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Post by chelseeyuh on Mar 18, 2010 4:08:08 GMT -5
Wrong. I believe it is wrong in any case. People who do it are wicked. We dont get to decide how long another human being lives. Thats not up to us. Have you or anyone you know ever taken medicine or gone to the hospital? The purpose whole medical field is to make people live longer. Therefore, we're deciding how long other people live. Plus, in the case of assisted suicide, the person that is suffering chooses, not another person. I absolutely support as long as it's a professional doing it. A person shouldn't have to suffer if they don't want to and it makes sense to end their life (i.e. if they're going to die anyway and living is just prolonging the pain). A lot of people go through depressed periods, and it shouldn't be done rashly, but if a professional talks about it with the person extensively beforehand and the person has a legitimate reason for it, then you shouldn't be forced to live.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Mar 18, 2010 9:25:19 GMT -5
I think euthanasia is morally acceptable. If we see it from a utilitarianist point of view, the person's preferences are to die, so their preferences should be made. From a rights point of view, the person can give up his/hers right to life. From a deontological point of view, creating a rule which says that people should be allowed to kill themselves in such condition as in which applies euthanasia would be possible as an universal rule and as an end by itself. So, euthanasia has nothing wrong with it. At least the voluntary one. The non-voluntary (in which the person has no ability to decide anything) is a little bit more controversial but I still agree with it. Involuntary euthanasia is simply disgusting and totally immoral. The big thing that has come up is that they are now finding out that people who were thought were to be in a vegitative state,( no thoughts, nothing) can really think, feel, and use their brain. What if you killed someone who you thought was basically dead but really wasnt Let me show you this from another perspective: The big thing that has to come up is that people who were thought to be in a vegetative state (without even being able to think) can really think, feel and use their brain. What if that person has to suffer such horrible loneliness for years and years and essentially go mad without even being able to "wake up" from such nightmare?I'd say the person would be happier dead than alive.
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Post by chelseeyuh on Mar 18, 2010 11:52:01 GMT -5
I think euthanasia is morally acceptable. If we see it from a utilitarianist point of view, the person's preferences are to die, so their preferences should be made. Based on utilitarianism, euthanasia would be wrong. Utilitarianism states that the ethical action is that which makes the most people happy. Typically death makes people sad, so only the person that died would actually be satisfied. So, fewer people would be happy than if the person lived. But this is why I don't believe in utilitarianism...
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Mar 18, 2010 12:27:02 GMT -5
I think euthanasia is morally acceptable. If we see it from a utilitarianist point of view, the person's preferences are to die, so their preferences should be made. Based on utilitarianism, euthanasia would be wrong. Utilitarianism states that the ethical action is that which makes the most people happy. Typically death makes people sad, so only the person that died would actually be satisfied. So, fewer people would be happy than if the person lived. But this is why I don't believe in utilitarianism... That is the hedonist utilitarianism. And yet, it would still be a good action because, although there would be people sad with the death of a close friend, but far more people would be distressed because they would know they wouldn't need to suffer from a incurable terminal disease if they caught one. Furthermore, people would still be sad if euthanasia didn't happen because the person they loved would be in pain and suffering a lot. But preferences utilitarianism says that an action is good according to the amount of preferences and wishes fulfilled. According to this utilitarianism euthanasia would be good, because although people would be sad, the preferences from the sick person, of ending his/hers suffering, would still fulfill. I should have specified which utilitarianism I was talking about, but still, in both cases it would still be a good action.
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Post by Jake on Mar 18, 2010 16:40:56 GMT -5
This is a hard one! Because they could be in lots of pain and it could be argued that they should be allowed assistance in suicide. But then in contrast, many people who commit suicide will probably be people who are in a very bad situation [i[but[/i] are also in a situation where they can completely turn their life around - rather than ending it.
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darkless
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Post by darkless on Mar 18, 2010 18:36:04 GMT -5
I don't see a reason to go against it so long as people who use it aren't offing themselves for something stupid.
Assisted suicide should be reserved for the suffering who have no chance of getting better and elderly who don't wish to be a burden on they're family.
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Post by zAkAtAk on Mar 19, 2010 8:34:50 GMT -5
I don't see a reason to go against it so long as people who use it aren't offing themselves for something stupid. Assisted suicide should be reserved for the suffering who have no chance of getting better and elderly who don't wish to be a burden on they're family. Isn't that only what were talking about?
