Senate End of Life Discussion

KILL ME!!!! Do it now!!!! What are you waiting for? Do it!!! KILL ME!!!!

 

Time...to die.

 

Two key points:

1) Right-to-die legislation is a needed piece of legislation for families to have privacy and dignity at end-of-life.

2) Medical experts, especially doctors and other specialized care providers, use science and facts to make recommendations and decisions.

 

Jeb actually tried to have Terry Schiavo's husband investigated after he lost in court. Apparently, the former governor is one vindictive you-know-what.

Just what we need in a president.

Peace,

V-03

 

If I recall, Terry Prachett was a strong advocate for assisted suicide, especially after his diagnosis.

 

I am in favor of assisted suicide in certain terminal cases and under certain conditions. I think allowing someone to get to the point where they must slowly starve and/or dehydrate to death, as is the case in many terminal patients who refuse treatment, is not more dignified than allowing them to choose to end it before that point.

 

If someone wants out, it is their decision and their's alone.

(assuming sound mind, etc)

 

I would hate to have to choose a slow death via starvation and dehydration if the quality of my life became unacceptable. Give me a quick and merciful way to end it, please.

 

Reposted from the other thread because I didn't see this till anakinfan mentioned it:

1. A .001% possibility actually sounds fairly high to me. Maybe something like a .000001% possibility would be a better example for the point you're trying to make. Regardless, it really doesn't equate to believing in miracles. Miracles are faith based beliefs and generally imply some sort of supernatural occurrence, and often are inexplicable (why they are referred to as miracles). I'm talking about things that can be done by looking at a situation and proactively allocating resources, and acknowledging that hopelessness is literally a fallacy. Because it is. You can argue for almost no hope. I might even buy that. But saying no hope at all is an absolute statement that goes too far, logically speaking. To say this is to be somewhat intellectually dishonest. And yes, I have always stated that this is an argument based on logic. I've also stated that it has a lot to do with definitions, because how we describe things is a big deal and can influence discussion and action a great deal (I mean, I literally am making my argument about the value of life of death specifically based off of how I define the terms "life" and "death" and "possibility"). Which is why I made a point of noting the in-my-opinion-and-you're-free-to-disagree mistakenly used word paternalistic. Because words matter a lot, and being precise matters for the sake of clarity, nuance, and time. In the case of "paternalistic" it unnecessarily derails the discussion by bringing some focus on patriarchy and women's issues, when this isn't strictly about those things at all. If you have to make a rights-based argument, either patient rights or human-rights arguments would make more sense (and are largely what you all have been using) and the language should be adjusted accordingly.
2. Atheism and agnosticism have nothing to do with death at all. Come on; you know better than that. They only have to do with a belief (or lack thereof) of a deity or deities. Literally any other aspect of the supernatural is outside the realm of that discussion, though I'll note that I don't believe in the supernatural in general anyway. And there is no basis for the value of death anywhere in a nonspiritual discussion. It's outside the scope of the topic, since one has to do with belief and the other to do with morality. This, as far as I am aware, and I do pay attention to these things for what it's worth, is the commonly accepted viewpoint from a philosophical view.
3. As for the role of death, I would argue strongly that death is not part of life. Death is the ender of life. More precisely, death occurs at the instant after the very last instant of life (yes, I am aware that it is a somewhat gradual process, and this murks it up a bit, but you get my point, which is that death is after, not during). As it is I don't think that this discussion matters one way or the other. That phrase is basically just a platitude without any weight at this point, and the idea behind it is tired. and seems blatantly contradictory. I kind of wish that phrase and discussion would go away in the future because it's always brought up and it always takes time away from more meaningful dialogue just to clear up a simple problem of definitions.
4. I never accused people of being stupid. I think smart people make mistakes and errors in judgment all the time. I know I do, and I consider myself reasonably intelligent. It's called being fallible. I do respect the expertise and competence of professionals. I just think that there are common blind spots that seem to be held by most people, including and perhaps especially professionals in this case. Whether they're overlooked or undervalued is another matter (probably a bit of both).
5. I am definitely all for people receiving comfort-care. I just don't want it at the expense of preventative care. I don't appreciate the implication that I don't care about such things or am even against them. I'm against hospice because of the philosophy behind it, which I equate to needlessly giving up hope, not because it's trying to keep people comfortable and relatively happy.
6. Your rhetoric is kind of inflammatory. I realize that I was having some problems with that myself before, so I'm not really one to talk, and again I apologize for that, but that doesn't make you not inflammatory as well. Please try to check your words. I'd appreciate it.

You'll hopefully notice that a lot of the points I made are actually all about language, and the way I said them was also using pretty precise language. To meat least this matters a lot whenever any serious exchange of ideas is made.

