Assisted dying

This is an emotive issue for sure and people have different opinions on things but I cannot see where those who are against this are coming from. Its beyond cruel to put people and their loved ones through unbearable pain because some don't have the stomach to do what is right.
Lots of religious lobbying against and others just clueless.
The olympic athlete with no legs is against it but as far as i know, having no legs is her only health problem, no long term degeneration or constant pain. I also notice some right wing twat politician sticking his oar in lately as well.
 
This is an emotive issue for sure and people have different opinions on things but I cannot see where those who are against this are coming from. Its beyond cruel to put people and their loved ones through unbearable pain because some don't have the stomach to do what is right.

If memory serves me well there was uproar with the LCP at end of life which allowed death to naturally occur. Stories about hospitals given extra money if they put patients on them and false stories about people dying of thirst… but 10 years later it’s fine and HCPs can kill you!!

The main issues I see are;

No one should be in unbearable pain. If they are that is a failure of the existing MDT supporting that patient. We should not accept people preferring death to life due to uncontrolled pain - that’s just a cop out of a medical professional not doing their job properly. I do accept there is a limit to this and that is where the pain control is leaving the patient so sedated they have no quality of life. So here a patient should be given a choice, we can ramp up the pain management but you are not going to know what day of week it is and offer the option of death then. That seems a reasonable point for pain (for other conditions there can be very fixed points in the disease trajectory a decision can be made).

Who is going to provide the assistance? It will be wholly unreasonable to expect to pitch up at your local hospital and expect a nurse or doctor to do this. You will need a single centralised place where this can happen - somewhere in the middle of the country. That will require multiple visits to provide psychological support.

People must have capacity at point of death to confirm that is their wish. You cannot rely on something like a DNR, it’s fundamentally different - with a DNR you are already dead.

Primarily I have little issue in concept with allowing people to choose death - my issues is - ok great, but who, how, under what conditions, and what guardrails. Will our MPs think of the practical implementation of their policy when voting? we can only hope.
 
If memory serves me well there was uproar with the LCP at end of life which allowed death to naturally occur. Stories about hospitals given extra money if they put patients on them and false stories about people dying of thirst… but 10 years later it’s fine and HCPs can kill you!!

The main issues I see are;

No one should be in unbearable pain. If they are that is a failure of the existing MDT supporting that patient. We should not accept people preferring death to life due to uncontrolled pain - that’s just a cop out of a medical professional not doing their job properly. I do accept there is a limit to this and that is where the pain control is leaving the patient so sedated they have no quality of life. So here a patient should be given a choice, we can ramp up the pain management but you are not going to know what day of week it is and offer the option of death then. That seems a reasonable point for pain (for other conditions there can be very fixed points in the disease trajectory a decision can be made).

Who is going to provide the assistance? It will be wholly unreasonable to expect to pitch up at your local hospital and expect a nurse or doctor to do this. You will need a single centralised place where this can happen - somewhere in the middle of the country. That will require multiple visits to provide psychological support.

People must have capacity at point of death to confirm that is their wish. You cannot rely on something like a DNR, it’s fundamentally different - with a DNR you are already dead.

Primarily I have little issue in concept with allowing people to choose death - my issues is - ok great, but who, how, under what conditions, and what guardrails. Will our MPs think of the practical implementation of their policy when voting? we can only hope.
We need to get past the laughable but kids will convince granny to top herself bollocks or the religious shite.
 
Some of the more prominent secular ethicists of recent times (Peter Singer, Jonathan Glover, Ronald Dworkin and Mary Warnock) have all been in favour of the legalisation of euthanasia and address concerns about potential 'slippery slopes' and other issues in their writings.

For example, Ronald Dworkin has argued that ‘making someone die in a way that others approve, but he believes a horrifying contradiction of his life, is a devastating, odious form of tyranny.’ On the other hand, for others, ‘the struggle to stay alive, no matter how hopeless or how thin the life, expresses a virtue central to their lives, the virtue of defiance in the face of inevitable death.’

Dworkin therefore thinks that the laws we make about euthanasia should reflect the patient’s right to self-determination as an expression of the sanctity of their own individual existence when it comes to deciding how their life should be completed. In other words, the law should be flexible enough to allow them to end their lives with dignity if they wish, whilst allowing others to fight on if that is what they want to do.

In addition, the state should ‘encourage people to make provision for their future care themselves’. By this, Dworkin meant that the government should prompt people to make it known what their wishes would be should they, for example, become terminally ill or involved in an accident which renders them brain dead.

In cases where no prior wish has been expressed, he thinks ‘the law should so far as possible leave decisions in the hands of their relatives or other people close to them, whose sense of their own best interests…is likely to be much sounder than some universal, theoretical, abstract judgement born in the stony walls where interest groups manoeuvre and political deals are done.’

For me, the opposition from those Christians who are opposed to assisted dying (and not all are) amount to nothing more than fideism at the end of the day.
 
I tend to agree but I do think it's probably like abortion in that no matter what the law says or doesn't say it will always go on. Murder is pretty much a crime everywhere but it has not stopped it. Bottom line, assisted dying is moving in only one direction and it is only a matter of time.
That something is happening doesn't mean that it should be enshrined.

Murders haven't stopped happening. Yet, I don't think thats a good argument for decriminalizing it.
 
Some of the more prominent secular ethicists of recent times (Peter Singer, Jonathan Glover, Ronald Dworkin and Mary Warnock) have all been in favour of the legalisation of euthanasia and address concerns about potential 'slippery slopes' and other issues in their writings.

For example, Ronald Dworkin has argued that ‘making someone die in a way that others approve, but he believes a horrifying contradiction of his life, is a devastating, odious form of tyranny.’ On the other hand, for others, ‘the struggle to stay alive, no matter how hopeless or how thin the life, expresses a virtue central to their lives, the virtue of defiance in the face of inevitable death.’

