Euthanasia & Assisted Suicide

[Tuga Nation's Dragon]

Are you pro or con? Please, give us your insight on the matter!

[Triora]

I believe in euthanasia if they are truly suffering and treatment is only extending their pain. Obviously, the person in question should consent to euthanasia. In conclusion, euthanasia is ok if it's just letting go after a long battle.

I don't really believe in assisted suicide if it means just helping someone kill themselves if they're depressed.

[Jabberwocky]

In the case of a terminal patient or one who is destined only to suffer, I heartily support the individual's choice. But I also agree with Triora's point.

[Witchcraft and Sorcery]

oof. This has always been a hard one for me to parse. On the one hand, I think suicide is always immoral. I'm a good Kantian and I believe he was correct when he said we cannot morally choose to kill ourselves. In doing so we would be treating ourselves as a mere means to an end rather than an end in ourselves.

However, I also believe that it is possible for someone to be in so much pain that it's impossible to bear. If a person is terminally ill and in constant pain, I don't think it's inconsistent or immoral for them to want to be out of their misery. If someone is going to die either way, I don't see why a Kantian would ever endorse unnecessary suffering.

So I approve of assisted suicide and euthanasia in cases where the outcome is the same either way, and the choice is between forcing someone to suffer and die or to help them pass on as peacefully as possible. Hospice exists to do this already, so I don't see why a patient shouldn't be able to choose how they want to go when they are facing the end no matter which way they turn.

[Tuga Nation's Dragon]

As a registered nurse myself, I've seen a lot of suffering in first hand to say I am all in favor of euthanasia... but I would like to see someone who is against it posting here, so we could understand their point of view...

[Dominion of Compassion]

I’m personally against it.

As a Roman Catholic, I believe life is sacred and should be treated as such, and that as long as you’re breathing you have purpose.

However, although I’m personally against it and would never take that route myself, I also understand that I can’t force my own points of view on other people.

[Witchcraft and Sorcery]

That’s my dilemma too DoC. I personally can’t imagine voluntarily choosing to end my life. I’m not very religious, it’s more of a philosophical thing, but Kant informs my ethical views quite heavily and i agree that one cannot morally take one’s own life. The case of being in severe, terminal pain does bother me though. I’m not sure how to resolve it.

Also from a doctor’s perspective it is extremely complicated. Doctors swear an oath to do no harm. By some accounts assisted suicide could be considered breaking that oath.

[Tuga Nation's Dragon]

imagine a person in severe pain (from brain cancer with metastasis or something like it), with ulcers on the skin caused by spreading cancer... that person can't speak, can't eat and almost can't breathe by their own... you give them all drugs available to stop their suffering, inducing a coma, but you can see by their life signs the pain goes on (accelerated heartbeat, respiratory distress and high blood pressure)... there is no medical way to cure that person, so we can only hope death comes sooner than later...
how would you act in that situation?

[Louisistan]

Mar 13, 2019 16:42:38 GMT -5 Witchcraft and Sorcery said:

Also from a doctor’s perspective it is extremely complicated. Doctors swear an oath to do no harm. By some accounts assisted suicide could be considered breaking that oath.

Alas, the world is not black and white. In the cases we discuss here, the doctor would also inflict harm by not assisting in suicide. After all, the patient is suffering, possibly in tremendous pain. If both choices inflict harm, should the choice not be that which inflicts less harm?

[Leoniss]

Mar 15, 2019 9:26:46 GMT -5 Louisistan said:

Mar 13, 2019 16:42:38 GMT -5 Witchcraft and Sorcery said:

Also from a doctor’s perspective it is extremely complicated. Doctors swear an oath to do no harm. By some accounts assisted suicide could be considered breaking that oath.

Alas, the world is not black and white. In the cases we discuss here, the doctor would also inflict harm by not assisting in suicide. After all, the patient is suffering, possibly in tremendous pain. If both choices inflict harm, should the choice not be that which inflicts less harm?

_{This is a great thread, I'm glad I'm choosing this as my first post!}

In the opinion of this writer, it depends on from which school of moral/ethical thought one derives the question. Since Kant has been thrown around a couple of times in here, it would be of interest to start there. For Deontologists, morality is not decided based on the consequences of an action, but on the action itself, which Kant posited should be universalisable. If one accepts that a core deontological belief is that it is immoral to take life, then a Deontological medical worker is bound by that, and could not end a patient's life under any circumstances ever. For that medical worker, the choice would be to not end life, because she or he would base the morality on the act of killing, and not the result of it.

But a Utilitarian, for example, frames the morality of this question on minimising (and therefore bringing happiness to) the patient. So a Utilitarian medical worker would be okay with performing euthanasia. The possible problem that arises here is that (especially Mill's idea of) Utilitarianism generally promotes the greatest good for the greatest number of people. As euthanasia may not be right for all patients all the time, it may be hard to say that a Utilitarianist view blankets all euthanasia in all scenarios as acceptable in its view.