For the most part I've stopped talking so much about values and am now trying to appeal to logic about the basic concepts of what I'm saying. I'm not going to be convinced that death is ever good, and you're just frustrated with my value statements which I readily acknowledge aren't objective anyway (I do believe in moral relativism. I just happen to have a personal set of morals myself that I like and advocate for while acknowledging their subjectivity.), and also that stem somewhat from my own anxieties.

Though on the subject of morals I do want to briefly state why I think "intense prolonged suffering is a better fate". Basically I just find loss of identity to be so unimaginably horrible on an existential level that any amount of pain just pales in comparison. Losing my identity is just scary. Like really scary. Like I can't possibly fathom how bad it is because it's too awful for words scary. Existential horror was how I started thinking about all of this in the first place, all those years ago. Pretty much right after I concluded that there wasn't an afterlife, which happened pretty quickly once I started thinking about philosophical matters at all. And it has never gone away and has basically become ingrained into my identity.

 

As far as terminal illnesses go, I strongly support assisted suicide if the patient requests it. But as far as mental illness, such as depression, goes, do we draw the line there? I'm asking you guys because I'm not necessarily sure where I stand on that topic as of now.

 

Aside from what was posted before, I want to say thus:

My stance is based off of both persona, emotional, subjective statements for my values, and more definition and language and philosophical based statements for why I think that my beliefs, if not my values, make logical sense. They're basically two separate discussions but due to the nature of the topic are often, perhaps unfortunately, conflated into one.

dp4m You still haven't answered how I'm against the scientific community and don't base my own arguments for beliefs in science. I acknowledge that the values arguments are outside the realm of science, but I don't see how they're anti-science either. I really would like an answer because this is honestly bugging me a lot.

But basically my values arguments are based on two parallel beliefs.
1. Death (as a concept) is really really really bad.
2. Life (as a concept) is really really really awesome.

Also, for the record I actually suffer from chronic depression and am not satisfied with my own life as it stands right now. I would even argue that someone with my life currently without my philosophy would be potentially suicidal, but specifically because of my philosophy I do not remotely think suicide would ever be a conceivable option for me. I don't think this actually holds any weight in terms of an argument, but it might offer some amount of perspective on my viewpoints. I hold the above two values despite my current life (and held them starting before my life turned for the worse).

 

Yes, but is it possible that other people could have different feelings on the matter? Shouldn't their wishes be respected?

I don't find the idea of the loss of my identity overly scary. For one thing, I tried it for an eternity before I was born, and it was fine. For another, "identity" is not a fixed thing. I had an identity as a five-year-old child that is pretty well obliterated now. Does that mean I should be feeling existential horror? Should I feel horror at the thought that my identity as an 80-year-old will probably contain little that was familiar to me at 40? <--probably a topic for another thread, but worth thinking about.

Edit: I Are The Internets--I'm conflicted about whether intense psychological pain ought to qualify a person for assisted suicide. On the one hand, there's the idea that people with mental illnesses can't make rational decisions for themselves, so they should categorically be denied the right to assisted suicide. (I'm not sure that all mentally ill people are non-rational, but let's say for the moment that they are.) On the other hand, quality of life can deteriorate just as severely with mental illnesses as with physical ones. And it's quite possible for a mental illness to be untreatable. I have treatment-resistant depression myself, and sometimes that makes life hellish.

 

I am going to die at some point in the future, I am comfortable in this knowledge.

I do not know when I am going to die, I am also comfortable in this knowledge.

I would like to have a long a fruitful life. I personally, do not however want to have a life where there is no quality. Being bedridden with no cognitive function and having a nurse or family member have to wash/bathe/take me to the toilet just is not what I want at any point in my life. At this point I have no dignity and I would become an imposition on my family and those around me.

Life is amazing up until the point it just simply isn't anymore.

As a result I wholeheartedly support the option of euthanasia.

We as a species typically consider it animal cruelty to force a dog or cat to continue living it's life in pain so we will often put them to sleep. We as a species however aren't prepared to allow for someone to make a conscious decision to have someone support them to end their life should they get to that stage.


If I am dying and have only weeks to live I would rather be allowed to die with as much dignity as possible, I would not want doctors or nurses look to prolong a life that is going to end shortly. That to me is cruelty to the patient.


I do not support making this a mandatory option though, people should have the right to choose to have their life prolonged if they feel it is right for them. The option should be there to end it rather than prolong it though.

 

Ah, this bit! This is a fun discussion, but is honestly a bit misleading. Here are my thoughts on it!

