UK lawmakers vote in support of assisted dying
cnn.com
cnn.com
That said, the great problem in countries with tax funded social and health services is the government have a distinct interest in persuading certain people to jump, and this is a serious moral hazard as some of the Canadian experience has demonstrated.
Today though the UK has the opposite problem, which is an enormous private residential “care” system keeping huge numbers of unwilling near vegetables wired up until they eventually die, transferring as much of the family money to the “carers” as possible. They have an awful lot to lose from this too, so I expect the fight to be a lot nastier from here on.
Not a chance. This will always be gated by medical evaluation for suitability.
Suicidal ideation occurs transiently in many conditions or life circumstances. Giving these people tools to follow through with their impulses "at any time for any reason" would be disastrous.
Whilst I am genuinely supportive of the legislation, I have a disability myself and am cautious about what it might lead to.
Find a way to do it. It sucks, and it’s not that I disagree that some people might be better off - it’s that the system that would allow for this would be politically untenable and likely abused.
But it’s also because not allowing people to commit suicide easily can help making the symptoms go away naturally as circumstances change.
That is a logical impossibility. Mental health is a thing; your mental health is not okay if you're physically fit and want to die.
My stance is that we should extend human beings the courtesy we extend to pets and road-almost-but-not-quite-kills: ending suffering when the situation calls for it.
That's a distortion of the truth. The case that you're referring to in Calgary is newsworthy because the father of the patient is arguing the woman isn't mentally competent to make the decision, because she is autistic. The judge ruled that being autistic doesn't make one mentally incompetent for the purposes of requesting MAID.
She's requesting MAID for some other unspecified symptoms that the father argues are undiagnosed psychological issues.
That is not the same as requesting MAID because you have autism.
Here's another one for hearing loss.
https://apnews.com/article/covid-science-health-toronto-7c63...
In the Netherlands it has always been (since the nineties) that two doctors need to approve of it. There is now a lot of discussion is people who suffer mentally do fit the process. I think there are slow movements in this regard.
Same as the US.
Nobody below the Fussellian upper-middle class in the US has savings—just accounts that temporarily hold money for the hospitals and elder care & hospice facilities.
Well, government may have a "distinct interest..." for reasons that are far away from being health related. I think that any hint of encouragement must be severely punished.
We have enormous private residential “care” system where they sit around in chairs. The "near vegetables wired up" are in NHS hospitals.
I don't think most of the care home folk are going to go for assisted dying. Also it's not as profitable as you might think - real estate is expensive and it's not that easy to get staff to wipe up 24/7.
I live in Canada, and I keep hearing this kind of stuff brought up by Americans.
What, exactly, is "the Canadian experience"?
It would be best if your sources are not American media outlets intended for American audiences they are looking to manipulate.
During the year with the most event (2022), 5 events occured for over 13 000 patients that chose assisted dying. That's 1 for every 2600 person and these events are basically just people suggesting MAiD improperly.
My family would have given anything to have been allowed access to assisted suicide by the end.
And I guarantee you would too.
Anyone that says otherwise simply hasn't lived it.
> And I guarantee you would too
Please don't presume.
Having just buried my mother last year after caring for her as the cancer literally ate her bones away ... no, I did not and I still would not choose suicide over waiting for the end.
Some of the famous incidents: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/veterans-maid-rcmp-investig... https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/paralympian-trying-to-get-wh...
The Canadian “care” industry is also a dumpster fire: https://globalnews.ca/news/4870784/gilles-duceppes-mother-fo...
Rogue employees suggesting bad treatment doesn't seem too much a cause for concern so long as they're caught before it goes further.
After all, people like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Shipman exist prior to this ruling.
I mean, we live in a country where the ruling party has 30% of the vote, and 35% when they had a majority in parliament. So why pretend that disagreements with Canadian policy is somehow just coming from Americans not understanding our wonderful country? It's super weird and it's oddly common on places like here and Reddit.
Because we live here, it's not as big a deal as right-wing ideologues would like you to believe, and it's usually American religious conservatives (or Canadian wannabe-Americans) doing the hand-wringing and the clutching at pearls.
>Surely as a Canadian you have seen that there has been a constant debate about the limits and excesses of MAID?
Yes, there has been spirited debate about a major shift in public health policy. Are you suggesting this is somehow bad?
You are being dishonest. I'm not going to engage with you further.
This is not murder, it’s mercy - just imagine being in a soul crushing place of having to end the suffering and life of your parent or child, then being told it’s not possible.
It's really good that it's possible.
The alternative is to never change your view, or to early on build a strong view on everything you have zero experience with, such as hospice care or the nuance of every immigration rule.
