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