May 19, 2008
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What are your thoughts on assisted suicide? Is it in any way acceptable?
This is a complex issue. Presumably, physicians assisting with suicide would do so only for patients in dire circumstances where healing is not going to happen. In that case, I would see it as a kindness, an act of moral integrity consistent with the oath to “do no harm.” Much harm, both emotional and economic, is done every day to patients and their families by prolonging lives that have become filled with pain and have gone beyond all chance for enjoyable activity or useful work.
Those whose religious and/or cultural programming deems suffering to be noble and life, in the sense of merely existing, without any concern for the quality of one’s life, to be sacred, will, of course, disagree.
Relatively speaking, physician assisted suicide seems a more appropriate act for a medical doctor than the administration of lethal injections to convicted killers, especially given the statistics on wrongful convictions.
If I ever get into a condition where I’m nothing but a useless lump, unable to communicate and create, and unable to kill myself, I hope someone will do it for me and not just leave me lying around wasting resources that might be put to better use by others.
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Comments (17)
having just started going for rides on Daves motorbike and being confronted by a radio advertising campaign that states 1 in five road deaths here are bike riders/passengers and that I now am 30 times more likely to be killed in an accident, I raised this issue with my boys last night…
I don’t want to be left to exist as a useless lump either
I agree with all your points.
But somehow it’s more complicated, or difficult to draw a line. I read a feautre in a newspaper about a 15-year old dying from cancer. Everybody knew it was a matter of weeks left. Yet he had to struggle so with unimaginable pain in the end. He wished to die in his parents home, but his condition worsened in the end and he accepted going into the hospital. His doctor had promised him he’d be free from pain. But it was only thelast 12 hrs or so that were painless to him.
He did not ask for help to die. Nor did his parents. That would seem so strange, since it’s not legal, or morally accepted here yet.
Still it would’ve been so easy for his parents, or later on in the hospital to give him a morphine overdose just by turning the switch on his IV droppong bottle.
I agree with you on every point here. Well said.
couldn’t have said it better myself. we treat our pets more humanely that we treat our species.
I agree with everything here. At the same time, I do see why some people are opposed to legalizing it… Not for the lame-ass “life is everything” arguments, though. People can be nasty creatures, and I can just see lots spoiled, greedy offspring pressuring their elderly parents into offing themselves alredy, just so they can have their inheritance a few years earlier. I don’t know whether that’s a morality issue or a practicality issue… Maybe both?
“If I ever get into a condition where I’m nothing but a useless lump, unable to communicate and create, and unable to kill myself,”
you mean like a politician,,,, yea,,, i agree.
I think it should be legal. Jack Kavorkian is my hero.
@relaxolgy - morphine overdosing is so common. (My mom is a nurse in a nursing home and astounded at how much morphine is ordered and how often) but she does as she’s told like a good nurse. seems to me if we are going to help them along anyway it should be legal. If someone close to me asked for me to help them I would help them. morally I would have to. wouldn’t you? we help pets die painlessly, why not people to? Just because it’s illegal, doesn’t make it wrong. not advocating or anything, just saying..
I agree with you 100%.
Though, as earthymama has stated, it is basically happening already with the morphine. That’s what happened with my stepmom on her last day of her leukemia battle.
Tough question. The killing of convicted criminals is easier. I’m not a fan of the death penalty. Thanks for tackling this one.
when i saw this featured question, i immediately thought of you as the blogger whose opinion i’d most like to hear, so i was pleased to see you responded to it.
this is one of those issues i haven’t yet made my mind up about, and i’m okay with that for right now. we explored it at length in my Contemporary Moral Problems course last year, but it did little to make my mind up for me either way.
I think all forms of suicide should be acceptable. A person should have the ultimate control over whether they live or die at any point.
We didn’t have control over how we were born. We could at least have control over how we die.
Yeah, I think we should be able to control what happens to our body. What goes in and out of it, how it’s medicated, or not, freedom to ingest what we want, or not, and ultimately freedom to choose when it shuts down.
Those whose cultural programming in terms of suffering and life who might disagree are welcome to do so, but not welcome to impose their choices on everyone.
I didn’t realize that about nursing homes. Interesting.
It’s called the big walk…………
I have contracts of conscience with friends……..
I agree with you.
I agree with you too–life is overrated and death is probably not so undesirable as we have been taught. But, to play devil’s advocate, the most convincing argument on the other side is that, if suicide were legalized, some older people might feel obliged to get out of the way of their children’s lives and leave sooner than they needed to.