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The Doctor
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Post by The Doctor on Mar 19, 2010 18:32:10 GMT -5
Why would it be legal, in that case, why do we try to stop suicides? The people who commits suicide are often depressed, and cant see any other way out, how is that different from a person that is paralysed and is depressed and se no other way. Show me a happy and satisfied person that want to off themself, and I will change my opinion!
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Post by cadetpewpew on Mar 21, 2010 17:00:29 GMT -5
I,personally would never be able to take someone else's life. Because,sadly,I know what it is like for the family members and friends after that. And jeez,who am I to decide wh lives and who dies.
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Post by chelseeyuh on Mar 21, 2010 17:16:32 GMT -5
Why would it be legal, in that case, why do we try to stop suicides? The people who commits suicide are often depressed, and cant see any other way out, how is that different from a person that is paralysed and is depressed and se no other way. Show me a happy and satisfied person that want to off themself, and I will change my opinion! Well, firstly, I don't think we're talking about a person that's paralyzed.. We're talking about someone with a terminal illness that IS going to die, whether it's by suicide or because of the disease. And that's different from a person that's depressed because you can overcome depression. There's medication for that, and depression is often a stage for teenagers and will end naturally in time. But if a person has a terminal illness and they are in pain every day that they must live, there is no cure for that. And these people often aren't depressed. They know that they're going to die, and they accept it. But they want to die because they've gotten to the point where their life is useless because they're in too much pain to actually do anything, and death is the best option.
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Post by llluminati on Mar 22, 2010 19:20:40 GMT -5
I'd agree with assisted suicide in theory. However, in practise, it doesn't work. One can never be certain that the person requesting death isn't delusional or being coerced into doing so. Furthermore, there have been cases of people murdering others claiming that it was a case of assisted suicide while in reality, said person was just proving to be too much of a liability.
Unless these instances can be adressed, I don't support assisted suicide in practise.
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Post by 4iner on Mar 30, 2010 20:46:34 GMT -5
There's a NOVA documentary on this (called "The Suicide Tourist): video.pbs.org/video/1430431984/The man in the documentary goes to Switzerland for assisted suicide, and it's essentially about him and his thoughts in the few days before death.
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korojo01
Meteorite
We are all just a pawn in this game of life.
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Post by korojo01 on Mar 30, 2010 21:32:31 GMT -5
I would agree with Illumiati in what you said. I just was faced with a situation where my whole family discussed assisted suicide. I had an aunt who was diagnosed with stage 4 terminal cancer about a year and a half ago. At that time they only gave her 2 years to live. Well unfortunately she didnt make it the whole 2 years. With in the past 6 months she was in and out of the hospital pretty much every week.With in the past 2 month she was in there the whole time going into surgeries, hooked up to tubes, and just in alot of pain. My family was with her by her side every step of the way. It got to a point where the doctor said she has only about 2 weeks left. At this point when the morphine wasnt taking full effect she would cry out saying please jesus take me now. When she was on morphine she was so drugged she just wasnt comprihendable. Our family decided the only thing the doctor would allow would be to remore all the tubes except the morphine drip so she at least had pain killers. The doctor said with removing all the tubes it should only be a couple of days before she passes. About a month later still with no nutrition in her, she looked like she was just skin and bone. Finally she passed away. But it took how many months of her to be in pain crying out to just die. this is why i believe that assisted suicide should legalized in these circumstances only. Like Illuminati stated there are those instances that need to be addressed before assisted suicide could be put in practice. But i dont feel that people should be forced to suffer in pain because we legally cant do anything to help them.
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RabbitWho
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Post by RabbitWho on Apr 22, 2010 7:28:09 GMT -5
Absolutely not by a layperson. However if the person is found to be of sound mind, all their immediate family consents, they have had a long enough time to think about it, and a doctor is willing to do it and feels it is reasonable, then... maybe.
I remember that episode of Star Trek voyager where they visited a planet where it was normal to go off to die when you got to a certain age. If you didn't do it you were considered incredibly selfish because you would be such a burden on your family. I am terrified this would become a reality and people who felt they were a burden would want to kill themselves just to save their family the trouble.
Maybe they wouldn't admit this to the family so the family wouldn't feel guilty, the family would believe them that the pain was unbearable, and they go off to die feeling lonely and useless. I can imagine feeling that way so I think that others could, i think it's especially typical of older people. In a Ted Video (forget which one) a fellow said it's very common for older people to fall down and have their phones with them, but not ring the emergency services or their families because they don't want to trouble them. I think it's human nature and if we legalize assisted suicide it would come out.
