France starts a debate on legalising assisted dying
economist.com
economist.com
I can't even imagine how hard it must be to have an incurable, debilitating illness and be obliged to endure it without any easy way out.
Which is mostly a good thing, as it leaves some room for relenting.
> People should be able to go as they wish, it's bodily autonomy.
There's a difference between being able to go as you wish, and being able to go as an impulse you can't take back.
Your right to "go how you wish" ends when it impacts others. For example, if you jump off a building there's a good chance you could kill a person you land on.
Then there's emotional trama. If you feed yourself to the lions at the zoo, you've harmed the onlookers and likely given people/children PTSD.
Also, jurisdictions are increasingly allowing assisted death in non-terminal cases. For example, Canada is poised to expand its assisted death program to individuals with mental illness. That is effectively carte blanche for anyone to access assisted dying.
But not by just getting drunk one evening and deciding to end it all! I have to repeat the question: you really don't think there's a moral distinction to be made here?
Yes, I'm sure we'll see growth in self-inflicted, fatal gunshot wounds, administered while surrounded by their loved ones.
There is no such thing as a good gun death.
The issue with guns and quick access to death is suicide can often be impulsive. Something hits wrong, a traumatic event happens, or just a temporary depression. All of those can lead to death by suicide that wouldn't have otherwise happen.
There needs to be nuance. I fully support someone's right to die by suicide, but I also support a waiting period with plenty of "opt out" opportunities.
It also does not have to be cruel or painful. We have a painless methods for someone to die.
Even if we take "you can impulsively shoot yourself at a moment's notice" as a good thing (I don't think it is), none of that is correct:
1. Any gun will do, and france (and more generally europe) has extensive allowance for hunting and sports shooting, both of which can easily be used to try to kill yourself.
2. Try being an important word here, fucking up a gun suicide attempt is a common occurrence and can leave you extensively maimed and debilitated (e.g. gun pointed too high, recoil moves the gun and blows up your entire face leaving you alive, gun pointed too low, bullet hits the palate or misses the skull entirely and hits the spine, ...)
3. Whether successful or not, finding a gun-suicide is one of the worst discoveries you can make, to say nothing of the cleanup (mostly in case of success).
While a gun is not the worst suicide method by a mile (train, car, or cop involve and endanger other people), it's still a shitty one.
That "side effect" is is not because of impulse buying and getting guns on short notice. In fact, there's a mandatory waiting period in 1/5th of US states (10 days in California) specifically to prevent that situation, which seems like a _very_ good idea to me. It's about a) getting them without learning a large amount of material (not everyone memorizes things as easily as engineers), and b) without approval buy someone who might actually object.
To get a gun in France, you need a hunting/sports license. The hunting license requires a 1-day theoretical and practical exam, as well as a medical exam that is specifically meant to verify if the physical and mental health is compatible with the stated purpose of the purchase. Whereas in the US, you need at most a trivial knowledge test (firearms safety certificate, with questions like in which direction to point the gun. possible answers: safest possible direction, up, down, north (!) [1]) to buy a firearm (hunter's safety education is only required to purchase a hunting license, not a gun).
And regarding your third point, sure, but the solution to that is to provide a better, legal, safe and professionally supervised pathway. Anything else makes as much sense as writing a law that bans cancer.
[1] https://oag.ca.gov/sites/all/files/agweb/pdfs/firearms/forms...
Cool story but that’s got nothing to do with my comment.
> That "side effect" is is not because of impulse buying
The impulse I’m talking about is once you have a gun in your home. Going out to buy a gun to shoot yourself seems unlikely as there’s plenty if faster ways to commit suicide along the way unless you live next door to a gun shop.
> And regarding your third point, sure, but the solution to that is to provide a better, legal, safe and professionally supervised pathway.
A better, legal, safe, and professionally supervised pathway… to shooting yourself tanks to the second amendment?
You do realise I was replying to a specific comment yeah?
