Euthanasia in Canada, Supreme Court Ruled this Morning

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I also think that by allowing people access to resources to die with dignity you are not only protecting the patient but also the loved ones. Taking one's life is not only difficult (usually - I did not know this) but it can be painful and messy. It can also be traumatic for the person who finds the body - no matter if they are a professional or a loved one (I can't remember the exact statistic but over 85 percent of people who attempt to take their own life via pill overconsumption fail because they don't take enough or their body rejects it or other reasons and then you are left with a painful mess to deal with).

Someone asked a question about markers for when you would have this happen - my husband has clearly indicated that as soon as his mind goes he wants out. That's his line in the sand. He saw my Dad with his relatively moderate dementia and could not handle that at all. We haven't talked about pain level though. I, on the other hand, would base it more on happiness - if I was living happily with dementia that would be ok. For me, pain is also a huge factor - living in pain is a big worry for me - I already have daily pain but if that pain reached migraine-level and was bound to continue like that for the majority of the rest of my life then I would like to bow out gracefully.

I loved your analogy of the fruit and pie Pinga especially after you added the clarification. I would extend it to say that a discussion of how it is unfair that fruit comes on a tree also does not help the people who can't reach the fruit to get fruit or get the fruit to make their own pie should they choose. The idea is to help them get the fruit while we also work on developing fruit that is easier to reach - because that is what we have to work with now. Otherwise advocacy is even more exhausting.
 
Justme said:
I also think that by allowing people access to resources to die with dignity you are not only protecting the patient but also the loved ones. Taking one's life is not only difficult (usually - I did not know this) but it can be painful and messy. It can also be traumatic for the person who finds the body - no matter if they are a professional or a loved one (I can't remember the exact statistic but over 85 percent of people who attempt to take their own life via pill overconsumption fail because they don't take enough or their body rejects it or other reasons and then you are left with a painful mess to deal with).

Someone asked a question about markers for when you would have this happen - my husband has clearly indicated that as soon as his mind goes he wants out. That's his line in the sand. He saw my Dad with his relatively moderate dementia and could not handle that at all. We haven't talked about pain level though. I, on the other hand, would base it more on happiness - if I was living happily with dementia that would be ok. For me, pain is also a huge factor - living in pain is a big worry for me - I already have daily pain but if that pain reached migraine-level and was bound to continue like that for the majority of the rest of my life then I would like to bow out gracefully.

I loved your analogy of the fruit and pie Pinga especially after you added the clarification. I would extend it to say that a discussion of how it is unfair that fruit comes on a tree also does not help the people who can't reach the fruit to get fruit or get the fruit to make their own pie should they choose. The idea is to help them get the fruit while we also work on developing fruit that is easier to reach - because that is what we have to work with now. Otherwise advocacy is even more exhausting.
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I see the people with disabilities as the ones who ain't getting any fruit. What little they did get went towards things like human rights and accessibility laws that benefit everyone - even the ones who can reach the fruit and have made the pie and have control of the fruit. But when it comes to discussions about being equal by just having fruit at ground level - that discussion is met with contempt by the people holding all the fruit at the top - who always have.
 
Pr. Jae said:
Checks and balances can be put into the law. There's no real way to put a guarantee of "thought" into it. I do agree with you on your last paragraph.
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Again, I haven't seen any guidelines for discussion or suggestions of questions to be asked by the doctor when the client requests assistance in ending their life, but to guarantee that the criteria are met, I would imagine that some of these questions would be pretty thought provoking.
 
I would like to concern and resources bolstered significantly going toward suicide prevention - including all the socioeconomic factors involved in suicide - not suicide assistance for people who are depressed (legally would fit the new definition of mental pain it appears - some serious scrutiny needs to happen there).
 