The film "Whose life is it anyway?" Deals with this issue really well and heartbreakingly.
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koralth
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Rest is for the dead.
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Post by koralth on Apr 22, 2010 15:36:25 GMT -5
This is a lengthy response, so I'm going to break it into bits so that it's more easily read piece for piece in terms of WHAT I'm responding to.
- RabbitWho, in your first paragraph, I generally agree with your criteria save for one - "All their immediate family consents". We live in a deeply divided society in a number of ways, including philosophical schisms. If I'm terminally ill, suffering every day, and feel that from a utilitarian point of view continued existence would only cause a decline in happiness and quality of life, why should my brother, or my mother, or WHOEVER have the right to say, "No, he's not ready to die yet, it is not in God's will"? If I were in such a situation, I would want the doctor uninhibited by others who disagree with my choice, free to snow me with the morphine drip or to end it in whatever means necessary.
- The second paragraph is a slippery slope. A similar concern I've heard in the past is, "If we allow doctors to euthanize patients, they'll stop caring about curing them and start just killing them". I think the thing we should consider here is - what are the laws prohibiting such actions, what are the reasons people would have TO do these things and finally what are the reasons people would have NOT to do these things.
First of all, there are all SORTS of extra rules placed on doctors holding them to higher standards because people's lives depend so closely to their ability. Just because we allow for some euthanasia of terminally ill patients does not mean we as a society would stop caring about life. The thought is quite asinine, if one were to ask me. Unless the person arguing that this would be the case already feels that we should kill the elderly just because they're a burden, they should realize there's a clear distinction between killing an elderly person in good or even moderately poor health and the killing of a terminally ill patient.
Second, why would we do such a thing? We live in quite the materialistic society, yes, but to assume that we would start killing in a manner befitting Logan's Run is crazy. If this is a legitimate concern, which I tend to think it is not, then we need to seriously start working at changing about the ENTIRE value system of our country. I agree that the nation as a whole needs to adjust our values away from the material wealth a bit, but overall, I think people would not support a motion to kill our parents and thusly ourselves and our children when we come to a certain age. Self-preservation will ensure that this model doesn't become OUR model.
Finally, in response to the second paragraph, why would it behoove society NOT to do this? Well, as previously mentioned we have this tendency to want to preserve ourselves. Even if it were to become an issue where the elderly did not want to trouble their families, I would think many would realize that such a societal maxim would mean that when they come to that age it's their responsibility to die regardless of their health, and would move to stop such a behavior/attitude from becoming pandemic.
I make a lot of assumptions, mostly positive, about people in general in this latter portion, but I hope from this you can delve into it a little yourself and see that such a society would not maintain that attitude for very long purely out of self preservation on an individual scale, and many would oppose such an attitude out of concern/empathy/compassion for loved ones they don't want to see die needlessly.
- I'll have to watch the video, but I'd like to respond in advance, anyway. I, too, could imagine a scenario in which I would feel ultimately useless and alone. However, isn't that the very reason euthanasia would have to be performed by a trained physician? If the physician looks at them, and nothing is ultimately wrong with them, they wouldn't be able by the tenets of their profession to euthanize them. This, again, hearkens back to the common fear that society would open up to the idea of killing anyone that walks in the door wanting to die. The psychological trauma the elderly endure is a REAL problem happening now as a result of a society that likes to throw the elderly into a rest home and forget about them while they wait to die. This is wrong, I agree with the east that the elderly should be a celebrated part of a family. I disagree that the elderly should be considered wiser than the rest of us, but that's a discussion for another time. So yes, I agree that there's a problem, but I disagree that euthanasia, or "good death", would aggravate the problem in any way. Instead of fighting reform that can end suffering of terminal patients, let's fight societal attitudes that promote the psychological suffering of relatively healthy but otherwise industrially-unproductive senescent citizens.
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FranticProdigy
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Post by FranticProdigy on Apr 22, 2010 21:52:00 GMT -5
Do you believe it is right/wrong to help end someone's life if they're suffering? Whether it be a relative, friend or a stranger.
Everything is situational as you quite clearly pointed out offering up examples such as what if it were a relative, what if it were a friend, what if it were a stranger. I am sure many people posting on here saying they would assist in a suicide, but really wouldn't in the heat of the moment. I have talked to people and they told me that they were visiting there dad and the person in the next room over pleaded with him to pull his plugs, and he didn't.