And I meant a better pathway through the medical system, not involving firearms. Using guns for that seems all around awful, and it is sad if people do see that as their most realistic option.
The majority of those who severely defend the 2nd amendment are conservative and thusly - it won't be handled.
It's as you state, morally bad, to take ones own life. That's the perception/belief setting idea for conservatives and the actual thing you're going against. Reality/facts actually have a very difficult time changing people's beliefs as we've seen with COVID, drugs, etc.
What does this mean? Just trying to understand the assumption being made about me.
Yet for some reason most folks would be fine with former and strongly reject the latter, maybe due to religious dogmas around suicide.
Anyway this way out of topic, most folks going through this in ie Switzerland would be barely able to hold the gun properly. Its much more about dying with dignity (which gun has 0) and ending it all with power over one's fate, instead of misery dragging out for months and years, of which elderly homes are choke full.
I would encourage anyone who is interested to review medical literature on the subject. Even a shotgun wound to the head is survivable if the weapon is not suitably oriented. In the least fortunate cases, both of the eyes, nose, and/or jaw may be removed, along with the rest of the face, without resulting in death.
It is not without reason that qualifying individuals are willing to pay aid societies in Switzerland thousands of US dollars for assistance in ending their lives. The required lethal dose of barbiturates is incredibly difficult to obtain legally.
Perhaps in the near future, firearm suicides will be considered along the same lines as back-alley abortions, a barbaric practice made necessary by our denial of a basic human right.
There's a reason professional medical assistance is needed. Human bodies are pretty resilient and as an amateur you often have no experience in the matter. Professional do.
The professional medical bit would mostly be to ensure proper oversight, proper handling of the remains, and allow the service to be provided to people physically incapable of doing so on their own.
The sooner the better. You don't want the body to stay undetected for any period of time.
Or the simple fact many people don't know that most just deceased people release some poop and pee.
Neutral gas asphyxiation (“exit bags”).
It’s possible to screw up but fairly limited, I think the only real risk is getting found too soon. That aside it’s reportedly a really calm way to go.
> I have a hard time coming up with examples, as after all the body has to be disposed off eventually.
Oh yes unless you throw yourself in a volcano that’s always going to be an issue. It’s mostly the other bits which the method has an impact on.
Well I guess an other option is a diving suicide, but that requires a lot of planning and certifications so seems unlikely to be worth.
Sometimes the slope really is slippery.
> But human rights advocates say the country’s regulations lack necessary safeguards, devalue the lives of disabled people and are prompting doctors and health workers to suggest the procedure to those who might not otherwise consider it.
In order to cut healthcare costs, assisted suicide is thrust upon people as an option. What's worse: having people with a debilitating illness suffer through it, or having everyone with a debilitating illness at a certain age get pressured by medical personnel into putting themselves on death row "for the common good"?
A person must have the right to chose the terms of their own existence.
A person shouldn't be pressured into that choice due to costs.
> A person must have the right to chose the terms of their own existence.
In the sense that a person doesn't have the right to choose to die, and shouldn't have the right to make that decision on behalf of someone else
But the harder you make it to do so, the more likely whatever method they end up choosing will harm someone else.
A peaceful end with safe, regulated medications in an isolated enviroment is preferable to people jumping off buildings or in front of trains or in front of cars.
It's one thing to be able to do something, it's another thing to inform the person of the ability to do something and put pressure on them like this (a real conversion in Canada between a patient and hospital administrator):
> “Roger, this is not my show,” the ethicist responded. “My piece of this was to talk to you, (to see) if you had an interest in assisted dying.”
And also jumping off buildings or in front of cars is a relatively uncommon way of committing suicide
Anecdotal tales of incompetence do not justify the removal of a person's basic right of self.
When Nazi’s put people in gas chambers they used these kinds of semantic arguments to brainwash people into committing atrocities. No one knows what happens after or when we die. We found out after years in the US, after executions by injection which was considered humane was actually excruciatingly painful but the prisoners couldn’t scream because they were effectively paralyzed. The whole idea of this raises red flags to me.
