Hacker News Reader

Comment by jbm | Hacker News Reader

I find it overall very unnerving how quiet this is and how the Canadian press never really finds issues with this.

I often saw Japanese media moving lock-step with the police (in terms of vocabulary to use for certain crimes, how to report certain issues), and thought it was creepy as hell. However, the complete lack of questioning of the purpose behind a sudden legalization of euthanasia (in a country with public healthcare and an inherent potential conflict of interest), and the entire concept of having "experts" sign off on it without any legal overview is creepy.

Even using "medicalized" terms like MAID instead of euthanasia is unnerving to me.

Put in another way, given how hard it is for people to see doctors, I wonder how much worse it would be without MAID? As it would clearly be worse, is this a mere sanitized form of cost cutting to deal with growing medical costs associated with treating the aging population?

View on HN

I've felt since I was young that I'd like to choose when and how I will die. I'm perfectly comfortable with the thought. I'm in my 30s and have a lovely life and family. I'm in no rush to end things. But when I'm old and the scales tip, I'd like to be the one to decide that it's time. I might not ever get there, but I want the option.

Amen. I want the option to leave gracefully and in peace, if a time comes where I cannot perform my basic needs by myself. I never chose when and how I would be brought into this world, so I think it's fair that I can choose when and how to leave.

Will I actually do it? That's irrelevant. I may decide to live and fight as much as possible, and that's fine, but I want the option.

I've been hearing young and healthy people say this for my entire, fairly long, life. But I have never personally known an elderly or disabled person to kill themselves over it. If you find life worth living despite its hardships now, it's likely that you always will even as those hardships increase.

At some point it may be more than just hardship. 80+, paralyzed from the waist down, bedridden, bed sores, muscles atrophying, all of your enjoyments gone, your friends dead, dying, or lost most of their mental facilities, and you're completely miserable.

I have known people in approximately similar situations and they still didn't want to die.

My description was of someone in my family who did. So, they took it into their own hands.

Your whole comment frames MAID as something the gov't does to patients, not something patients choose as a better option than spending 6-12 months in agony with only one possible outcome.

MAID isn't a cost cutting measure. The cost of palliative care for the terminally ill is trivial.

It's not a loud issue in Canada because we've had decades of grappling with this (there's nothing sudden about it: google "Robert Latimer") and come to a humane solution: the near-term terminally ill can choose MAID, and a small number of long-term terminally ill can also choose it.

Without MAID, you'd have the same number of deaths, they'd just be medicated into insensibility for the last few months instead of making a conscious choice about it.

There's a legitimate fear in Canada about the misuse or abuse of MAID, especially amongst the disabled community (again, google "Robert Latimer"). But we've found zero evidence since its introduction of its abuse, of its application as a cost-cutting measure, of it being forced on people.

You shouldn't take the fact that something is working as designed, as sinister.

>Your whole comment frames MAID as something the gov't does to patients, not something patients choose as a better option than spending 6-12 months in agony with only one possible outcome.

It is something the government (or people working for it) have tried to push onto patients: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/veterans-maid-rcmp-investig... .

Yeah, I think it's fair to be cautious about the topic and keep a close eye on the employment of the MAID process. It's definitely one of those things that warrants a lot of oversight IMO, lest the line between mercy and manslaughter be crossed by too much "suggestion" or "help". Not that I am especially well-versed on the subject - just my overall feeling on it.

"a now-suspended Veterans Affairs Canada caseworker.... which has now uncovered a total of four cases where veterans were allegedly offered MAID — all apparently by the same caseworker".

One person. Not the gov't, not many gov't employees. One person who presented the option overzealously or inappropriately, leading to four people feeling pressured, out of, IIRC, 45,000 people annually choosing MAID.

A lot of people who could be asked about whether they've been pressured or felt society could have done more for them than killing them are no longer available to collect evidence from for some reason.

One person...that we know of. The fact this one person did this, contradicts your earlier statement of "But we've found zero evidence since its introduction of its abuse, of its application as a cost-cutting measure, of it being forced on people."

Your assuming a motive in that case when none is known of.

A more generous reading of the comment might have read it as "widespread abuse"

They should have included the "widespread" disclaimer rather than making an absolute statement if they wanted that generous reading.

Well I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that people will understand that any system will be prone to abuse - what's more important is how much it realistically enables, and how it responds to that abuse

That's a great attitude when you're talking about other people (a.k.a. numbers). We'll see if you have the same attitude when it's you or someone you know.

I'm not really sure what point you're trying to make. If it were someone I knew, I would be upset, yes, and would pursue options for justice - which is, as I said, the more important aspect of such a system. Furthermore, even if my position changed if it were one of my loved ones, I wouldn't think my emotionally-charged thinking should be used to craft legislation.

If you're advocating for systems that cannot possibly be abused... good luck. Providing benefits to society often comes with avenues of potential abuse.

I'm advocating for not enabling a system that allows legalizing death. This is similar to people who are against the death penalty because it can and has been used to execute people who were later exonerated. "Move fast & break stuff because the benefits are worth the cost" is a better argument for almost any other policy than ones that explicitly result in death.

Tracing back, this one case of one case worker who suggested MAID to perhaps as many as five veterans .. did not result in death being "forced" upon any one.

The outrage over MAID being suggested as a viable option has resulted in even more scrutiny, oversight, and guard rails.

This is not the example that demonstrates abuse of the system.

> This is not the example that demonstrates abuse of the system.

I don't know how you can come to that conclusion. It's an example that demonstrates abuse, and "guard rails" (LOL) that are supposedly going to protect against future abuse.

"Legalizing death" isn't really accurate, isn't it? I mean, it's not illegal to die. And this isn't legalizing murder, as murder doesn't generally require the informed, prolonged consent of the person going to be murdered.

Death that isn't murder doesn't generally require someone else taking an action that kills you.

And while encouraging people to commit suicide may or may not be illegal depending on where you live, who it is, etc, it's generally not seen as moral.

> One person. Not the gov't, not many gov't employees.

Yes, a gov't employee working for the gov't. A.k.a. the gov't.

Given that 1 in 4 people die from cancer, I'm surprised the number is so low.

Do you know anyone who took the MAiD way out? Because once you know someone going through the pain, it changes one's perspective. I would never want my loved one, nor me to go through the agony of hell, if there's a more humane way of going through this experience.

A person can't choose for himself when or even if to come into existence in this world.

In an era when human rights are considered sacred above all, it is hypocritical to me that a person can't decide for himself when he wants to quit.

> I find it overall very unnerving how quiet this is and how the Canadian press never really finds issues with this.

I suspect this claim to be dubious. I'm certain one can find 'Canadian press' that report issues with this.

However, putting that aside... I am not surprised, because most people feel that our current prevailing culture of extending life at any cost of suffering is... cruel. Most people are glad we have things like this, so their loved ones - and themselves - can go out with some amount of dignity.

As a Canadian, i would certainly write a very unpleasant letter to the editor of a Canadian newspaper publishing anything against MAiD. To me, euthanasia is unquestionably necessary. The problem of healthcare availability is completely orthogonal because MAiD is an option available but never forced as an alternative.

> The problem of healthcare availability is completely orthogonal because MAiD is an option available but never forced as an alternative.

> an option available

You're saying it's an "option," but also saying it's "orthogonal" whether the alternative option actually exists. What kind of logic is that?

Mainstream media globally shifted from critizing governments to being their mouthpiece so absolutely no surprises here.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com