Should assisted suicide be an option for people in chronic, incurable pain?

We treat our animals with more dignity than we do ourselves.

Steve the Cynic

I have three thoughts about this.

1. Death is not the worst thing that can happen to a person. In cases like the one described in the article, it’s hard to argue that a person should be compelled to continue to exist.

2. But then, what do you say to a depressed teenager who, unable to imagine how life could ever bring any joy, asks, “It was good enough for Grandma, and I’m looking forward to even more years of suffering than she was.”

3. Given that suicide is cheaper than good paliative care, and given the way our health care system is structured, family members who fear seeing their inheritance eaten up by medical and nursing home costs are tempted to say, “You know, Dad, you don’t have to suffer if you don’t want to….” We shouldn’t even be talking about a right to die until we recognize a right to medical care.

Jim G

Yes. I don’t believe in torturing any of the God’s creatures.

KB

Health care first, then, yes.

John

I think people who cause chronic incurable pain should be helped to commit suicide, such as the too big to fail banksters.

Shana

Steve: Doctors can tell the difference between teenaged angst and actual chronic pain. I see your point about pushy relatives, but it is true that a ridiculous proportion of healthcare funds are spent in the last year or so of life. We have come to the point where we can live past our bodies, and I’m not sure that’s reasonable.

As someone who faces the possibility of untreatable worsening chronic pain, I can say for sure that I want the right to choose a humane death if it gets to the point that I can’t stand to live anymore. I do have good healthcare, and I’m doing everything in my power to prevent it getting to that degree, but there’s no guarantee.

GregX

Without question it should be permitted but regulated. There needs to be competency and “public awareness” (ie the courts) so that police have a clear understanding that a death resulted from legal rights and directed wishes – instead of manipulated documents and hidden motives.

Involving the courts does increase the cost – but surely this is far, far, far less then the cost of health care to prolong, from the prespective of the sufferer, a functionless and painful life.

Steve the Cynic

Shana, you trivialize the issue when you refer to major clinical depression as “teenage angst.” The quotation in my earlier post was part of an imagined internal dialog. The teens I have known who have died by suicide didn’t consult with anyone, though plenty of help would have been available. If society shows by example that suicide is an approved and relatively easy way to escape the pain of life, whether physical or emotional, we make it easier for depressed teens to make that decision. I’m not saying it shouldn’t be an option for mature adults who are really suffering, but there’s a danger if it becomes too common.

And I still say we shouldn’t even be talking about a right to die until we acknowledge a right to health care.

suzie

OK, maybe, but only between the person and his/her personal physician. Then a team of three other pysicians who are specialists in chronic, incurable pain. If they determinie that the pain cannot be eased with other medical intervention, then three phychiatrists who will hopefully be able to determine the full reasons for the person wanting to die and not just overly influenced by family pressure, etc. Who will administer the drugs to end a life – the physician or the person? Also will need laws exempting the physicians and phychiatrists from law suits brought on by family members.

Major slippery slope issue.

Whitney

I had an extended family member who had brain cancer, while performing the biopsy, the doctors accidentally damaged her brain leaving her paralyzed and unable to speak, there was nothing they could do for her, instead of “euthanizing” her they let her starve to death, how humane is that? We need to have a system in place so people can die with dignity and humanely.

Stephen Drake

First, I’d like to offer a reminder to people who have followed the debate on assisted suicide and euthanasia at all, that pro-assisted suicide groups ridiculed opponents when we said that the practices in Oregon were just a door-opener. That is, once the public accepted ‘helping’ terminally ill people commit suicide, the next move would be to push for acceptance in assisting suicides of nonterminally ill people. Here’s that slope – we were right.

Second, Chronic pain is a complex issue and successfully living with it depends heavily on finding a physician or medical team that specialized in helping people cope. Unfortunately, there are way too many physicians who are not competent to treat chronic pain but don’t acknowledge they need to make a referral. It’s a sute bet the Final Exit Network didn’t try to find out just how competent and comprehensive this woman’s treatment was.

Third, (to Chris) “we treat animals with more dignity”? You mean the ones we have put down because they’re peeing on the rug. The ones we put down because the treatable conditions they have are out of our price range? The ones we abandon to shelters because we can’t afford them, knowing that the shelter will just put them down after a week or two of crowded misery? Is that the kind of ‘dignity’ you’re talking about?

Steve the Cynic

A better metaphor than the “slippery slope,” suzie, is the “two ditches.” A stance that is too far in either direction, either making it too easy or too hard, will produce a bad outcome.

Joe Schaedler

Of course it should be allowed for people in chronic & incurable physical pain. To deny it to such folks is more cruel and thus immoral than to allow it.

Should it also be allowed for people in chronic & incurable psychological pain? Perhaps someday, but only if new medical measurement standards can be developed to quantify psychological suffering first.

JasonB

This is a terrible dilemma in which us healthy people are making decisions about people in a state of extreme physical discomfort and emotional strain, both beyond at least my comprehension. I do believe in easing that discomfort as much as possible. They should have whatever drugs or procedures are available for that.