I don't see how that's possible. Sure, the egregious cases by healthcare professionals can be prevented, but I don't see how you can prevent the soft pressure from friends and family, or even just self imposed guilt on the part of the patient.
People who are sick often have to deal with depression. Feelings of being helpless and worthless are only going to be made worse knowing they are effectively choosing to be a burden by not allowing themselves to be killed. I would imagine a great many people who are not ready to die would do so out of a sense of shame or guilt and that seems really terrible to me.
Palliative care and avoiding treatment that unnecessarily prolongs life can go a long way to easing the difficulty of dying from illness and I think are more humane than asking, explicitly or implicitly, for the disabled or dying to decide when they should die during what is certainly already a very difficult time.
I don't think this functions as a principle. It only seems like it applies very narrowly to the situation of ending one's life.
People don't have a right to choose where, how, or to whom they're born. They don't get to select which aptitudes they have or where they struggle. There's very little they can do to change a great many things about their lives, but this doesn't strike us as a "violation of their rights" as much as "a fact of the human condition."
I think you need an argument as to why the specific situation of choosing how and when to end one's life ought to be different.
Death does come. When and how is (usually) not chosen by the person who dies. This seems like it's as much a part of the human condition as the randomness around being born.
Obviously, you can't dictate what things happen to you, only how you respond to them.
> In one recording obtained by the AP, the hospital’s director of ethics told Foley that for him to remain in the hospital, it would cost “north of $1,500 a day.” Foley replied that mentioning fees felt like coercion and asked what plan there was for his long-term care.
> “Roger, this is not my show,” the ethicist responded. “My piece of this was to talk to you, (to see) if you had an interest in assisted dying.”
> Foley said he had never previously mentioned euthanasia. The hospital says there is no prohibition on staff raising the issue.
Wow. This does feel hazardous to me.
I used to be very much in favour of legalised euthanasia but I'm a lot less certain after reading about what it's actually looking like in practice in Canada - where the results seem horrifying.
I live in a state (W.Australia) with legal assisted death and I have no specific opinion on what is actually happening in Canada (a peer Commonwealth country) .. but I can see that much of what there is to read on the matter is strongly bent toward the worst possible presentation.
Eg: When I read horrified accounts of social workers recommending death to (otherwise) healthy disabled people I too am shocked .. and then I read elsewhere that this is the isolated practice of individuals whose behaviour is being hauled over the coals at tribunal hearings into "this is how not to do this".
It's a charged issue and no system can ever be perfect. The question for Canada is how much effort is going into oversight and keeping things ethical.
https://toronto.citynews.ca/2022/10/13/medical-assistance-de...
> “I don’t want to die but I don’t want to be homeless more than I don’t want to die,” shared Farsoud.
One doctor has already signed off on his euthanasia and he only needs one more.
I don't know how common this kind of story is but it shouldn't be ignored - and it's the exact kind of thing that all those scary right wing monsters warned would happen if we didn't listen to them.
The fact that one doctor has confirmed he meets one (of several) criteria (which is physical suffering due to a disability that is intolerable and cannot be relieved) is a factoid.
At this point he has not been approved, and in the state I live in, on the face of the article, would not be approved, at the very least not without the intervention of counseling and effective welfare assistance.
You're correct, this is the exact kind of story scary right wing monsters amplify and use to suggest that any day now we'll be stacking the corpes of the homeless in carts and rolling them off to the landfill.
I'm guessing their endgame here is improve support for the homeless?
Yeah, .. right.
I don't think this issue has been politicized yet (at least in the US). Has it been politicized in Canada or something?
My perhaps incorrect view from afar (Australia) is that a great many events in Canada get politicized in the US press with the cooperation of some Canadians with less mainstream views.
