said, I’m aware of the complexity. But improving palliative care with dignity should still be the primary route.

That your legal floodgates are open now may prohibit a focus on palliative care research since it seemingly has already changed your national discourse quite a bit - which is another issue opponents have warned about. The Dutch / Belgian (and perhaps Canadian) discourse on euthanasia is an outlier in the world, and being on the outlier side is not automatically a good thing. It will derail even further and weaken more boundaries, and change how people act or feel are expected to act.

Yeah, don’t worry too much about the suicidal depressed guy, just open up an easy legal route to painless suicide with a ‚rationality’ flavor for him so that he can „ ‚decide‘ to end his suffering“. And tell all his friends (half of them depressed too) that ‚this is just a rational decision for a depressed person to make’. Don’t worry too much about implications, that’s just „unrealistic perfectionism“. Just put up your very confident face.

I don't think your first comment really made those very legitimate concerns clear.

I'm pro right to die, but I'm also aware that it's a slippery slope and can go bad places.

That's a good thing to talk about, but it's not easy to do and I don't think your first remark made your concerns clear.

It's not the country that decides, it's the person and a panel of doctors, and there are requirements ( severe physical or mental issues). Point in case, there's a trial for murder on doctors that signed off on euthanasia for a woman which didn't fit the requirements - https://www.reuters.com/article/us-belgium-euthanasia-idUSKB...

Rather I think the point is we’re gravitating towards the idea that not all life is worth living, and the consciousness that must (alone) experience a given life should have primacy on decision rights of its continuation.

To relinquish some of the sacredness of life endowed by evolution is not to commit wholeheartedly to nihilism.

It must be nice in your pretend world where unbearable suffering of children does not exist.

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