author:self_made_human euthanasia
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
14hr ago
Really? Okay? What if I say 5% is massive, or not massive? You can make the same fuss either way. There are people who are categorically against the euthanasia of even a single person, and people who think that every human should be euthanized. What do you have to say to them?
Do you have an intuitive or even an intellectual understanding of how miserable the average death is? Did you remind yourself that euthanasia is meant to replace that inevitable, often painful and undignified death, with one that doesn't draw out the inevitable and lets people go out on their own terms?
Please, if you accuse me of being miscalibrated, then produce your own ISO calibrated standards. I remain in earnest anticipation, and until then, this is probably the queerest objection in the thread.
Hang on, please explain to me, ideally without referencing slippery slopes at all, what is the precise issue with this 29 year old woman with depression being offered euthanasia?
I try not to brow-beat people with my credentials any more than I can help, but I have experience in both psychiatry and being severely depressed. It would take far worse to make me seek euthanasia, but my depression wasn't as bad as it can truly get. Some forms of dysfunction and agony can truly be hard to discern from a distance. You see a pretty young woman in the prime of her life being consigned to death by uncaring doctors.
I see a tortured soul, who has consented to her doctors trying everything they can feasibly try. If you don't believe me, you can look at the article. Her every day is utter misery, we have no idea how to fix her, at present. And we've tried, tried oh so hard, with no results. I had reasons to cling to life even when my brain screamed it was pointless to get out of bed, I do not care to dictate beyond a very limited extent, how much others should really tolerate.
She is an exception. 99.9% or more of depressed people are not recommended euthanasia. She went through all the loops and hoops, she didn't change her mind. Her very right to do so was challenged, and when I initially engaged with the article, being adjudicated in a court of law. The rules are being followed.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
16hr ago
Did you take that seriously? I would hope not, because the joke was that it's hard to get responses from participants in euthanasia because they're dead. If it's meant to be an educational aside, I appreciate it.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
18hr ago
I will note that this is a concern I have intentionally and prominently addressed. I am personally okay with euthanasia as a cost-saving measure, keeping someone on the verge of brain death in the ICU is both expensive and futile. Doubly so if the savings are used to extend more lives on net.
As it stands, I am willing to compromise on my fantasy of euthanasia booths next to children's parks if that's the cost of making it available in more jurisdictions. What I proposed is a version specifically designed to appease the squeamish, while still being something I am content with myself. This involves removing or minimizing financial incentive to individuals or even most parts of the system.
To the extent that this calls for amendments in places with legal euthanasia, well, it does do that. It's just not as pressing as elsewhere.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
22hr ago
It has been a generation! In some cases, multiple:
The Netherlands legalized euthanasia in 2002. Belgium in 2002. Switzerland has allowed assisted suicide since 1941.
If this a slippery slope, then at the current rate of progress we might have Dyson Swarms before the Netherlands breaks double digits for proportion of deaths conducted by MAID.
Switzerland has octogenarians running hobbling around who don't remember a regime before euthanasia. It also has a rather high proportion of the elderly, which suggests they're not being culled when inconvenient.
Can I make guarantees that societal norms won't change, and in a direction either you or I will disapprove of? Who can? The legalization of gay marriage hasn't, as far as I'm aware, causally produced a legalization of pedophilia or beastiality as some feared. I consider my claims very strong evidence, it's harder to get stronger.
You can't launch many rockets if your standard for rocketry is that we must perfect the design before putting a single nozzle on the pad. You will not enact any social change at all, out of an overabundance of caution. I consider this regrettable.
You've given me the idea for a very good medical comedy about a critical care doctor who either disagrees with the concept of euthanasia, or bumbles around never quite being told which patients are involved.
He, or she, holds the record for most lives saved or resuscitations performed. In a very British manner, the actual doctors responsible for euthanasia are very vexed by his tendency to immediately save their patients, and they're in a cat and mouse game of taking turns murdering and unmurdering any given patient.
The hospital brass are desperate to figure out a way to not award him excellence awards, because it's just plain old embarrassing at this point.
I can foresee potential to change the plot to get more demographic appeal. The life saving male doctor versus the ice queen no-nonsense German euthanasia dom. Or getting Rowan Atkinson to play the male lead.
It might be delightfully British. We can fabricate end of season drama by having them come to blows, and then have them either start to fuck over a corpse that comes alive (because their thrusting counts as CPR), or when they realize that they can game both metrics if they cooperate to keep the bodies clinically dead for long enough to fool the coroner.
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