Canadian Health Care is often smeared (like the UK NHS) as it would otherwise serve to shaow that better than "Obamacare" is feasible, etc.
Ahh yes, it's only a couple of bad apples and not the system in place that's enabling their behavior
He was lucky to be Belgian resident and thus had a choice to go peacefuly without horrors of those last weeks and days when there’s no hope, just suffering and pain. After seeing how it looks first hand, I think veryone should have an option for euthanasia.
That's the kind of personal experience that makes me feel much less in favour of legalisation.
"I am, finally, so glad I never quit Belgium. This country allows for death on demand, for patients who are terminal or have a bad enough quality of life. *It takes three doctors and a psychiatrist, in the second case, and four weeks' waiting period.* In the first case, it takes one doctor's opinion."
Yet after watching my 99 year old grandmother die last year in the final seven days before she passed it became increasingly obvious she was in significant amount of pain. The assisted suicide laws are irrelevant in this scenario and it became more obvious that giving her a massive dose of morphine to end it all was, in my opinion, the mericful and right course of action to prevent the needless suffering the final five days gave her.
Medical professional ethics of course prevented that happening which I thought was borderline cruel. If I am ever in that position I have told my family to give me a 'hot shot' mixed with LSD to make my end of life timeframe as painless as possible.
It's a shame that we couldn't have a quiet word with the doctor to over administer medication to her. In the final words she spoke a few days prior to passing she said she just wanted to go.
Similar to abortion and organ donation, this matter is about body autonomy. It's immoral to force someone to do something they don't want to do.
It's trivially easy to think of counterexamples to this statement.
I don't want to safely dispose of this industrial waste because that is too expensive and time consuming.
I don't want to feed my children.
I don't want to drive the speed limit.
I don't want to pay for that.
I don't want limit my amplifier's output to 1500 watts on the amateur radio bands. (edit: 500 watts on HF in France!)
I don't want to provide the good or service I have been paid for and I don't want to return the money.
I don't want to add to this list anymore....
But if you only want to talk about suicide: we already "force" suicidal people to stay alive via suicide prevention measures (nets under bridges, restrictions on drug purchases etc.) that make it harder or less convenient to kill yourself. These measures reduce suicide rates and I'd say they're moral.
Okay, so what if we're only talking about "assisted" suicide? If someone really wants to die, should we let them? I get where you're coming from, but let's not pretend it's always this simple. Suicidal people aren't famous for thinking rationally, and just because someone says they want to die that doesn't mean we should take it at face value. There are already cases in Canada of people seeking euthanasia not because they're terminally ill but because they're poor, and see suicide as preferable to poverty/homelessness:
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-is-canada-euthanisin...
There's the "slippery slope" we were warned about.
PS I'm not sure what you think "bad faith" means, but my post was not written in bad faith.
Those are all negative, in those cases you're not allowing someone to do something (which is different from forcing someone to do something). There are other forms of suicide prevention though, like forcing suicidal people to take medication
These measures won't stop a truly determined person, but they stop a lot of people. It's well understood that erecting even a minor inconvenience in front of a suicidal person can be enough to keep them alive. Popping all your paracetamol out of the packaging takes enough time to give you a chance to reconsider the whole thing.
By forcing someone to do something, we prevent them from doing something else.
Well this was poorly thought through. I guess I’ll never need to tell the truth under oath, hand over alimony checks, wear clothes, avoid being drunk on the street at noon…
"Refusing to assist someone in doing something" seems to be different from "forcing someone to do whatever was already going to happen if they didn't do the thing you refused to help them do" to me.
It seems to me that it's not "force" unless there's an alteration to the natural course something takes by default. So in this case, "continuing to live for awhile" is the default natural course. Refusing to assist someone in altering that natural course isn't the same as "forcing them to continue living."
Likewise with pregnancy, the default natural course is to remain pregnant until miscarriage or birth. Refusing to assist (or allow someone else to assist) someone in altering that natural course isn't the same as "forcing someone to remain pregnant."
