“I Helped 8 People Die”

http://torontolife.com/city/life/john-hofsess-assisted-suicide

by kitbrennan • 10 years ago

166 60 10 years ago

whack• 10 years ago

It is insane that we make people huddle into dark alleys and underground societies, simply to have agency over their own lives.

I know and understand the main arguments against assisted suicide. The idea that it would pressure people into taking their own lives, in order to please others. With respect, such arguments are nonsensical. People feel external pressures every day to do things that they may not want to do. Pursue careers they may not enjoy. Get married when they may not want to. Have kids even if they don't want to. Should the government step in every time and ban the activity entirely, simply to ensure that no one ever gives in to peer pressure? Of course not.

We recognize that freedom, liberty and individual agency, trumps any concerns about peer pressure. We recognize that our life decisions should be in our own hands, and not in the hands of big brother. It's time we allowed people full control to end their lives on their own terms, and not on the terms forced upon them.

JackFr2• 10 years ago

And yet we have suicide prevention hotlines. Go figure.

detaro• 10 years ago

Asking for help is a form of personal agency, especially (or maybe even only) if there actually is someone available to ask.

XorNot• 10 years ago

There's a big difference between emotional teenagers doing something impulsive, people with mental illness (treatable) doing something out of desperation and people with terminal illnesses or dementia choosing to avoid unpreventable suffering or losing everything they are.

The biggest problem is most of the conditions which wipe people out take your rational agency as their first action.

vacri• 10 years ago

We have gambling addiction hotlines too, but don't blanket-ban gambling.

PhasmaFelis• 10 years ago

Many people think that abortion is a bad choice, but one that women should be allowed to make. Saying you shouldn't do something is not the same as saying you shouldn't be allowed to do it.

superuser25• 10 years ago

The very act of calling a suicide prevention hotline is solid evidence that the caller does not truly want to die.

The point isn't that people should die, it's that they should choose. Compelling someone else's continued consciousness is absurd and, depending on the subjective experiencing of being inside that person's head, can be among the cruelest forms of torture. Just as it would be to fail to help someone who wants to stay alive.

paulddraper• 10 years ago

"our life decisions should be in our own hands"

On the scale of things, that's probably one of the least intrusive ways that big brother helps.

I mean, we outlaw people working for too little money, and a hundred other things before we get to something as self-detrimental as death itself.

I appreciate the libertarianism; I just wanted to point out that this is very, very far from the most egregious big-brother-helping policy.

meric2• 10 years ago

Central banks are discussing outlawing cash, so that when the time comes and they want to impose negative rates, they won't be limited by a lower bound - they can be as financially repressive as they like.

Outlawing suicide is the same - if the state is overly oppressive, people would rather suicide than to live under the oppression, and when they suicide they are no longer productive. Removing the possibility of suicide removes the lower bound of how oppressive the state can be.

See force feeding in Guantanamo bay for example. By stopping deaths from hunger strikes, the state can treat it's prisoners as badly as it wants.

superuser25• 10 years ago

Minimum wage is a little more complicated in a welfare state. We outlaw people paying their workers too little money because otherwise the welfare system becomes a free grant towards what should be their payroll expenses. (It even this way under our current minimum wage system because minimum wages are far too low).

If the costs of keeping low-wage workers alive weren't socialized (people paid too little simply died), you might have a point. But wages would also be much higher, or Wal-Mart would quickly run out of warm bodies to hire.

DanBC8• 10 years ago

I'm in favour of assisted dying. (Please don't call it assisted suicide - we want to prevent suicide. It's useful to keep the word suicide for something we want to stop).

With respect, such arguments are nonsensical.

Elder abuse is rampant. It's easy to imagine that the victim of such abuse may be more willing to die. But assisted death may help this - there would (should) be considerable professional involvement to make sure there's no coersion or abuse.

