Is Euthanasia the Future of End-of-Life Choices?

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The discussion centers on the controversial topics of suicide and euthanasia, with participants advocating for the right to end one's life, particularly for the elderly and terminally ill. Concerns are raised about the influence of religious beliefs on the legality of euthanasia, with some arguing that personal autonomy should prevail over religious objections. The distinction between euthanasia and assisted suicide is debated, with some participants expressing support for assisted suicide under strict conditions while opposing euthanasia. There are fears of potential abuse, such as elderly individuals being pressured into euthanasia by family members. Overall, the conversation reflects a growing belief that euthanasia may become more accepted in the future, particularly in less religiously influenced regions.
  • #181
Jimmy Snyder said:
This post will not be emotional nor rhetorical. It simply clears up something that might have been unclear about the law in the US. I define suicide as killing yourself and euthanasia as killing someone else. Certain adjectives have been introduced perhaps making things unclear, so I will make the following definitions. I will justify them by citing US law.

assisted suicide. Suicide with the help of another. An example would be a physician provides a lethal dose at your request, hands it to you, and you administer it to yourself.

voluntary euthanasia. Euthanasia according to the wishes of the person who will die. An example would be a physician provides a lethal dose at your request, does not hand it to you, but administers it himself.

With these definitions, and in spite of some hints to the contrary, there is no jurisdiction in the US that allows voluntary euthanasia. There are three states that allow assisted suicide. These are Washington, Oregon, and Montana. The case in Washington is particularly revealing in that there was a law proposed in 1991 that would have allowed voluntary euthanasia but it did not pass. The current law passed when the language was changed to preclude it. In the following, I-1000 refers to the Death with Dignity Act.


Empasis mine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Death_with_Dignity_Act"

Oregon's law requires self administration.

Emphasis mine
http://www.oregon.gov/DHS/ph/pas/faqs.shtml"

The situation in Montana is less clear. No particular law allows assisted suicide. Rather, a state supreme court ruling stated that there was no law in Montana that forbids it. I haven't found anything worthy of linking to because I can't find the case they were deciding on (was it a case of assisted suicide, or was it voluntary euthanasia), nor can I find the wording of the decision. All the news stories I have found use the language "assisted suicide", and I don't want to link to them for fear you will accuse me of jumping to conclusions.

In future, I will not expect to hear any more attempts to equate these two legally different concepts regardless of support from wiki or any other non-legal source.

I don't get it... because a law that was never enacted spooked you, and a few other US laws don't work for you... somehow one term is judgment-neutral and the other is evil? I also have no idea what this has to do with your previous... well... rants.
 
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  • #182
nismaratwork said:
I don't get it... because a law that was never enacted spooked you, and a few other US laws don't work for you... somehow one term is judgment-neutral and the other is evil? I also have no idea what this has to do with your previous... well... rants.
Whether these laws work for me or not is a matter of mere speculation. I have been very careful not to express my views on assisted suicide and these laws concern assisted suicide. I never said that it is judgement-neutral, nor have I said anything else about my attitude towards it.

But my post wasn't about my opinions it was about legality. Some hints were dropped that both were legal and I wanted to dispell that. There is nothing more in that post to "get".
 
  • #183
nismaratwork said:
spooked you ... rants.
I don't like the way this is turning. I'll bet you $5 my revulsion toward killing people is stronger than your feelings toward me. Yet I do not resort to this kind of emotional rhetoric.
 
  • #184
Jimmy Snyder said:
I don't like the way this is turning. I'll bet you $5 my revulsion toward killing people is stronger than your feelings toward me. Yet I do not resort to this kind of emotional rhetoric.

First, to respond to the post preceding the one quoted above, your post represents a vanishing minority of what you've said since https://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=3033159&postcount=45

and the litany since. I can't take your "unemotional" and non 'rhetorical' statement at face value because it conflicts stylistically and behaviorally from the last 10+ pages. I read this thread from page one and you're splitting hairs on the one point you have had a handful of people jump on you for making.

Finally... I think you're completely wrong. Using a physician instead of a machine or a family member as a fail-deadly measure in the event of an unwanted state such as a PVS, fatal burns, fulminating sepsis, tumors and more. If I hire a hitman to kill someone, I'm on the hook for conspiracy to commit 1st degree murder. If I tell a doctor to kill me under specific circumstances then I'm committing suicide by proxy, with my doctor as the tool. The doctor, like the hitman is going to be in a different legal and moral quandary, as they have choice in the matter, but from my perspective, it's 6 of 1...

As for feelings...