The nearer analogy would be if someone published a recipe and instructions for making the pill.
I think that would still be "assistance," but much more likely to be covered under free speech laws, that disseminating information about something (publishing instructions) is generally already protected.
Even then, though, were such publication to be banned, it would still be the case that nobody is being "forced to remain pregnant."
Those are both primary uses for those drugs so manufacturing and delivery isn't knowing assistance.
Then you suggest it is legal free speech for me to divulge that if you take one, wait 48hrs and take the second, it is precisely what would occur if you requested a drug induced abortion in a place that allows those?
In fact it sounds like, and forgive me if I assume incorrectly, your argument is meant to be opposed to assisted suicide, but I would use the exact same argument in favor of it, all forms of recreational drugs, (ethically produced) porn, and other such things that harm no one except potentially the person making the decision. Obviously there's a lot of grey area there but we don't need to get super pedantic.
If something is already underway, like a person is already alive or a pregnancy has already begun, it has a path along which it will continue without requiring additional force to reach it. "Force" is only necessary to change the course.
An object in motion is not forced to stay in motion. That's what happens in the absence of force.
For a person to continue living or a pregnancy to continue, they must continually exert, collect, and consume energy in the form of food and water. Why isn't that additional force? The 'natural' course of events, without any outside 'force', is for everyone and every living thing to drop dead in a couple of days tops.
"Okay, but obviously living beings were designed to continue living, seeking energy to continue sustaining their existence is obviously a natural course of events" you might say, but why does it have to end there? Why isn't the very natural path that all humans begin on, one of being a social creature that desires to assist others in their tribe, the 'default' force as well?
It really seems like there can't be any clear cut answer, and it's just philosophical sleight of hand. You also haven't addressed the point that if one person wants to help the other, preventing that is clearly a form of force.
The whole conversation is about taking action to end someone's life, and whether anyone who does not take action to assist someone in ending their life is forcing them to continue living. "Being alive" has a biological meaning and a natural course. These aren't just things we get to define as we will.
While I admire the gymnastics you're putting your mind through to try to maintain shortening someone's life intentionally could even remotely be considered "the natural course" such that force would have to be applied to prevent it, the only way to get there is to negate meaning in any word or any thing other than what any particular person ascribes to it.
Virtually by definition, no one can join you in your solipsism, so I'm afraid this conversation has run its course.
This is the first I've heard of this, and I've been in the homebrewing scene for awhile now. If someone told me they got nitrogen homebrewing equipment, I'd be pretty stoked because nitro beer isn't that common at all among homebrewers. Got anything to back this up?
I always thought nitrous oxide would make a great fizzifier. Talk about giggle water! And it is much more soluble than even co2 so you could actually make it bubbly.
I'll remember this the next time I need to pay taxes, am drafted to serve in the military, or have to abide by a court judgment I don't agree with.
The tough thing about principle arguments is that they're like trains, not taxis. You're stuck with them until their conclusions. You don't just get to choose where you want them to go.
That's all it takes.
Your argument certainly doesn't depend on timing, does it? France has had conscriptions whenever it needed them. If it needs them in the future, you can be sure it will have them.
Some people are not too happy about it being advertised like that in public [1] since it really is only for people that are suffering or at the end of their life.
However assisted suicide is considered a "basic" right and that will not change.
[1] https://www.20min.ch/story/exit-wirbt-im-berner-tram-fuer-fr...
Those who choose to die should be allowed to make that choice in a way that’s safe, painless, and that minimizes the effects on others as much as is possible.
But should doctors (or anyone else) be allowed to suggest it to patients, and at what point does that suggestion become coercion? Through what means will the patient learn about euthanasia as an option?
I think my doctor(s) should be able to advise me on any relevant medical matters, not just those that prolong life.
Yes
> Through what means will the patient learn about euthanasia as an option
You’d learn about it because your 90-year old grandpa did it when he got cancer or when your 45-year old aunt did it because she was sick of living. It would just be part of life.
