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Comment by qualeed | Hacker News Reader

I had a lot to say to this comment. I think your comment is gross. But it will just end up in a debate about god, so I'm editing it out.

However:

>How many people will we lose to despair that could have been helped?

Assisted death is not something reserved for mental illness, and it's dishonest to frame your comment like it is. Terminal, painful diseases are the leading reason for assisted death. In fact, many assisted death programs do not consider mental illness alone to meet the criteria of acceptance.

The whole point of these programs is that there is no other help possible. Except, maybe, enough drugs to make the person basically dead anyways. Which, in my opinion, is not "help".

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I'm leaving my other comment despite your edits, as I believe it represents an answer to an important question.

Nothing in my comments is dependent on assisted suicide being available or not for any purpose or another. I am arguing against it in all cases to be clear.

>I am arguing against it in all cases to be clear.

Yes, reading your other comment, I now understand that you truly believe that suffering is a good thing and that, if you had it your way, my father would have had to be bedridden, in extreme agony, for several more months than he had already suffered. A cruelty beyond imagination.

We will never, ever agree on this, so I wish you a good day.

I am not against painkillers. I am against suicide.

Keeping someone on painkillers against their will in an extremely hopeless, painful, terminal situation is a form of torture.

If your god approves of that, I disapprove of your god.

This is an age-old question. All I can do is share the Catholic perspective on this which you may or may not like or agree with.

God allows suffering to bring about a greater good, His plan. He endows us also with free will, which sometimes means we make choices that cause suffering for ourselves or others. Free will doesn't mean all or even most suffering in a given life is because of our choices. Sometimes it is though.

Satan's playbook is all about denying these things, denying the cross, denying redemption. Satan is the one whispering that life isn't worth it, that it would be easier to end it, come down from the cross.

For a even better discussion of these things, I always recommend Life is Worth Living which is an old program hosted by Bishop Fulton Sheen. It is as relevant today as it was when he recorded it. Many of the episodes are on YouTube.

EDIT: many seem to be taking this as an anti-painkiller stance which it is not. Reducing pain until natural death is a great kindness.

I think that’s an entirely reasonable stance to take if I can reframe my anguish as in the case where I’ve been dumped and am feeling sad. But if my heart is dying and my life can only be prolonged through great and endless suffering, I think choosing death is entirely reasonable, and demanding that someone live a few more miserable weeks is cruel. And I don’t think those parables about Satan considered the difference between those two situations. What lesson is there to absorb to become a better person?

If tomorrow I invented a machine that could keep us all alive indefinitely but also required us to be immobile and in great pain, who would choose that outcome?

Not against reducing pain for terminal patients - I made an edit above because it seems I was unclear on this point.

Many of us don't believe in god, Catholic or otherwise, and so we shouldn't have this point of view enforced upon us.

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