It is also worth noting, so believes the writer of this discourse, that Dr. Leo Alexander (the United States medical representative to the Nuremburg War Crimes Tribunal) said that "If only those whose treatment is worthwhile in terms of prognosis are to be treated, what about the other ones? The doubtful patients are the ones whose recovery appears unlikely, but frequently if treated energetically, they surprise the best prognosticators." Dr Alexander also stated of euthanasia, "from small beginnings the values of an entire society may be subverted."

[Louisistan]

If we're invoking the Nurmeberg trials here, let me be clear tgat I was talking about assissted suicide, which requires a conscientious choice by the patient. Not the sort of euthanasia program the Nazis ran to get rid of mentally challenged people. I grew up only a few kilometres where some of those atrocities were committed and there is nothing about them which I condone.

[Futustan]

I don't understand why some people agree for euthanasia due to intreatable physical pain while denying that for intreatable mental pain, trust me, sometimes the mental pain surpasses the physical pain.
Euthanasia should be allowed for patients who consent, physically or mentally ill, of course after trying every possible method for treatment and failing them.
It's 2019, People have the right to end their agony when medicine and therapy can not, we can't just force those who wish to leave and have their peace to stay alive with us for our own selfish reasons or our own moral compass, let them pass, let them have their peace, they deserve it, be humane.
Euthanasia under these circumstances should be a human right.

[Leoniss]

At what point would you ask someone to violate their morals for your own? A medical worker who has taken the hippocratic oath should not kill, and the hippocratic oath certainly shouldn't be subjective for each medical worker, or it would dilute the meaning of 'do no harm'. Most, though certainly not all, terminally ill patients are prescribed narcotic medicine for pain. If they want to take a whole bottle, that's up to them, but they shouldn't force a physician to feed it to them.

[Deleted]

I'm in favor of euthanasia and assisted suicide for terminally ill patients, primarily because I believe in the rights of bodily autonomy that allow anyone to commit suicide, do drugs, have abortions, or so on.

I think these should only be legally authorized for terminal illnesses, though, because of the involvement of physicians or other professionals who have to agree to them. Like, yes anyone should be allowed to commit suicide, but involving other people in it unnecessarily (like by jumping in front of a train, or deliberately aggravating the police) seems wrong.

Mar 18, 2019 11:56:28 GMT -5 Leoniss said:

A medical worker who has taken the hippocratic oath should not kill, and the hippocratic oath certainly shouldn't be subjective for each medical worker, or it would dilute the meaning of 'do no harm'.

Mar 13, 2019 16:42:38 GMT -5 Witchcraft and Sorcery said:

Doctors swear an oath to do no harm. By some accounts assisted suicide could be considered breaking that oath.

The whole phrase you're both referencing is "first do no harm," which has a substantially different meaning. Generally, I think it's a warning to consider the harms and benefits of taking action or doing nothing. Certainly a lot of treatments can be considered harmful, like chemotherapy or surgery, but the goal is to do short-term harm for long-term gain.

In the case of terminal patients, though, there is no more long-term gain to be had, at least in life. I also don't think that death in itself is a harm - it's natural, we're all going to die eventually (unless the people researching ways to stop death succeed, which I'm highly skeptical of), so the drive to prolong life at the cost of suffering seems like the greater harm than euthanasia or assisted suicide.

[Leoniss]

Mar 18, 2019 13:20:58 GMT -5 @prudor said:

I'm in favor of euthanasia and assisted suicide for terminally ill patients, primarily because I believe in the rights of bodily autonomy that allow anyone to commit suicide, do drugs, have abortions, or so on.

I think these should only be legally authorized for terminal illnesses, though, because of the involvement of physicians or other professionals who have to agree to them. Like, yes anyone should be allowed to commit suicide, but involving other people in it unnecessarily (like by jumping in front of a train, or deliberately aggravating the police) seems wrong.

Mar 18, 2019 11:56:28 GMT -5 Leoniss said:

A medical worker who has taken the hippocratic oath should not kill, and the hippocratic oath certainly shouldn't be subjective for each medical worker, or it would dilute the meaning of 'do no harm'.

Mar 13, 2019 16:42:38 GMT -5 Witchcraft and Sorcery said:

Doctors swear an oath to do no harm. By some accounts assisted suicide could be considered breaking that oath.

The whole phrase you're both referencing is "first do no harm," which has a substantially different meaning. Generally, I think it's a warning to consider the harms and benefits of taking action or doing nothing. Certainly a lot of treatments can be considered harmful, like chemotherapy or surgery, but the goal is to do short-term harm for long-term gain.

In the case of terminal patients, though, there is no more long-term gain to be had, at least in life. I also don't think that death in itself is a harm - it's natural, we're all going to die eventually (unless the people researching ways to stop death succeed, which I'm highly skeptical of), so the drive to prolong life at the cost of suffering seems like the greater harm than euthanasia or assisted suicide.

If a terminal patient wishes to die, but cannot find a doctor willing to kill them, and hires someone to shoot them, is that person guilty of murder? It's also worth noting that in the original Greek, a physician swore not to administer poison. This was likely to prevent physicians from acting as an executioner for criminals, but there's no reason it shouldn't still apply in this context as well.