@ Justme ...
Imagine the fruit of the tree as knowledge, wisdom and all that crap ... would your enemies like to see you suffer in lack of knowledge? Thus the God point ( boo's un) or particle! Suffering of friends (hard things to find in a suffering-leaning world ... unless suffering the pane of learning) in which case would your real friends tell you a story ... as you are conditioned to believe knowledge is evil? Then there is the concept of the midnight son .. your abstract Buddha/buddy or friend unseen that gives hope that something poorly understood will go on and on ... eternally mys'd? No normal person would gather that under present philosophy of common persons shouldn't know what authority is up to in metaphorical language. They could know small details and as someone said: if god is in the details the devious is there too ... allowing us denial and dementia ... as we approach grater ... or larger millings ... wee scrapings as pups under the table ... to the top dog maw! Such things a' muse unknowns ... Celestial Essences that are out there like pheromones ... a rich P'EW? The alternate unknown phew that gather such crap and look deeper into it! This that rare squeak in the dark ... as such things turn and come round ... in mental inverse ... rarely seen!

Thus creation at a point (of penne) gave us the word ... and still we don't know unless doing some digging into deep 6's! Our enemies tell us not to go there in Roman tradition a psyche is dangerous (as a thinking character) and thus the mind disappears in devilish manor (manner) in a dark flash ... Hawking Radiance? What comes of this? Recycle of the physical trash ... to see if resurrection is similar to re working of des oles! Sets some old loafers (leather backs) into phitz of howls as hissing turtles ... and if you present a finger to that ... snip its gone as I'z ees ID!

Watched The Imitation Game and Hawking's genius (High Story of Time in cerebral order of celestics) last night ... in tandem. Like soul and spirit these two movies should not be isolated ... or you could take them in an unbalanced mental condition ... impossible if you had no suffering of mental powers ... lesser case in an emotional world .... like How the West Was One ... and isolation philosophy was encouraged ... stand alone comics? Like Marvel and other worshippers of Heroes that over come their friends with naïveté?

Few real people make such connections ... entangles their emotions in negative manna ...

One is best in such company to play stupid ... in one logic regress like a turtle .. or other hard shelled Jinn ... J' aimes to do that soon as I'm over the hump ... a mire dip in space when considering the negative force of gravid things ... Gloria Steinem et al!
 
Kimmio said:
You people are discussing the power to choose when to die with dignity because life has declined for you - and I am talking about people who have never really had the power to choose how to live with dignity, equality, who are fighting for that still.
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So you agree - you are talking apples and oranges.

You are talking about people struggling for the power to choose how to live with dignity, etc. I don't see anybody here arguing against that. In fact I think many would support you. I certainly would.

But the discussion is about allowing people to choose to die with dignity. A completely different thing.
 
Kimmio said:
I think there has to be clear boundaries around who can choose assisted death - terminally ill perhaps, elderly perhaps. And very high criteria must be met. I don't think someone should be allowed without counselling first.
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Pretty much what I said in my first post.
 
Another question is - is there a time frame of working with someone (read in one of those articles that it takes 7 years on average for a person to adjust to an acquired disability) before a doctor will agree to help a person end their life (as opposed to accepting that they can have a full live even with a condition of impairment)?
 
Seeler said:
So you agree - you are talking apples and oranges.

You are talking about people struggling for the power to choose how to live with dignity, etc. I don't see anybody here arguing against that. In fact I think many would support you. I certainly would.

But the discussion is about allowing people to choose to die with dignity. A completely different thing.
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They are not apples to oranges. If you would be so kind, I'd really appreciate it if you would read the Calgary Herald piece I posted about 5-10 posts up now that explains, by a professor in disability studies at Ryerson (more credible and articulate than I) why they are relevant to one another...wait I'll find it.
 
But SEELER in a world driven by the desire not to know ... how would we know who was trying to assist and who is attempting to inhibit a wise choice? Does wisdom and passion get along other than in Philo's Sophie ... the love of wisdom .. when it all collapses, or falls together? Point of humor ... when sweating plasma!

The great divide goes on ...
 