When we look at places that have assisted dying we find some cases of people who probably died for the wrong reasons. Those cases are always waved around - but people against assisted dying need to come up with some numbers.

startling• 10 years ago

From the article: “I don’t mind a bit being labelled a suicide.”

daodedickinson4• 10 years ago

It may be that you dislike the word suicide because you have a distaste for it but not for any rational reason—by what recourse could you separate the legitimacy of an assisted dying person from a suicide? They both want to die and then do it—the difference is usually of aesthetics or location. Euthanasia cocktails derive from veterinary medicine where animals are killed in a way where they do not struggle or spasm, the animal dies in a way less disturbing to viewers, but we cannot be sure that there is more or less subjective suffering than with someone jumping from a height. Brain activity continues much longer than movement and breathing with the administering of these cocktails. It could be that the jumping that the author of the article has an aversion to is as good a way to die as any. As for the suicide methods that fail due to discomfort, I am forever grateful that my two attempts failed.

I believe that suffering is not the great evil to be avoided, but the means to joy—even a moment of joy can redeem decades of suffering.

Therefore, the number is ONE. Saving even ONE life is worth our societies enshrining complete prohibition of medical murder in our law codes.

Even rare instances in which new evidence exonerates prisoners decades after murder convictions shows that the death penalty ought to be outlawed. Likewise, rare instances in which patients, believed to be terminally ill, live much longer than thought possible negate the validity of the whole medical death enterprise. Furthermore, the experience of millions... perhaps billions on this planet who have, like me, undergone years of despairing thoughts and suicidal desires to develop more well-adjusted cognitive behavior undergird the ever-beautiful opportunity to stop the suicidal from self-murder in the hope that day will break once more.

I invite all who read this to come together in a culture of life that seeks to make use of and redeem all suffering, to engage in strenuous effort to overcome hardship, to take up "the life of toil and effort, of labor and strife; to preach that highest form of success which comes, not to the man who desires mere easy peace, but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph." (Theodore Roosevelt)

We ought to reject the idea that death is a proper cure for suffering, recognizing the ubiquity of suffering among all lifeforms, recognizing that there are no experiences so painful that no one has endured them without ultimately desiring death, and that, if we truly think that death is an appropriate cure for suffering, we run the risk agreeing with Silenus that "it is best not to be born at all; and next to that, it is better to die than to live", and, even worse, we run the risk of agreeing with him and losing the virtue of his hypocrisy!

People can make mistakes. The choice to kill a child or to kill one's self isn't always right just because it is chosen. In other words, people are not gods. You seem to agree and think it possible that something could go wrong here. But, have you considered that, if someone could be wrongfully "euthanized", that someone could be wrongfully left living? Out of the many faces you have seen in your life, are you willing to follow your moral logic through its full path and conclude that many of them should have killed themselves earlier, perhaps much earlier? How many people do you think go on making themselves live out of ignorant religious fear or compunctions that ought to be deprecated? If you really ponder these questions and those beyond, you may begin to feel the murky outline of the rough beast slowly, and sometimes blindly being conjured by the refashioners of moral taste.

random_upvoter• 10 years ago

Where I live people can, and do, get euthanasia for psychological suffering. Now, research has shown that a rather large percentage of the elderly are suffering from depression. Part of the reason is, of course, that getting old can be very painful. But another part of the reason is that in today's society many old people are almost criminally neglected.

The only right solution to this problem is that society begins to take better care of old people. But now we begin to offer an alternative "solution" which consist of helping these people to kill themselves. And look, now there's extra budget to take care of the old people that remain.

Did you see what just happened? Assisted suicide has, sneakily, become a means to control the cost of elderly care and to avoid addressing the real problem -- while thinking ourselves very enlightened and progressive as a bonus.

Omniusaspirer• 10 years ago

Aging is the real problem, and suicide by suffering elderly is unlikely to make young researchers turn their backs on the search for the fountain of youth.