Dworkin therefore thinks that the laws we make about euthanasia should reflect the patient’s right to self-determination as an expression of the sanctity of their own individual existence when it comes to deciding how their life should be completed. In other words, the law should be flexible enough to allow them to end their lives with dignity if they wish, whilst allowing others to fight on if that is what they want to do.

In addition, the state should ‘encourage people to make provision for their future care themselves’. By this, Dworkin meant that the government should prompt people to make it known what their wishes would be should they, for example, become terminally ill or involved in an accident which renders them brain dead.

In cases where no prior wish has been expressed, he thinks ‘the law should so far as possible leave decisions in the hands of their relatives or other people close to them, whose sense of their own best interests…is likely to be much sounder than some universal, theoretical, abstract judgement born in the stony walls where interest groups manoeuvre and political deals are done.’

For me, the opposition from those Christians who are opposed to assisted dying (and not all are) amount to nothing more than fideism at the end of the day.
Zen is here. One of my favorite posters. Disagree almost every time. But I appreciate the meticulous information.

Top guy!
 
Would have loved the option for my brother , recently died of terminal cancer and the last few weeks were undignified and unnecessary suffering . He went full circle from baby , adulthood to in effect baby . Have pads changed and being fed / watered . The poor bastards with the onset of dementia knowing they have potentially years of deterioration should have a say if they want to live that way . Obviously open to abuse the process but should be out there
 
We need to get past the laughable but kids will convince granny to top herself bollocks or the religious shite.

Yes. There are serious medical questions that need addressing. Mrs MB has stated she will absolutely not assist anyone to die, - although I think that might be partly driven by her seeing it that should a patient of hers want to end their life, then she has failed them in their care. However at its heart is a conundrum - you might have the right to ask to die but you don’t have the right to force her to kill you.

This is a deeply complex subject. That can be morally and philosophically right but practically wrong.
 
Within a generation this will be the way we manage the costs of end of life care and get the next generation on the property ladder.
 
Would have loved the option for my brother , recently died of terminal cancer and the last few weeks were undignified and unnecessary suffering . He went full circle from baby , adulthood to in effect baby . Have pads changed and being fed / watered . The poor bastards with the onset of dementia knowing they have potentially years of deterioration should have a say if they want to live that way . Obviously open to abuse the process but should be out there

Sorry to read that mate. Some diseases can bring about quite horrific deaths - almost always worse for those left behind.
 
Within a generation this will be the way we manage the costs of end of life care and get the next generation on the property ladder.

Already sorted. Reeves is hoping for “pensioner warm games”. Like hunger games but they fight to the death for a piece of coal.
 
I dont understand the arguement that nurses would feel they have failed in their job if someone chooses to die, what right would they have to say to someone with mnd or a painful cancer that cant be controlled , that they cant die , diseases have evolved and the pain can be beyond morphine , etc

There are conditions that mean you slowly suffocate or are wearing nappies and shitting the bed, just why make them suffer , as an ex nurse i feel you give people a good death , it is the last thing you can do for them. I hope this is in law soon
 
Having been through end of life care with my mum, who died last week, and previously my dad 8 years ago, I'm in favour. They both went through unnecessary suffering.

Sorry for your losses, I hope you said all you had to say to your mum blue.

They should not have suffered unnecessarily and we should not permit this simply on the basis of poor healthcare. One issue that comes up often is EoL patients are “care deprioritised” within the hospital setting as staff have a tendency to prioritise patients who will recover.
 
I've seen several people die from terminal illness and I think there is already a level of tacit assistance in terms of food reduction and increase in opiates. Not a criticism btw. In all these cases it seemed to me that the patients had decided they'd had enough.
 
I've seen several people die from terminal illness and I think there is already a level of tacit assistance in terms of food reduction and increase in opiates. Not a criticism btw. In all these cases it seemed to me that the patients had decided they'd had enough.
This is how we treated terminal illness back when i was a nurse . No person should have food and fluids taken away , you are literal!y starving the person to death , just how the fuck can you do that to someone . Also giving enough morphine to keep them out of it serves what purpose , so the family can sit by the bed and stare at them, seriously selfish

I feel very strongly about this as i have had twenty years watching patients die of all sorts and i have lost my dad, brother and mum to cancer , i was a young nurse giving my dad morphine injections as we had him at home , if he had been able to he would have told mum and i to get fucked
 
I dont understand the arguement that nurses would feel they have failed in their job if someone chooses to die, what right would they have to say to someone with mnd or a painful cancer that cant be controlled , that they cant die , diseases have evolved and the pain can be beyond morphine , etc

There are conditions that mean you slowly suffocate or are wearing nappies and shitting the bed, just why make them suffer , as an ex nurse i feel you give people a good death , it is the last thing you can do for them. I hope this is in law soon

All pain can be controlled. It’s a question of how sedated the patient has to be and if that offers any quality of life. As I said previously there is a point in some disease trajectories when death is probably in the patients interest - but this will be the exception not the norm - and I see that if this legislation is passed it will only be available in very limited scenarios and at a single centre in the country. Any notion we may have of someone being helped along their way in their last couple of weeks because of a sudden deterioration feels highly unlikely.

I suppose the “failure” part depends on what areas people specialise in and the passion they have for it. Mrs MB had 8 years as a palliative care CNS and loved doing what she did - PC is centred on one principle and that is to neither hasten nor delay death. Problems can of course arise if it is a late referral to the specialism or poor nursing from your SPC nurse. You give a good PC CNS enough time and you’ll be symptom controlled, anything else she would see as her failing her patient and their families.
 

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