No, I would say the alternative is to listen to and evaluate arguments and base your views on what you find to be convincing. The problem with the "I don't care until it happens to me" mindset is that they often flatly refuse to consider arguments until those arguments affect them personally; this isn't open-mindedness but rather closed-mindedness paired with a deeply self-centered world view.
I don't support this legislation. My opposition is based on the fact that enabling someone to have a peaceful death involves a interplay of numerous environmental social and biological factors. The new legislation will need to fit into this complex environment without disrupting the practices which have built up to manage EOL care.
For example suffering for a patient will be significantly eased if the doctor explains clearly what is expected to happen and what the patient is likely to experience.
A patient with COPD, might be afraid to experience breathlessness. But the medical team explain how it will work, the nurses introduce it gradually and the patient does not suffer. Its the interplay of the technology, the professionals, the biological process and, obviously the patient and the beliefs and uncertainty.
Likewise a completely dependent MND patient will requite 16 full time nurses to provide for his needs. They might feel like a burden. Again its an interplay between the patients needs, symptoms and the professionals and technology we use to meet these needs.
If we overlay on this situations the knowledge that the patient could simply take their own life, its not clear to me that this would alleviate suffering.
She can't breathe. She can't use the bathroom without help. She can't hardly move. She's hooked up to a nasal cannula 100% of the time. Albuterol breathing exercises 4x a day means she can't sleep more than six hours at a time because if she skips one, even on O2, she experiences suffocation.
She coughs so badly that she has constant rib/spine fractures so she's on and off narcotic painkillers that only make life bearable in doses enough to turn her brain into mush.
She wants to die. She's done. She won life. She's the last lady standing. Every single friend from her youth is gone. It's over.
I've already told her that when I get into my 60s I am going to stockpile a cache of painkillers and when the time comes go out on my own terms. There is an exact and precise 0.0% chance that my family is going to cry out in the hallway for days/weeks while I shit/piss myself in bed and slowly drown to death as my organs fail.
But it's too late for my grandmother because she waited until she was under the watchful eye of the skilled nursing facility nightmare.
In my idealized world, there is no violence, no accidents, and all diseases have been cured except for the inevitable and unstoppable phenomenon of heart failure and 100% of ALL deaths are medically-assisted suicide, decided on by the individual once they reach the point where your heart can no longer support independent living but before you get to the Morphine downward spiral.
I am a volunteer FF/EMT so I've seen my fair share of end of life patients in the last 25 years and apparently I am the only responsible adult in my family so I've handled the hospice phase for every member of my family for the last 20 years.
It is incomprehensible to me that anyone who has any exposure to death whatsoever does not fully support a person's right to determine the time and manner of their death-- even if it comes with problems.
The only reasons I can come up with for not supporting it are: a financial stake in prolonged expensive end-of-life care, the belief that the patients are too stupid to determine their fate, and/or trying to impose their personal religious beliefs on the masses.
It's not that long ago that people were dying in hospitals while their relatives were forbidden from seeing them, and by the way hospitals were under immense pressure to free up beds.
Some people are full of fear about many things.
My only fears are disappointing my mother and Alzheimer’s.
I certainly do not fear an imperfect system.
I'm thankful to know that when its my time to go, I'll have the choice to skip enduring several days of torture should I wish.
It look like Parliament, via private members bill working at its best.
Lots of debate, lots of people listening to the debate and then voting.
Yes, let's imagine all the horrible things that could happen because the government suddenly allowed something that happened anyway - people committed suicide in end of life situations all the time - and let's base it off this one country where the law wasn't written well enough or enforcement is lax or whatever.
Let's use that as an example of why this should be banned always, forever, in all situations, because the X abuse of this in country Y shows it should never be done.
I have family who's dying with dementia. If I ever get into that situation, which I hope I don't, I hope people end it with my permission.
Why could the law not just continue this by adding an additional option that states when you would want assisted suicide? I would think lawmakers could specify that insurance or doctors are not allowed to make this decision or let it effect their services.
imagine paying taxes all your life and hoping to get a good care in later stage of your life, and government just MAIDs you instead of providing care
The current UK/CA social contract seems to be: you work for 45+ years and pay taxes, but when you get old and sick and need medical care, we will just MAID you and instead give away all your taxes to welfare recipients
Do you live in a democracy?
This poll showed widespread support for MAID in the UK.
https://www.dignityindying.org.uk/assisted-dying/public-opin...