I'll bet your revulsion is stronger by orders of magnitude. You're clearly near (if not actually the point of) trauma when it comes to killing, whereas my feelings towards you are mild academic... oomph? This is just a discussion of an academic topic to me, and frankly given your recent circumstances the strongest feeling I'm inclined to feel towards you is a bit sorry.
 
  • #185
I never made it personal.
 
  • #186
Jimmy Snyder said:
I never made it personal.

What on Earth are you talking about?!
 
  • #187
Haven't been here in a while, so I don't know what the present argument is about, but I'd like to ask Jimmy a question.
Jimmy Snyder said:
I'll bet you $5 my revulsion toward killing people is stronger than your feelings toward me.
Why do you have a revulsion towards killing people, specifically in the case where these people are asking to be killed? I can understand an apprehension (did the person think this through, etc?) more easily than a revulsion.
 
  • #188
Another thought came to my head this morning. Does anyone have a proposal for the age of consent for being killed, or is that even an issue? The reason I want to know is that I had been asked something like "why do we let people suffer so?" Do we provide this analgesic to adults and deny it to children? If so, is that because adults suffer more than children do? If not, what of informed consent? If we do away with informed consent what boundary is there between voluntary and involuntary? If no boundary there, then what boundary between euthanasia and murder?
 
  • #189
Gokul43201 said:
Why do you have a revulsion towards killing people, specifically in the case where these people are asking to be killed? I can understand an apprehension (did the person think this through, etc?) more easily than a revulsion.
If revulsion is too strong a word, apprehension is too weak. You might think disgust, hatred or abhorrence are overpowering, while I don't think dislike, distaste, or aversion bring out my meaning forcefully enough. There's still loathing, repugnance, repulsion, and detestation. I could live with any of these. You pick for me.
 
  • #190
Jimmy Snyder said:
If revulsion is too strong a word, apprehension is too weak. You might think disgust, hatred or abhorrence are overpowering, while I don't think dislike, distaste, or aversion bring out my meaning forcefully enough. There's still loathing, repugnance, repulsion, and detestation. I could live with any of these. You pick for me.

You're not really engaged with a discussion... you're set off by what I or Gokul or others say, but you don't engage. You've responded minimally if at all to me, and Gokul asked you a question that you deflected with thesaurus.
 
  • #191
Jimmy Snyder said:
Another thought came to my head this morning. Does anyone have a proposal for the age of consent for being killed, or is that even an issue? The reason I want to know is that I had been asked something like "why do we let people suffer so?" Do we provide this analgesic to adults and deny it to children? If so, is that because adults suffer more than children do? If not, what of informed consent? If we do away with informed consent what boundary is there between voluntary and involuntary? If no boundary there, then what boundary between euthanasia and murder?

You have to face reality... kids already participate in their own suicide in medical contexts. I'm sorry, but while you find "killing" revolting, I find the concept of letting a child experience bone-pain, hepatic and renal failure, and worse is somehow less revolting. If a kid wants to suffer until death, that's their choice, but if a kid begs the average group of parents, family, friends and doctors to give them something fatal near the end, odds are good it'll happen.

...AND IT SHOULD. There's nothing great or noble about being in a PVS, or in terminal agony, or even in suffering through the end stages of a disease such as ALS.
 
  • #192
nismaratwork said:
kids already participate in their own suicide.
I'm not asking about suicide.
 
  • #193
Jimmy Snyder said:
I'm not asking about suicide.

Just curious, have you ever heard the term "suicide by cop?" What are your thoughts about that term?
 
  • #194
Jimmy Snyder said:
If revulsion is too strong a word, apprehension is too weak. You might think disgust, hatred or abhorrence are overpowering, while I don't think dislike, distaste, or aversion bring out my meaning forcefully enough. There's still loathing, repugnance, repulsion, and detestation. I could live with any of these. You pick for me.

Yes, Jimmy, I'll say it again: it is one thing to have these feelings, but to actually discuss the topic's rights and wrongs, we must look at the rational arguments behind the emotion. Because someone loathes something does not make it actionable. Emotions are unprocessed - by definition, not the right criteria with which to make life and death decisions.

The rational argument behind the emotion is how you involve other people in the decision-making, and ensure it applies to more than just Jimmy's specific circumstances. If all you do is express your emotions, then all we do is say: 'that must be hard for you', and move on.

So, I think we've been pretty patient so far. I am now going to request that you put your arguments in rational, discussible form, or voluntarily remove yourself from the discussion.
 
  • #195
Jimmy Snyder said:
I'm not asking about suicide.

You do realize that non-voluntary, passive euthanasia is practised in the UK and US?

When it is decided not to revive someone or to pull the plug or with hold treatment and allow them to pass away, that is passive euthanasia. In these cases, it is generally done when the person is unable to make the decision themselves - for example if they are in a coma. This makes it non-voluntary.

