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Comment by aaplok | Hacker News Reader

The thing is, someone has to.

If you walk in very drunk asking to be euthanised, one would hope that they would have to wait until you are no longer drunk to confirm you really want to be euthanised. Then, who decides on the waiting period?

Likewise if a traumatic event clouds your judgement (as some events can do), it's not unreasonable to make you wait until your judgement is sound. Then someone has to decide on the waiting period.

Potentially this can be studied statistically. Just collect data regularly after an event (such as binge drinking event) to evaluate how quickly people's judgement stabilises. That way we may find that the death of a spouse doesn't cloud the judgement, in which case the waiting period is 0.

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Convincing your drunk friend to go to the suicide clinic and kill himself is the absolute pinnacle of "thing that's the most hilarious thing in the world while you're smashed but is absolutely horrifying the second you wake up the next morning".

Anecdotally, I've heard that there's a strong link between heavy boozing and suicide, especially via firearm. One wonders if it's determined people needing courage, or drunk people becoming determined.

It's that "free will" isn't as free as people think".

You can't access MAID in Canada any faster than 90 days unless you are at immediate risk of losing your faculties such that you couldn't make the choice. You need multiple specialists to assess you and sign off on it etc.

Really? Then how did the man in guyzero's anecdote do it in less than a week?

Why do you assume he did? Specifically, why do you assume he started it in response to his wife's death rather than completed it in response to his wife's death?

> why do you assume he started it in response to his wife's death rather than completed it in response to his wife's death?

Are you saying if someone buys a rope and ties a noose, then lets it sit there for at least 90 days, then they can use it to hang themself after a bad day and that's not suicide in reaction to the bad day?

I'm not sure, I assume good faith on HN, so I'd guess that it was in the works for a a while? But yeah, it's 100% not a process that can be done in a week, like, for sure.

> anecdote

Perhaps it'd be best to circle back and check the actual specifics?

Absolutely. The thing is, guyzero told a nice little story in which the speed and seamlessness of the process were portrayed as a positive aspect. If it turns out those details were completely incorrect, then he was being extremely misleading with the way he told that story, and any emotional feel-goods one might get from it should be just as invalid as negative knee-jerk reactions.

That tends to not be what happens-- instead, the correction is used as a rebuttal against people who don't like it, but the correction and its implications aren't considered by people who liked how the story went in the first place. Even now, that comment is the top one in this thread, and it has not been edited to add any additional clarification or corrections.

And sometimes one of the specialists can vote more than once to kill you to break the tie (crazy but it happened).

Is there any country in the world with laws allowing assisted dying that actually allows what you describe, or is it a fantasy that’s irrelevant to the actual policies we’re discussing?

The user you're responding to is very clearly presenting a hypothetical argument, not something that actually exists.

The GP asked "Who decides on the duration of the waiting period? Why can’t people be in charge of their own lives?"

And the OP is making that point that (a) there must be someone in a position to make that decision, and that (b) there must be some waiting period.

In fact, if as you imply there are no countries that allow walk-in assisted euthanasia, that's a point in favor of the OPs point, because it suggests that we do widely recognize that there have to be some limits to individual freedom in this area.

i dont think id characterize those as limits on individual freedom, as much as a requirement of individual freedom. you actually have to want it, vs a whim where you might be drunk and not make the choice you wanted

Yes, it's true that for the choice to be a free one you have to actually want it, but making another person the arbiter of that reduces freedom insofar as there will be people who do freely want it and are forced to wait, or who freely want it and are rejected due to being able to prove they want to to the arbiter's satisfaction.

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