GunboatDiplomat2• 10 years ago

Society is not obligated to take care of the elderly. They had 60+ years to prepare for being old, and if they didn't, the burden doesn't fall on me.

klibertp2• 10 years ago

The only right solution to this problem is that society begins to take better care of old people.

What about another issue of incurable, terminally ill patients who descend into a years-long hell of losing themselves to the pain, to the illness; who day by day see their brains becoming less and less capable? Are you sure we're even qualified to really "take care" of such people?

It's not about elderly; it's about suffering. If you can't cure or ease someone's pain, step aside. You're in no position to tell such person what to do because you failed them already. If a suffering person decides it's enough, you have no right to tell them - to make them! - to suffer anymore.

Assisted suicide is a way out of hell you can't picture fully without going there yourself. It's easy to say that "we need to take better care of someone", but this makes those who don't want to be taken care of left with nothing. And to repeat, there are people that we don't know how to help and the only thing we can offer them is to prolong their suffering.

gkya2• 10 years ago

As medicine developed, we got a chance to live, to the point that we sort of lost our chance to die. I'm too young to really worry about prolonged terminal illnesses, but I sometimes think about this nowadays, as my father passed away very recently, from lung cancer, discovered very very late, at terminal stage. He was a strong, dynamic man in his fifties, and in two months he passed away. I recall my grandfather's terminal stage which dured some five, six years, until 2010. He had many illnesses, and he was too weak to walk in his last two-three years. Comparing the two, I do not really know what to think, but in this context, after lightly reading the article linked too, I guess everybody should have the right to renounce their lives, with assistance from someone who'll guarantee a peaceful and certain death: an ignorant, solo attempt might result in getting into a state where suicide is physically impossible and pain is greater. And I sometimes think the state is way too much intertwined into people's lifes, but that's another topic.

daodedickinson4• 10 years ago

I consider myself very lucky that no one tried to kill me when I was suicidal. It's going to get a lot more dangerous now that able-bodied young people are getting social and medical "support" that kills them for their possibly temporary depression or nihilism.

Suffering can always be made meaningful and abolition of pain is not a goal for society but a enervation unto death.

Just now in Canada, doctors and nurses are being forced to choose between their professions and holding to a religion that forbids murder. These are their options:

"They can keep their heads down and pray they are never asked to kill a patient. They can surrender and become part of the death machine—at the risk of the eternal consequences that their faith beliefs portend. They can give up their careers and hand the keys of what are now religious medical institutions to secular ownership (or, move to the United States where, at least for now, doctors and nurses enjoy conscience protections). Finally, the difficult but most righteous course would be to engage in a policy of total non-cooperation with the culture of death, forcing the national and provincial governments and medical colleges either to turn a blind eye or to inflict unjust punishments on doctors for refusing to kill. Perhaps such draconian measures would bring the country to its senses."

https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2016/03/canada-de...

daodedickinson4• 10 years ago

http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=193281

In this survey, a small proportion of terminally ill patients seriously considered euthanasia or PAS for themselves. Over a few months, half the patients changed their minds. Patients with depressive symptoms were more likely to change their minds about desiring euthanasia or PAS.... contrary to general perceptions, depression and hopelessness, rather than pain, seem to be the primary factors motivating patients' interest in euthanasia or PAS.... because euthanasia and PAS are irreversible actions, longitudinal assessments of patients' attitudes and preferences are important.

yuzi• 10 years ago

Every legit news source is reporting doctors will have the right to NOT participate.

Everything else is opinionated propaganda. Right now the community is debating if they should require that doctors provide information on where/whom they can go to in order to get the assistance/advice patients need; In the end even that is unlikely.