1. As for the whole "I used to not exist" thing, I don't see how that matters. It doesn't matter so much that you won't exist (you won't care at that point) but that you exist now and you will lose that. It matters right now, while you are alive. So this argument is kind of besides the point (but hey, Twain made the same mistake, and I normally love Twain, so you're in good company here!).
2. When I say "identity" I really mean something along the lines of "a sense of identity and consciousness, made up of thoughts and memories". It doesn't really have to do with a mental snapshot of where you are right now. It's a continuous thing. If I get to live so long, I fully expect to be an entirely different person in a lot of ways, and even a bit unrecognizable to what we generally think of as normal humanity, by the time I am 10,000 or a million or whatever. I am completely fine with this! I'm reasonably confident that my core value of "wanting to experience all of the things" will not go away at any stage, because there will always be new things!

I'm honestly not sure what things you are specifically referring to when you talk about what you generally agree with, so please clarify so I can respond to you better.

While I cringe at the comparison to conservative Christians, I don't think it's a bad comparison in all honesty, concerning what you're talking about. I would like to rephrase that I would prefer that this not be necessary. I prefer persuasion to force in all situations. I don't know if that would actually matter to you, though. I also mentioned briefly in the other thread that on the subject of right to die (and, really more in line with what I'm thinking about it's "right to not live forever") that I have been on fence with this in the past and have gone back and forth several times depending on mood and circumstance. In general my actual belief is that it's probably best to give people choice, but I'm not sure if I would a good enough person to honor that if it ever actually mattered. It is one of my biggest moral dilemmas because I actually value both life and choice and really just want to have both. Losing either one feels like a loss in general... I really do not like compromise in these matters, because I think in very all-or-nothing, complete success or complete failure terms. This is partly a byproduct of my neurology (I have moderate Asperger's, which I tend to not advertise much unless it's relevant, and which I'm still hesitant to mention here because I don't want you thinking such things have more influence on my philosophical beliefs than they actually do). This is a large part of why we are disagreeing on this issue at all. I will say however that my thought s on the definitions, as I have said before, have not ever changed, which I think is important.

EDIT: Also it may not be a surprise that I am somewhat controversially against animal euthanasia. I generally think that once humans are safe from death and it is therefore able to be a more practical concern that nonhuman animals and perhaps other organic life should hopefully be dealt with net. I can be a bit zealous on liking death in general, and not just in humans. I have gone back and forth on this issue a lot as well, but I've been pretty consistently anti-euthanasia in any case.

EDIT EDIT for ophelia: Regardless of whether or not we're allowing assisted suicide in general or not, I'm not a huge fan of the idea of allowing it for mentally ill patients even if I were supportive of it otherwise. As I said, I like you have depression, and it is also pretty treatment-resistant, so I can empathize, but I don't think it's the same thing as a physical illness unless it also affects physical abilities. I don't mean things like holding a job, but more things like taking care of yourself in a basic way (i.e. needing help). These severe cases might have an argument, but I generally hold a pretty clear divide between mental and physical disability/illness. Certainly people should not be given the option of assisted suicide just because they are suicidal... some sort of assessment would need to be made about their life and health in general.

I would also point out that both of us are generally rational and we both have depression, which is a very common mental illness, and in some ways is one of the most prominent in terms of low quality of life and suicidal tendencies. So perhaps the concept of lack of rationality shouldn't be given too much weight either way.

 

We will never be safe from death and in all honesty I don't ever want there to be an "immortality drug" I find the prospect or idea of living forever rather tedious as an idea if I'm honest.


It's also a little selfish IMO to want to not die. We live now, my children and eventually grandchildren will live on after me. If I live forever, why have kids?

 

Zap -- the answer as to why you're anti-science is because medical professionals (and, as always, I talk in the aggregate) will present you, the Patient, with reasonable information on mortality rate and quality of life. If they say:

"You have a 1% chance to survive more than a month or two if we give you extremely debilitating drugs that almost certainly won't work and will have no way to mange the pain at that point when they don't work."

You say take the chance, flying the in face of conventional wisdom and scientific evidence. As well, you then moralize on that choice saying that anyone who would take the choice on the 99% needs to have their mentality changed, exactly like an anti-vaxxer telling people not to vaccinate their children because of their own stance. Or, possibly more aptly, an anti-abortion person telling a young woman not to get an abortion.

 

Well, yes, why have kids? I don't see a reason to. I mean, I don't actively discourage it. If you want kids I don't see a reason to not have them as a matter of principle, at least for several generations after immortality became a thing and was widespread. A random ballpark number I've thrown out that might be wildly inaccurate is that we would have enough people to where we probably shouldn't have kids anymore after about 1,000 years. I admit that this is totally biased because we think in base 10, but it sounds like a relatively decent amount of time to have lots more people to interact with (which is appealing) without straining the resources of the greater universe.

But I don't see why it's selfish to deny something to someone who doesn't even exist yet. They're not around to have it be denied to them. Which is also why I'm not exactly emotional about abortion... it's hard to mourn for someone who hasn't even been alive yet. If anything I would mourn for the parents in that situation, who had the great opportunity they desired denied to them.