And is this a big thing in your country? Im from the Switzerland and its really not a big deal.
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Post by Jake on Apr 24, 2010 8:45:40 GMT -5
Like Dan Brown said about Abortion, if it is possible to fit your opinion of this on a bumper sticker - then you haven't thought it through enough. There are so many criteria I believe have to be filled before it is right!
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RabbitWho
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Post by RabbitWho on Apr 24, 2010 10:37:27 GMT -5
This is a lengthy response, so I'm going to break it into bits so that it's more easily read piece for piece in terms of WHAT I'm responding to. - RabbitWho, in your first paragraph, I generally agree with your criteria save for one - "All their immediate family consents". We live in a deeply divided society in a number of ways, including philosophical schisms. If I'm terminally ill, suffering every day, and feel that from a utilitarian point of view continued existence would only cause a decline in happiness and quality of life, why should my brother, or my mother, or WHOEVER have the right to say, "No, he's not ready to die yet, it is not in God's will"? If I were in such a situation, I would want the doctor uninhibited by others who disagree with my choice, free to snow me with the morphine drip or to end it in whatever means necessary. Because the pain your family will feel when you die is greater than the pain you are living through, so they should be consulted. It's the same with suicide in the case of depression, if there is genuinely no one who cares about you then maybe your life belongs in some way to you. But if anyone cares about you their pain should be your first consideration because truly feel most of us are no where near as capable of feeling sorry for ourselves as we are of feeling sorry for other people. I feel doctors are just tools in this process, i only mentioned them so that they wouldn't be legally obligated to do something they didn't feel comfortable wiht. They have to do what is right, but it is not their choice to decide what is right. They will follow the rules we decide. They can choose not to kill, but they can not choose to kill. I don't think it would ever be so out there, but it might become expected. Think of women who abandon their children vs men who abandon their children. Neither are acceptable actions and both are considered horrendous, but there is an unwritten rule that it is worse of the mother. This is the type of thing that can develop without us having any control and this is the type of thing I am terrified of. That we will just start to feel it is right for someone to slip off quietly into the night. Some old people already feel this way, i do not think it is so ridiculous or impossible as logans run, things don't need to be so organized. That's true, i didn't think of that. We'd have ad campaigns on TV with old people generally being awesome And every family would make 100% sure their own personal old person felt loved. But sometimes it's hard because we're human. My own grandmother, god love her, had bad dementia before she died and rang us every hour or so, or my aunts. If any of the husbands picked up the phone it was easy to hear the resentment in their voices, the women of course had better self control, but still it would leak through sometimes. And she would get a feeling of it and apologize so much for ringing and for bothering them. And it's human nature, we hurt each other You've had a long day at work and your favorite soap opera is coming on and you're sitting down to dinner with it to relax and the phone rings for the third time that hour, if you pick it up to answer the same question a third time, and this happens every day for years, how easy is it to always keep love in your mind? But i know that she knew she was loved and she fought right till the end and she would have lived forever if she was able, or at least till the rest of us were gone. I'd have given up long before. It's so hard to chose a person to make that decision though, should hospitals or communities or states ever be allowed to do this? Everyone who reads this thread, read this: www.nclrights.org/site/PageServer?pagename=issue_caseDocket_Greene_v_County_of_Sonoma_et_alTwo men who had no legal rights to make their own decisions just because they were old. And who had no rights to make decisions for each other just because they were gay. Alright obviously that is an extreme case, but it's the type of thing that happens where we give an institution or the state rights over a human being.
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kadie
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Post by kadie on Apr 25, 2010 8:46:44 GMT -5
I feel incredibly strongly that people should be aloud to end their life if their quality of life is that poor that death is the preferable option. I think assisted suicide should be made legal as it would allow people to die peacefully with their families and friends and the people they love around them and it would allow them to die with dignity. A point that came up in one of my lessons when we were discussing this topic was, when an animal is suffering unspeakable pain we end their suffering and put them down, why is this not extended to humans? As most people believe humans to be above and of more value then animals. (I'd like to point out that this is not an opinion I have, it is however a widely accepted opinion) Kadie
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Post by GojuRyuKarateWolf on Apr 26, 2010 15:04:04 GMT -5
Under REALLY extreme cases..maybe.
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