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Comment by spritefs | Hacker News Reader

See this https://apnews.com/article/covid-science-health-toronto-7c63...

> 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"?

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> Roger Foley, who has a degenerative brain disorder and is hospitalized in London, Ontario, was so alarmed by staffers mentioning euthanasia that he began secretly recording some of their conversations.

> 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'd argue both are horrible trade-offs and can be somewhat lessened with better regulations.

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.

I disagree with this:

> 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

Whether you believe a person has a "right" to choose to die or not, people are fully capable of making the choice, and whether you believe they have to right to or not, people are going to do it.

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.

> Whether you believe a person has a "right" to choose to die or not, people are fully capable of making the choice, and whether you believe they have to right to or not, people are going to do it.

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

We can regulate the behaviors of doctors and staff in hospital to ensure they aren't pressuring people to make the choice due to costs. We can fire people who do so.

Anecdotal tales of incompetence do not justify the removal of a person's basic right of self.

The thing I really don’t like about the whole assisted dying debate, is when people use exactly that phraseology. It’s “peaceful”. It’s “safe”. There’s nothing safe or peaceful about your own death.

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.

Everyone has the Ape right do kill themselves at any time. But you should really do it yourself. If we were more virtuous, there would be little need for these laws- or rather, those who need a man in a coat to tell them they're allowed to die are emotional children.

> I'd argue both are horrible trade-offs and can be somewhat lessened with better regulations.

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.

> A person must have the right to chose the terms of their own existence.

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.

The phrasing "terms of their own existence" is just a polite way to say, "You don't get to tell me I have to keep being alive."

Obviously, you can't dictate what things happen to you, only how you respond to them.

I'm glad someone else shared this.

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.

> 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.

Okay, I'm not Canadian, and I'm not going to pretend to be intimately familiar with how things work there. But then I read appalling anecdotes like this one:

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 such people exist is unsurprising - and it concerns me.

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.

> 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 don't think this issue has been politicized yet (at least in the US). Has it been politicized in Canada or something?

Preamble: I read a lot "news media" from about the globe - I'm more interested in substance than culture war type material.

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.

> 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".

Ahh yes, it's only a couple of bad apples and not the system in place that's enabling their behavior

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