Doctors can decide to with hold treatment from children and allow them to pass away, against the will of the parents if that is what they deem best for the child. (Although the parents are consulted on the issue, the doctors can over rule them.)
 
  • #196
Jack21222 said:
Just curious, have you ever heard the term "suicide by cop?" What are your thoughts about that term?
In spite of its name, unless the cops kill themselves, it is not suicide. I have tried without much success to avoid such vocabulary issues by using phrases like "one person killing another".
 
  • #197
jarednjames said:
You do realize that non-voluntary, passive euthanasia is practised in the UK and US?

When it is decided not to revive someone or to pull the plug or with hold treatment and allow them to pass away, that is passive euthanasia. In these cases, it is generally done when the person is unable to make the decision themselves - for example if they are in a coma. This makes it non-voluntary.
Yes I do. This is yet another reason why I have been using the phrase "one person killing another."
 
  • #198
Are we finished with the thesaurus yet?
 
  • #199
Jimmy Snyder said:
Yes I do. This is yet another reason why I have been using the phrase "one person killing another."

So is pulling the plug not one person killing another?
 
  • #200
Jimmy Snyder said:
I'm not asking about suicide.

Holy **** you have 2 speeds huh... you either get monosyllabic about minutiae, or you ramble emotionally. I've read this thread from page 1 and you haven't let up yet... no wonder Dave is at the point where he's asking you to leave.

As for the thesaurus comment, I'm worried Jimmy... if that was a clever rip of my post, it fails. If that was meant to broadly dismiss the unanimous concern with your reactionary view... eh, not so useful. I don't see a win in that one, but at least I get to play: Diatribe or Terse... which will it be?!

*spin*
 
  • #201
Terse. Age of consent?
 
  • #202
Jimmy Snyder said:
In spite of its name, unless the cops kill themselves, it is not suicide. I have tried without much success to avoid such vocabulary issues by using phrases like "one person killing another".

If I walk into a police station with a resin model pistol, scream, "I'll kill you all, I have a gun and you're all dead!", then aim my fake gun at people... I'm going to die. A police officer will justifiably shoot me in self defense based on the information they had at the time. The only person in control of that situation, who initiated and ensured a lethal outcome, is the person who "commits suicide by cop". How you dismiss this as a simple semantic issue is beyond me, when it's clearly another instrument of suicide, much as the dramatic end to a long fall is when leaping from a bridge.
 
  • #203
Jimmy Snyder said:
Terse. Age of consent?

You have so many outstanding questions to answer from myself and others, you really can't be in a position to borrow from the bank at this time. Really, either do as DaveC indicated or just admit that you're too emotionally involved as a result of your mother's passing (and who-knows-what-else) and LEAVE the discussion.
 
  • #204
Just wanted to check the definition on suicide, Google now thinks I need help and wants me to call the Samaritans.
 
  • #205
jarednjames said:
Just wanted to check the definition on suicide, Google now thinks I need help and wants me to call the Samaritans.

:smile:
 
  • #206
Jimmy, suicide is the act of causing your own death. So who actually kills you is irrelevant if you cause it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide#Murder.E2.80.93suicide

I have now read five definitions (legal and otherwise) and none say you have to perform the act of killing yourself. It simply says it is intentionally causing your own death.

"Suicide by cop" as per nismara's example is committing suicide.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/suicide
The act or an instance of intentionally killing oneself.
 
  • #207
Hi jarednjames. It was from you more than anyone else that I wanted an answer. What age of consent to be killed by the doctor?
 
  • #208
That whole cop thing is a rather poor analogy. If you put someone in a kill or be killed situation, I give them liberty to kill. I get the feeling you want my opinion on this vocabulary issue so you can extend the analogy to the doctor who administers a lethal dose, but that is more than just a stretch. There is no kill or be killed situation going on, so I don't give them the same liberty.
 
  • #209
Jimmy Snyder said:
Hi jarednjames. It was from you more than anyone else that I wanted an answer. What age of consent to be killed by the doctor?

I know it wasn't directed to me, but I'd say 18, because that's the age where you can legally form contracts.
 
  • #210
Jimmy Snyder said:
Hi jarednjames. It was from you more than anyone else that I wanted an answer. What age of consent to be killed by the doctor?

Sorry, didn't know it was at me.

Tricky question. I think anyone should be allowed to request it, but the opinion of a doctor should be taken into account far more in this situation.

I'd go as far to say that the law should be split (there's no reason one law needs to "cover it all").

18+ it should be completely down to the person.

Up to 18, it should be the person (or childs) decision, but with input from a doctor / trained persons. The parents don't get a say.

A young child (5 and below) comes completely down to the medical staff.
 

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