"It's expected that no doctors will be forced to help a patient die."

http://www.ctvnews.ca/health/canadian-doctors-express-mixed-...

moistgorilla• 10 years ago

When I was 20 I wanted to kill myself. Thank whomever that assisted suicide isn't a socially acceptable practice because I could have easily gone into some clinic and had someone kill me without my family knowing.

bronson• 10 years ago

How would you fake the terminal illness? That seems very difficult, especially at age 20.

el_benhameen• 10 years ago

That's just patently untrue. There's an enormous gap between the situations in which the author advocates for (and laws in various states and countries permit) assisted suicide and a society that allows you to walk into a clinic and kill yourself for any reason. The laws in California [0], Washington, Oregon, and Vermont [1], for example, require that the patient is mentally competent and is terminally ill with less than six months to live as certified by two doctors. A suicidal person won't meet the first requirement, much less the second.

[0] http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/10/05/44610780... [1] https://www.deathwithdignity.org/learn/access/

DanBC8• 10 years ago

easily

No, not easily. And if you want to die there are very many ways that are as easy or easier.

Assisted dying has should have some safeguards built in - "does this person have mental ill health?", "has this person had access to a variety of good quality MH treatment?"

If anything the delays built in (waiting for an appointment) are somewhat protective.

Confusion• 10 years ago

You may want to actually read the article. The options aren't "no euthanasia at all" or "anyone can request euthanasia at any time and get it immediately". If some line of reasoning leads you to conclude that the Swiss are insane, well, then maybe you should consider the option that you're the problem, not the majority of Swiss that support their legislation.

tomjen3• 10 years ago

I own a car. I can trivially turn it around on the highway, turn of the light and floor the gas (going against traffic). It would almost certainly kill everybody else in the car I hit, but it would also kill me - and my family wouldn't know.

If I didn't own a car I could just rent one.

Or I could throw myself in front of a train or truck.

In short there are lots of ways to die right now, but they nearly always fuck up somebody else too - why not accept reality and make it so that people who wants to die can go do that safely?

Note: I do not right now want to kill myself.

Keverw• 10 years ago

It's interesting how they can do assisted suicide, yet many states have trouble carrying out executions. Strange, is the stuff doctors use any better or are they're botched assisted suicides also? Do they get to use somthing better than the prisons have?

dorfsmay• 10 years ago

My understanding is that companies won't sell the products that are used in assisted suicide to states which carry execution.

chillydawg• 10 years ago

The suppliers take a moral view that execution is wrong and decline to do business with the executioners. Executioners thus have to find alternative suppliers of the various drugs they need, which gets harder and harder in well regulated places like the US.

mjh2539• 10 years ago

This is vile, putrid shit.

All lives are worth living.

junto• 10 years ago

I believe that you were facing the reality of living the 6 months of an agonising slow death in a cancer hospice, you might change your narrow minded opinion.

htns• 10 years ago

Or he might demand better painkillers from the doctors.

SG-• 10 years ago

It's a personal choice just like everything in life. Sometimes the pain is too strong where the outcome will never improve but only get worse.

Just like people are allowed to choose or deny any religion or any other preference in life.

tim3332• 10 years ago

I sometimes thing you could combine avoiding suffering through euthanasia with the desire to preserve life by doing cryonics.

driverdan• 10 years ago

Except cryonics doesn't preserve life. It doesn't work. It's more or less a scam.

tangled_zans• 10 years ago

No cryonics company has yet claimed that it "works".

They're quite up front about the fact that they have no idea how to bring anyone back. People choose to get cryo-preserved despite that because, as far as some people see it, it beats being buried underground or burned to ash.

Marvin Minsky who passed away recently was on the board of Alcor (one of the main cryonics companies in the US). Does he seem like a scammer to you?

Please research your claims before accusing people of "scams" left and right.

tim3332• 10 years ago

I'd say that was unproven either way.

Kenji• 10 years ago

If you've seen a family member suffer from terminal cancer for years, rotting away while still being alive and suffering from such horrible pain that no amount of medication can reduce it, there is just no way you are against assisted suicide, trust me on that. We treat our dogs better than that. We kill them to spare them from such a fate.

known• 10 years ago

Die with dignity; http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/rest-of-world/Agein...

“I Helped 8 People Die”

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