> and at what point does that suggestion become coercion?
Impossible for me to say for sure. I’d rather there be some cases of coercion than people who want to die being denied the chance.
No-one is "denied the chance" to die if they wait long enough and I'd much rather let a few more people die natural deaths if the alternative is coercing people into suicide.
There are numerous safeguards (you have to ask, wait 15 days, and ask again; the doctor can refer you to psychiatric care if they think your judgment is impaired; and others).
The state government of Oregon has a FAQ about the law at: https://www.oregon.gov/oha/ph/providerpartnerresources/evalu...
My problem with euthanasia is how do you know if the patient actually wanted it, or if they were pressured into it by medical personnel in order to cut costs?
In Canada, the health care system is publicly funded. There's an incentive for euthanasia because it cuts costs
In the USA, we don't have a public health care system, so there's an incentive to drag people along, run up the bill, and not euthanize them
What I find most interesting about this euthanasia thing is I only see it really getting taken seriously in jurisdictions where the health care system is public. If a public healthcare system introduces this nasty dynamic of disabled, debilitated people getting put down "for the public good", I don't want a public health care system
[0] https://apnews.com/article/covid-science-health-toronto-7c63...
>My problem with euthanasia is how do you know if the patient actually wanted it, or if they were pressured into it by medical personnel in order to cut costs?
It does not take a genius to figure out that expensive end of life care paid with taxpayer funds and the country’s labor resources could instead be going towards things like education or infrastructure.
>In the USA, we don't have a public health care system,
What is Medicare? Medicaid? Who pays the hospital when someone with no means to pay walks in and EMTALA requires them to receive healthcare?
And there are a great many people that cost society more than they're worth, so the potential savings are enormous! I bet we can save even more if we practice selective sterilization.
There's enough surplus in any western society that this sort of zero sum thinking is completely out of place. Anyone who would consciously sacrifice another human being for something inanimate like "infrastructure" is sick in the head
You need to read more history.
We had a law in the 2000's (law Leonetti) which was ridiculously weak. It is now going to take uears and several elections to have progress there.
Fortunately we have reasonable neighbors where you are free to dispose of your life.
This together with the squatting laws are a disgrace.
We are in fact faced by an objective "conspiracy against life", involving even international Institutions, engaged in encouraging and carrying out actual campaigns to make contraception, sterilization and abortion widely available. Nor can it be denied that the mass media are often implicated in this conspiracy, by lending credit to that culture which presents recourse to contraception, sterilization, abortion and even euthanasia as a mark of progress and a victory of freedom, while depicting as enemies of freedom and progress those positions which are unreservedly pro-life.
The State is no longer the "common home" where all can live together on the basis of principles of fundamental equality, but is transformed into a tyrant State, which arrogates to itself the right to dispose of the life of the weakest and most defenceless members, from the unborn child to the elderly, in the name of a public interest which is really nothing but the interest of one part. The appearance of the strictest respect for legality is maintained, at least when the laws permitting abortion and euthanasia are the result of a ballot in accordance with what are generally seen as the rules of democracy. Really, what we have here is only the tragic caricature of legality; the democratic ideal, which is only truly such when it acknowledges and safeguards the dignity of every human person, is betrayed in its very foundations: "How is it still possible to speak of the dignity of every human person when the killing of the weakest and most innocent is permitted? In the name of what justice is the most unjust of discriminations practised: some individuals are held to be deserving of defence and others are denied that dignity?" When this happens, the process leading to the breakdown of a genuinely human co-existence and the disintegration of the State itself has already begun.
To claim the right to abortion, infanticide and euthanasia, and to recognize that right in law, means to attribute to human freedom a perverse and evil significance: that of an absolute power over others and against others. This is the death of true freedom: "Truly, truly, I say to you, every one who commits sin is a slave to sin" (Jn 8:34).
— John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae (1995), https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/d...