Every single constituency supports law change: Three-quarters of respondents (75%) said that they would support making it lawful for someone to seek assisted dying in the UK, with just 14% against
Support for changing the law consistently high regardless of voters’ political affiliation
Two-thirds (66%) of respondents with faith support law change, including 69% of Christians
If assisted dying is on the table, it won't be long before prescribed dying is too. I am not as hopeful as you that normal political processes will prevent that, but one can dream.
You want to know what prescribed dying looks like? Look at any autocracy, see their political prisoners dying in jail or by execution.
If the majority of a population want reasonable MAID rights, then it’s within their democratic right to get it. The rejection of this is autocracy by ignoring the popular will.
I might be a pessimist but I don't think I'm wrong. Everything tends to be abused, especially when it involves government. So be careful what you wish for and watch for tyranny at every turn.
Certainly part of it. Some people by the time they have no other hope are physically incapable of doing that.
Some people would rather not DIY such a consequential thing the same way they rather not brew their own antibiotics or do their own dentistry. Obviously in this case the “worst” which might happen is that they don’t die but suffer even more pain and indignities.
It is also the legal risk for those who remain. Every time someoen DIYs their end as you write it there is a police investigation. (As there should be, to make sure that there were no trickery around the death.) Depending on how things go your loved ones might get arrested and thrown into prison (if the system believes they killed you, or even if something they did or accused of doing is deemed to have “assisted” you). Similarly they might not be able to inherit after you if they were deemed to have assisted in your suicide. And that can be some small thing, like your partner driving you to the hardware store, or paying for the purchase, or helping you tighten a NATO connector. Now they lost you, they might have lost their home and they might be looking down the barrel of a risky legal case with years of prison as a possibility. That is not something anybody would wish on their loved ones.
I guess what you describe above sounds sensible. There are two practical problems with it.
One is that you are, by all evidence of your comment, an individual with above average inteligence and planning ability. I have a suspicion if we leave you on a deserted island in a few years you might be halfway on your way to your own iron age. Unfortunately not everyone who is smithen by devastating chronic suffering is as lucky as you are in that department. The rules of the society has to work for everyone, not just the smart ones. For each and everyone who thinks through what you did there are hundreds and hundreds who can’t and won’t.
Then the other problem, society wise, is that typically by the point someone reaches the end of the road and their illness is deemed incurrabble they are not well. Long illness weakened them, maybe they are paralysed, or blinded. What you describe is hard, but even harder if one does not have all their physical faculties. And that is very sad, but unfortunately that is the main case legislation like this aims at.
At least that is how I think about when i think about the purposes of such law.
If the law didn’t cover this, then people who provided assistance would be open to criminal prosecution.
That greatly depends on the jurisdiction. In general though the issue here is that you don't want to die by shooting yourself, but you want to die by taking a pill. And the issue really is that nobody is going to sell this stuff to you unless they know they cannot be charged for it.
Assisted suicide is legal in Austria for a few years and the main thing that it has changed is the availability of humane ways of dying.
Personally I'd like the right to die with dignity if I were unfortunate enough to find myself facing horrible, imminent, certain death.
I'm glad it passed and I hope it makes it into law.
If this was seriously restricted to people facing severe debilitating injuries or pain I might be more in favor. But you know it won't stop there.
There is no exception because it is not talking about just killings only unjust ones.
Wars, and killings within them, can be just (look up just war theory). The point of a war, at least from a Christian perspective, is not to kill people, but to stop an invasion, protect innocents or the like. If it isn't doing that then the war is not just. If you are wanting to kill, rather than protect innocents or whatever then you are fighting for the wrong reason. This is what is known as the principle of double effect.
The Crusades were intended to stop the Muslim invasion, regain Christian lands, prevent the fall of the Byzantine Empire, allow for safe travel of pilgrims, etc. Those are considered just things to protect. (Obviously not all people in the Crusades had the same motives, but that is on them not the war in general).
Also, just because Christians, Jews, or whoever do something, doesn't mean it is inline with their faith. People justify bad things, ignore teachings, don't actually believe, etc.
To give a more modern example and one relevant to the thread, jumping on a live grenade is not considered suicide because you are not attempting to kill yourself, but to stop others from being blown up. You know you are probably going to die, but since you are not intending to kill yourself it is not an unjust killing. Jesus said "Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends".
Every Jew and Christian, until recently, interpreted thou shall not kill (more accurately translated as murder) as a ban on killing yourself or another ..
(paraphrased) except for when justified.
There will be some who interpret:
Jesus said "Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends".
There are many Christians, Jews, and Muslims in this world and many interpretations of the many and varied texts and translations.
I was making a distinction between killing and murder. All murders are killings, not all killings are murders. If you kill somebody it may be acceptable or it may not be. Killing somebody in defense of another is fine so long as you are intending to protect the innocent not to kill. You may end up killing, but it would not be murder and as such would be justifiable.