@Luce NDs I believe that we have to work toward change. I am in a position of economic privlige. Something that a lot of people in my situation are not. I was lucky - I recognize that many are not. I frankly do not understand how they survive on the meagre amount of assistance that they get. I feel guilty that I am a client of CMHA because those resources should go toward someone who is more disadvantaged but, honestly, I need the assistance and can't afford to pay for it privately (and really there are not services that provide it). I am trying to enact change in my own little way - unfortunately I am not in a position health wise to lead a crusade but change happens one little ripple at a time and I'm trying to make as big a ripple as possible. I still believe that it is my right to choose my death as long as people are protected against abuse. It is my right to say that my suffering is too much - it's not a societal construct - it's my own interpretation of how I feel and really reality is mostly about interpretation (see the thread on vaccination for a clear example of that :)

So I'm going to help make fruit accessible to all with resources to make pies if people choose recognizing that it takes effort for them to even access the fruit. I am also going to support efforts to find ways to make fruit grow in a more accessible manner (please, let's not get into a GMO debate in this thread :)
 
It is fine to say that I choose to live through my pain or with my limitations. It's a choice. But it's not a choice everyone would make.

I look at my Uncle - he's ready to go. He's 98. He has said that he would like to go peacefully. He is in his right mind. He feels like he is suffering. Who am I to tell him he can't die on his own terms? It's not a societal construct - he is unhappy with how his life is now after having had 96 years of good living that he happily embraced. How dare we tell him that for the larger good he can't make the decision? And, he is getting relatively good care and I tell him every time I see him how much I enjoy visiting and reassure him that I am glad he is here.

Or look at my Dad - he had full access to great palliative care (set up by a small rural community). The nurses and doctors were awesome. He got lots of visitors and was never alone. But the writing was on the wall - he did not have long to live. Did we really need him to be in more pain than could be controlled? Deprived of being able to drink water or diet coke (his favourite drink) because he could choke and aspirate (thickened diet coke is gross in case you are wondering) - dementia and cancer took his body and mind. We didn't need for him to be vomiting all the time and thirsty to prove that everyone is worthy of life. I am a Christian. I believe in God. I don't believe in suffering unnecessarily and maybe that makes me a coward but I want the ability to choose to be a coward - freedom is one of the reasons my Uncle went to war. Under what is being proposed my Dad probably would not have the ability to choose to end his life because of the dementia so any new law won't prevent that from happening but I'm hoping my intent is better illustrated through his story. It's three years this weekend that we lost him and it sucks. I miss him so much but I sure as heck hate the fact that he suffered.
 
This just makes me cry because the arguments presented there are through the lens of priveledge. The first one in particular - pro-assisted suicide - is from the POV of a conservative MP ... Who has more security in his priveledged view..because he's a conservative MP. He is not representive of the majority of people with disabilities. He's an anomaly we talked about. Even the writer of the Calgary Herald article recognizes she's an anomaly - aside from her disability she is a white, baby boomer, in a position to call shots - she's a professor emeritis and someone who has worked on Human Rights policy - but she chooses to stand with the other side. To make her career about equality for people with disabilities - why is that?
 
In conclusion to the several forgoing scripts ... is life a pain ... and should have ends?

Doctors would life to say this is false ... if there was not fear of death ... could doctors become very wealthy?

This works as well in other professions like engineering ... in which many make embarrassing sums from capitalizing on mistakes ... when they should be sharing equitably with their gifts of knowing what went wrong ... a thing lost in the mental case of denial of past, aboriginal factors ... like the burning of literature and thinking souls ... a sort of metaphorical inquisition as to ... why did they do that?

Answer: "In support of naïveté!" Thus social poverty goes on ... because we don't know beta? I couldn't really say as such information is withheld or otherwise blanket case as universal cover-up that provides for another side to the meme brane that separates absolute form abstract portions ... a mire pariah?
 
Accessible humane palliative care for the terminally ill and/ or elderly I support. But does opening up assisted suicide to all with irreparable chronic conditions (encompasses so many things that if they are looked at as reasons to die really put us on a dangerous course in terms of looking at the value of life for those fighting to live with equality), achieve quality palliative care or is it a cost cutting replacement for it?
 
I wish we'd stop pronouncing "palliative care" as if it were some sort of magic bullet that would cure everything.

If you listen to the interview with Dr. Low's widow that I posted, she described how he went 'deaf'. He felt as if there was a freight train in his head, getting louder and louder and louder until finally, it drowned out all external noise, and all he could do was to try and read her lips. But, of course, the tumour blinded him, as well. He spent his last few days in "palliative sedation" as he suffocated and his kidneys shut down.

I just don't get why we allow our critters the dignity of a good death and not our neighbours.
 
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