I think we’re in a transitional period of development regarding our attitudes on death and dying. Based on other societies we are moving closer to integrating “end of life” decisions into our healthcare plans. Whether that involves some form of suicide planning is unknown, but I hope we are gaining a more practical and true understanding of life in terms of value verses quality.

David Poretti

Yes – assisted death should be a care option. However, there certainly needs to be safeguards.

The conditions to meet before taking that option should be part of a Living Will. It makes no sense to condem someone to an existance of dibilitating chronic pain or a drug induced stupor, or to a level of incoherant dependance that only serves to prolong the collective suffering of the patient and the family. Currently, one can dictate a level of (non) care under a set of conditionsin their Living Will – if one can define care to include death by starvation or infection without medical care, why not assisted death, saving all involved the needless suffering that so often occurs.

Mags

Okay, Steve the Cynic – since you have twice today asked for a ‘right to healthcare’, where are the doctors of tomorrow going to come from when they are signing up for the life of indentured servitude your ‘right’ is forcing them into?

Rights are not something you take from someone else. Rights are guarantees that someone else can’t do something to you – that the government can’t take your property without due process, or force you to practice a particular religion, or keep you from expressing your opinion.

You have the right to life; you have the right to liberty; you have the right to pursue happiness. Granting those rights to everyone doesn’t take those same rights from anyone else. The ‘right’ you’re discussing is the right to take from someone, who trained to practice medicine, the fruits of his labor. Rights don’t work that way. Rights don’t get reduced for some few by putting them in place for everyone.

Steve the Cynic

Would you say Canadian doctors are “indentured servants,” Mags?

Gordon near Two Harbors

Yes. We euthanize suffering animals in the name of mercy. So, if a person, an adult of sound mind, is suffering severly, and modern medicine cannot ease the suffering, then a person should be able commit suicide, with assistance, if needed.

A human is not fully free if he/she has no control over their life.

David

Absolutely. To force a person to endure the pain and anguish of an incurable, debilitating and ultimately fatal illness is inhumane. It is particularly cruel to keep someone alive using expensive medical treatments, which can suck away a person’s lifetime of wealth just as surely as the disease itself can suck away that person’s life. I believe I have a right to choose to leave this world under such circumstances, for I believe there are in fact things worse than death in this world.

Ann

Physical and emotional pain are both very difficult. It is very difficult to have hope when in pain. But sometimes things do change for a person.Sometimes I wonder how people continue, but most people do.There are many things a person can try, including unconventional things like acupuncture.I think it has been shown that people like Jack Kavorkian sometimes go beyond what is reasonable in assisting suicide.

Sandra

Dakota County is out of line in this case. Choosing death indicates the unbearable pain and hopelessness of this and many other situations. There are better things than living when living involves only suffering … when endless peace is possible.

Individuals deserve to choose to live or not when our Western medical system has completely failed them, as it does all too often. I would hope that sufferers would seek alternative care and Eastern medicine where something called “healing” is at least possible. Give life as many chances as possible.

This is an issue that is close as my youngest two siblings suffer from unrelenting, severe migraines and rapidly progressing ALS. 🙁 Life can be very cruel indeed.

Adam G.

I have long held the belief that a person has a right to live, and also a right to die. If someone feels that they are ready to terminate their life, that is their prerogative, and should be respected by friends, family, and lawmakers.

Marshealy

Legalizing assisted suicide is too dangerous. It provides a financial incentive for premature deaths. It invites pressure and coercion. It covers up abuse. It makes socially marginalized groups vulnerable.

Diane Coleman

The question is whether the benefits of assisted suicide outweigh the risks. One risk is coercion. Coercion to die is a form of abuse. Assisted suicide “safeguards” call upon doctors to find that there is no coercion before they provide a prescription for lethal drugs. How would a doctor discern if there is coercion?

There are estimated to be over 99,000 cases of elder abuse in Minnesota annually. http://www.eadaily.com/15/elder-abuse-statistics/

Statistically, 90% of elder abusers are a family member or trusted other. http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2011/04/27/elder-abuse/

Would doctors observe coercion during a medical appointment? Only if the abuser is stupid. Would a coerced patient complain, when the abuser who brings her to the doctor is the same abuser who takes her home?

Nothing in the assisted suicide safeguards in Oregon, or anywhere else, prevent an abuser from suggesting assisted suicide, signing as one of the witnesses, or picking up the lethal prescription. Even if the abuser administered the drugs without the person’s consent, no independent witness to the death is required, so who would know?

The desires of the relatively few people who prefer assisted suicide rather than regular suicide are outweighed by the risks to thousands who are already victims of abuse.

Bradley Williams

According to Williams Toffler, MD: “In Oregon there has never been any documented case of assisted suicide used because there was actual untreatable pain.”

That is how assisted suicide is promoted but the facts are that a so-called case of of untreatable pain is “an indication of inadequate medical care, not an indication for assisted suicide.”