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Comment by Workaccount2 | Hacker News Reader

Seeing my grandmother go through dementia for 10 years made me incredibly angry that we don't have assisted suicide available for people.

People with the emotional and compassionate depth of a child are the ones keeping us from allowing people to die with dignity.

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If I were diagnosed with Alzheimer's, I would seek out assisted suicide. But I think it's more complicated than that: its existence incentivizes pushing people toward assisted suicide. The government finds a way to help with bloated medical care budgets; unscrupulous family members guilt trip the sick to choose the option to keep the inheritance intact.

The best solution allows it for severe cases, while still investing money in research and spending money for palliative care so it remains an option and not a demand. But that's a tricky line to maintain.

My grandmother's case ended up bankrupting my grandfather and seriously straining the rest of the family. Which ultimately put my grandfather in a pennyless position when he was in his 90's, and poor state care when he was declining - not what he or my grandmother worked their entire lives for. Our family couldn't replace what was lost in the years of care for my grandmother's body, long after she herself was gone.

Never something she would have wanted, but you don't really have a choice and dignified death is never given as an option.

> dignified death is never given as an option

That's not a universal law, in fact it is different in other countries, i.e. it is something that can be changed.

It appears that there are options for care in other countries that are much less expensive.

https://www.alzint.org/news-events/news/health-tourism-the-l...

Not me, I’d hire someone to take really good notes and test all the promising potential treatments one after the other.

No need for lengthy approvals or a drug trial if you’re giving it to yourself. I’d want to go out doing some mfing science.

Its the slippery slope proved real by places like my home country of canada keeping other people from having it. I am a huge supporter of assisted suicide but what my country has gone way too far. find a way credibly Keep it to impending death with lots of pain and alzeimers like disease and you would have strong majority acceptance.

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