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Joke about healthcare cost control goes here.

I've never been able to understand why people are against the idea of someone who is terminally ill, with no chance of recovery, committing suicide so they can die on their own terms as opposed to slowly and painfully withering away, eventually dying, a shell of their former selves, in a hospital bed.

You could take the doctor's point of view I suppose. The whole thing where they're supposed to heal, not "harm", but that's sort of invalid since I don't see how making someone suffer for the last chapter of their lives, can be considered "not causing harm". It's not the same as someone who's clinically depressed wanting to end it all because they don't see a future, those people need help getting out of that place, we're talking about people who, in fact, do not have a future. Because they're terminally ill, and in pain.

You could go with the religious point of view where it's a mortal sin to end one's own life, but that's not exactly valid either as the religious view of one person or group of persons, should not be forced upon others. One could say it's immoral to let someone end their own life to save themselves the pain of dying from a disease, but I fail to see how it's morally acceptable to force someone to suffer from ALS, or terminal cancer, or AIDS, etc.

The entire argument seems dumb to me(that it's an argument that exists at all seems dumb to me), and the people against it come off as overtly self-righteous, and condescending. I fail to see how it can continue to be an issue.

Everything Driftwood said.

Life shouldn't be forced upon people, any more than death should be.

Protection from being sued by the family is the reason I can think of. Easy to argue that anyone that wants to kill themselves aren't in their right mind and not fit to make those decisions.

You'd think it was easy. The physician's opinion doesn't really matter, and any lawyer would argue the family member that signed with the patient didn't care as much as the opposing family members who were disgusted with the murder that took place. What does morals have to do with people being sue-happy and wanting money?

I understand the problem you're trying to solve, but IMHO, this is just as bad as requiring a pregnant woman who wants to get an abortion to look at an ultrasound before she can terminate the pregnancy.

A signed consent form should be good enough. Especially coupled with a DNR.

I doubt anyone who is "philosophically" against the idea is going to see reason after a week of back and forth screaming across a table and you'd still be facing the same situation of lawsuits and malpractice charges. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for people offing themselves for any reason they can think of, but I can see why the people that would be in charge of doing it would hesitate.

I don't know how BC does it, but we've had this on our books for a while. Once people gave up trying to repeal and fight it, it's pretty much been a non-issue. There haven't been any major problems arising from it at least.

Some points of note:

You have to have less than 6 months to live.
Doctors can opt out of offering the lethal dose of prescription.
You have to have witnesses sign off on it that aren't related, and aren't able to financially benefit from the death in any way.
You have to be mentally competent.

A coworker of mine had an aunt in her 80s that was prescribed a lethal dose of pain killers last week. She had severe osteoporosis and her pelvis shattered when she sat down one day. They couldn't operate and it wouldn't heal on its own so her options were lie in the hospital bed in severe pain until she died of natural causes or "swallow this and be done with it". Everyone was aware and everyone respected her decision.

Now, myself I'd like to think I could be burning alive and I'd try to live every agonizing second I could, but who knows and more importantly who am I to say what others should do?

Perhaps. I'm a dirty athiest (that's the one that doesn't believe in anything right? Why that requires a title I'll never understand) so I can't see my self consigning myself to oblivion for, well, anything short of saving my children from the same fate.

I think at 80+ they should be herded up and then process their old bones into oil. Or put them into a pit and let them fight for our amusement. Something other than tossing them into a room and fed jello until they die. Waste of a resource, I say.

It's the Circle of Life.

But it wouldn't be the doctor making the decision. I'm not arguing that doctors should be able to choose to end their patients' lives. I'm arguing that the patients themselves have that right to choose for themselves.



That actually sounds quite reasonable. This is how it should be done.