I also doubt that there will ever be a "drug" for immortality (though I guess who knows far enough in the future). I think it's more about cybernetics and cloning and stem cells and preservation and just general body modification, really. This seems more technologically plausible. That's the way to immortality. Unless you want to do some sort of brain-uploading theory, but I've never been a fan of that because I'm emotionally attached to the physical world.

 

My stance on this has recently been coming around to one that accepts right-to-die legislation as maybe necessary under specific conditions. I'm not a big supporter of it, but then again I like even less the idea of, for example, telling someone with terminal illness who's barely being kept alive that they have to keep on living in that state because....society says they have to?

 

Ah. Okay. Good. I know where to go from here, now. Thank you for clarifying.

To be clear I do not think that some 1% chance should have much faith be put in it. I simply think that doing something to prevent death is automatically more sensible than doing nothing at all to prevent death. I would fully acknowledge the reality of my chances and while obviously doing everything possible to overcome them (and if I felt I was slipping I would be in a terrible mental state), would be cognizant of the risks. I'd even acknowledge that I was essentially grasping at straws, but the point is that it's still better than nothing at all. Best to grasp for something. It's a matter of swallowing the bad medicine in hopes that it makes you better, as opposed to just doing nothing. To put it more eloquently, one of my favorite quotes is the FDR quote "It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something." (Honestly, that entire speech is rally good.) He was talking about a recoverable economy and I'm talking about a not recoverable case of death, so there's not much room for failure beyond a certain point, but the principle is the same. Of course a potentially debilitating medical treatment isn't ideal, but death is still worse. I don't see how this belief is anti-science. I hope I have explained this in a satisfactory way for you!

In my past several posts I have consistently backed away from those statements about what others must do, not because I really disbelieve them, but because I acknowledge the subjectivity of those values. I always did, but I was caught up in the argument for awhile last night and I spoke too strongly, and I have repeatedly apologized for that. I do think that a lot of people are underestimating the possibilities inherently available to them while they remain alive, but I'm trying to refrain from saying that they are wrong for valuing that differently than I do. Of course I would prefer them to agree with me, and I see no reason to say otherwise, but it is a subjective thing.

Is that more agreeable to you?

 

Well, two things . . . first, it's not uncommon for people with severe depression to be unable to do much more than lie in bed 24 hours a day. (I focus on depression because I don't know as much about other mental illnesses.) Would someone qualify for assisted suicide if they needed nurses in a psyche hospital to get them up and get them into the shower?

Second, why should there be a divide between mental illness and physical illness? I can't think of any particular reasons, other than the assumption that I already mentioned--that people with mental illnesses must necessarily be unable to make rational decisions.

 

Pulling over from the other thread:

So you are saying that someone who is dying right now, should hold on because a cure could be around the corner? That's not how science works. Even if they found a cure for cancer right now, it would have to go through trials and testing, it would be years before it could be used. This theoretical person doesn't have years. They may have months of significant pain that can not be controlled. They are literally being tortured, I'm not exaggerating, and you want to tell someone who has decided for themselves, that they shouldn't let go because of something that might happen long after they are dead?

I'm going to ask you a question and I'm not being sarcastic or mean, I honestly want to know... have you ever watched someone die? Someone who was in pain while they died? I have, personally and professionally and it's ugly. I would do anything to save someone from that pain, a stranger, a family member, it doesn't matter.

I want to challenge you to do something: Lay on your bed for just 20 minutes and don't move a single muscle. Don't talk, don't scratch, don't move your leg or arm that's uncomfortable. Don't swallow, let you saliva run out of your mouth. While you are doing this I want you to imagine a tube that is surgically placed in your neck connected to a machine that breathes for you, you can't take a breath as deep or as shallow as you want, it gives you what it wants, when it wants. Imagine a tube in your bladder, a diaper on to collect your waste, a stranger coming to change it and wipe your butt every few hours. A tube that was placed in your stomach that is feeding you. Imagine that people who come into your room talk around you as though you aren't there, because you can't communicate easily, people think you don't exist or it's just too hard to talk to you. You can't change the channel on the TV, you can't cover yourself up when you are cold and uncover yourself when you are hot. Do this for just 20 minutes and imagine that this is the rest of your life, that your family can't go on vacation because they have to take care of you.

This is what people with end stage ALS go through every day, all day, they can't get up after 20 minutes. If you would live through that and still hang on, that's great! I'm more than happy to be the person helps you. But for you to say someone else should have to live through that if they don't want to.... I just don't really know what to say. It makes me sad you think someone should be tortured because you wouldn't want to personally let go. That's what right to die is trying to do, give people who have nothing left some control over what's left of their life, not kill people who have some hope.

 

Beautiful, quoted as I can only like it once