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Last post 2 years ago by rfenst. 13 replies replies.
Opinion: Medical aid in dying should not be proscribed by society’s laws or condemned by its mores
rfenst Offline
#1 Posted:
Joined: 06-23-2007
Posts: 39,112
WAPO by George F. Will

Late last year, at 3 a.m. in what is a now-normal night, Kim Hoffman awoke with “an unbelievable headache.” These are related to the 30 brain lesions, and the steroids needed to reduce the swelling of the brain. After dawn that day, she said, speaking by phone from her home in Glastonbury, Conn., “I felt a new neck lesion.” She has so many skin lesions that “it feels as though my skin is being torn like someone has a serrated knife.” What began as ovarian cancer has, she said, metastasized to “both breasts, my right lung, the lining of my spine, and many lymph nodes.” She says, “I’m a pretty sick puppy.”

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When she was 16 and “a car broadsided me while I was on my bike,” her injuries were “really, really painful.” Then, however, “I knew I was going to live. The difference here is I’m not going to get better. And the pain is indescribably worse.”

A few days before her initial diagnosis in June 2013, she ran a three-mile, 20-obstacle race through mud. For years, the arsenal of modern oncology has been unable to defeat her disease, and has left her debilitated by constant fatigue and pain. In November, she was told she had two to four months to live. She turned 59 on Dec. 27. She and her wife — “It hurts her so much to see me suffer so deeply” — and other loved ones hope she won’t live far into her 60th year.

While resisting her disease with surgery, radiation and chemotherapy (one treatment she likens to “injecting your body with Agent Orange),” she has twice testified to Connecticut’s legislature in support of legalization of medical aid in dying (MAID). Although 75 percent of Connecticut voters favor MAID, the legislature tabled the measure this past year without debating this question: What is Connecticut’s compelling interest in preventing Hoffman from receiving such assistance?

Writing in the London Review of Books, Stephen Sedley, a former judge and current Oxford University professor, notes that in the 19th century the law “got itself into such a tangle” that a person who injured himself or herself in a suicide attempt “could be indicted for wounding with intent to kill,” a capital offense. Some believers in an interventionist deity argued that terminal suffering, being God’s will, should not be curtailed, an objection they could also lodge against anesthesia. The British common law of “trespass to the person” entitles a mentally competent adult to refuse invasive treatment even if it is painless. “Yet,” Sedley writes, “the ability of a rational individual in unbearable and untreatable distress to opt for terminal medication remains beyond the pale of the law.”

Increased life expectancy, increased medical competence, increased secularism, and increased insistence on privacy and autonomy are producing increased support for legal regimes that respect the right of mentally capable and terminally ill individuals to protect themselves from lingering intense pain and mental decrepitude. A November survey by Susquehanna Polling and Research found that 68 percent of likely voters believe that a mentally sound person with no more than six months to live should have access to a prescription medication that will produce a peaceful death while asleep. Ten states and the District of Columbia, with a combined 22 percent of the U.S. population, have comparable laws.

Compassion & Choices, which advocates for medical aid in dying, sensibly insists that this terminology, not “assisted suicide,” is proper. Suicide connotes despair and perhaps derangement. Dying is a facet of every life. An anticipated death, in the presence of loved ones, a death chosen after reflection about predictable, unavoidable pain, should not be proscribed by society’s laws or condemned by its mores.

“I do want to live,” Hoffman says. But not in her increasingly, irreversibly “whittled down” condition.

She is a tad testy about the legislature ignoring her cause but making pizza the state’s official food. Before she was incapacitated, she was a social worker in local high schools. “My God,” she says, humorous even in extremis, “I worked with teenagers for 30 years. If that’s not paying my dues ...” She is speaking, she says, “tongue-in-cheek,” but pointedly: What does she owe, and to whom, that justifies the state government’s standing between her and consensual measures that would stop the prolongation of her agony?
delta1 Offline
#2 Posted:
Joined: 11-23-2011
Posts: 28,754
I support medical aid in dying, having witnessed two siblings and two parents die long after they expressed the desire to die...

My brother and sisters and I were to blame for prolonging my mother's agony. She gathered us together one day after a series of medical issues, including strokes, falls with head and hip injuries and kidney failure...told us she was ready to go a few days before she suffered another stroke. Doctors said there was a slight chance that a brain surgery would increase her chances of survival. We said OK. Mom was in a coma for another week. My siblings and I all regretted that decision.