Bringing up the latitude and interpretation is a major problem some Christians have, but this is a modern problem. The Church, historical, had always believed there needs to be people involved to help guide people. The Bible itself makes the point in Acts 8: "So Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?” And he said, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him."
You are highlighting a reason why somebody shouldn't just read the Bible and assume they know what it means. This is a problem that only applies to a portion of the Protestant churches not the remaining Protestant churches or the Churches that existed before the reformation (Catholic, Orthodox, etc).
You bringing up English translations is why I was making it clear that murder was a more accurate way of understanding the decree against killing. I knew if I didn't specify that it was only murder, somebody would ask about war. Apparently I wasn't clear enough.
Can you find a single prominent Christian or Jewish scholar, theologian, saint, etc who lived 1000 years ago who believed that Jesus was allowing suicide?
Like I said, this is a modern problem because some Christian churches have gone off the rails and have rejected the traditional views held by the Church. They are clearly wrong. Using them as justification for something is ridiculous. Imagine if somebody said Stalin / Mao / whoever was a communist. Communists are atheists so that means atheists can kill people like those people did. You would argue that those people do not represent an accurate description of atheists. Just as you would reject that argument against atheists, I reject your argument against Jews and Christians.
The debate on whether jumping on a grenade to save others is suicide or self secrifice, et al has passed you by?
Is it your claim that not a single prominent Christian or Jewish scholar / theologian has wrestled with that conundrum and if they had they all fell in line in unison?
> because some Christian churches have gone off the rails and have rejected the traditional views held by the Church.
There's cetainly less church sanctioned burning of Catholics and Cathars alike .. I don't believe there's a uniform monolithic corp of "traditional views" prior to modern times .. even the implication of a singular Christian "the Church" appears to be an ahistoric over simplification.
the protestant view dominates "public Christianity". even Catholics will happily tell you that "yeah we believe in this, but I certainly dont" in regards to things like abortion. they just ignore the leap in logic because it's "permissible" by some protestants.
for many, Christianity is simply "turn the other cheek" on steroids, wrongfully interpreted as "mind my own business" and "only believe in the parts I want to".
in the limit, health care is abortion and euthanasia only.
we all know that abortion prevents suffering of the mother and the child who will never experience it.
euthanasia fixes the mistake of not aborting.
we cannot suffer if we just dont live.
It is not allowed in Muslim countries and is explicitly banned in Israel.
Orthodox Christian is not allowing MAID as well
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/history-will-not-be-kind...
The second argues that this will disproportionately affect women, who already suffer more under domestic abuse including being killed by partners, predicting that this will be used similarly:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/11/25/assisted-dying-i...
According to this report, the main charity that is pushing this, Death in Dignity, uses case studies from violent men who murdered their wives and has men working for them who have killed women.
Most doctors, all disability organisations and charities, all hospices and elderly care organisations opposed this. A visit to the doctor should never even have the possibility of a conversation such as "have you considered dying? I can help". This was decided by people who are not old, not disabled, not vulnerable.
Additionally, we have a case now where the national health service will in one section prevent ill people considering suicide and help them out of it but will in another section help those who are considering suicide and encourage them into it! It fundamentally changes the nature of what a health service is.
The Samartians number is 116 123
The Samaritan's motto is "every life lost to suicide is a tragedy"
https://jme.bmj.com/content/47/12/e64
This paper suggests the vast majority of disability rights organisations in great britain are not publicly opposed to assisted dying.
https://www.bma.org.uk/advice-and-support/ethics/end-of-life...
This survey of doctors presents data that does not correspond with your claim that most doctors oppose assisted dying.
Hospice UK, a sector-support body, is publicly neutral. (which aligns with most hospices i can find public statements from)
I saw my grandmother go through the most intense amount of pains for about a decade in early 2000s (at about ~70) while she lived with us. We did everything we could. Seeing my mom cry endlessly throughout years rewired my brain to the point where I will always support assisted suicide.
I really don't care if it's "immoral", "slippery slope", "against the natural way of life" and so on. If, at any point in the future, my parents are suffering and decide they want to go out with their own way, I want them to have the choice. And I want that choice to be available for me as well, if it ever comes to that.
Its name derives from the biblical Parable of the Good Samaritan, although the organisation itself is not religious.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samaritans_(charity)
Samaritans is a registered charity aimed at providing emotional support to anyone in emotional distress, struggling to cope or at risk of suicide throughout the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, often through its telephone helpline.
They will not encourage them into it. That's not the idea.