Death with dignity, if you choose.
Gene363 Offline
#3 Posted:
Joined: 01-24-2003
Posts: 30,680
If you cannot choose to end your life, you are not free. It is absolutely not the business of the government how you chose.

That said, I personally hate the idea of chosing to end one's life.
delta1 Offline
#4 Posted:
Joined: 11-23-2011
Posts: 28,754
for me, there have to be justified medical circumstances
DrMaddVibe Offline
#5 Posted:
Joined: 10-21-2000
Posts: 55,309
delta1 wrote:
for me, there have to be justified medical circumstances



Who is the Arbiter of Death? Dr. Fauci???

Lived through the "Dr." Kevorkian BS enough to know that if you want to kill yourself...https://www.assistedsuicide.org/index.html

Don't involve a doctor that is supposed to uphold and preserve Life.
Speyside2 Offline
#6 Posted:
Joined: 11-11-2021
Posts: 2,307
Abortion clinics could pick up additional buisness.
Speyside2 Offline
#7 Posted:
Joined: 11-11-2021
Posts: 2,307
I can already see one slogan. Wish you were dead because you killed your baby, we can help.
delta1 Offline
#8 Posted:
Joined: 11-23-2011
Posts: 28,754
DrMaddVibe wrote:
Who is the Arbiter of Death? Dr. Fauci???

Lived through the "Dr." Kevorkian BS enough to know that if you want to kill yourself...https://www.assistedsuicide.org/index.html

Don't involve a doctor that is supposed to uphold and preserve Life.


To me, the person who decides to pull the plug has to base it on the best medical advice and, most of all, like the person in the article, has to bear whatever pain that further life will bring...sometimes the cure can be worse than the disease, and that would be my time.

Each individual should be able to determine their tolerance for pain and quality of life...your level may differ from mine...
rfenst Offline
#9 Posted:
Joined: 06-23-2007
Posts: 39,112
Both sides of my family have long histories of letting and helping people (not just family) go when we have very clear instruction including just pulling the plug (family only)- even if it is the hard way...

When it came time for my dad, his doctor was 100% on board, but the nursing home staff didn't want to follow my dad's written authorization and instructions (even though it was on their own form!). So, we called in hospice to the nursing home and they gave my dad exactly what he wanted.

So to avoid a repeat, I am my mother's sole legally appointed advocate and have a very clear instructions about what she wants (even if my brother and sister were to disagree). She knows I am the one she can count on 100%.

My wife and I and our kids all know each others' very clear instructions. We all feel the same way (no kidding- lol).
deadeyedick Offline
#10 Posted:
Joined: 03-13-2003
Posts: 16,961
I'm thinking the statistics for deaths by "drug overdose" are much higher than they would be if there were a category for drugs utilized in suicide.
MACS Offline
#11 Posted:
Joined: 02-26-2004
Posts: 79,599
D-I-E must die.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oq2rBE5zwAs
Mr. Jones Offline
#12 Posted:
Joined: 06-12-2005
Posts: 19,359
All dementia and Alzheimer's locked units at nursing homes should let COVID RUN RAMPANT and let those poor mindless peeps just depart and end their misery....

Instead, they keep vaccinating each one, they keep isolating cases so others don't catch it, they keep testing dozens of patients every three days to check for COVID-19....

W.H.Y. ????

Is this done??

Because these poor mindless bastids EQUAL BIG $$$$
PAYMENTS FROM THEIR FAMILIES AND MEDICARE ...

IT IS NOT QUALITY OF LIFE AT ALL..

IT IS TOTAL $$$$ GREED AND INCOME TO THE BOTTOM LINE THAT DRIVES IT...THAT IS The ONLY reason for it...
rfenst Offline
#13 Posted:
Joined: 06-23-2007
Posts: 39,112
Mr. Jones wrote:
All dementia and Alzheimer's locked units at nursing homes should let COVID RUN RAMPANT and let those poor mindless peeps just depart and end their misery....

Instead, they keep vaccinating each one, they keep isolating cases so others don't catch it, they keep testing dozens of patients every three days to check for COVID-19....

W.H.Y. ????

Is this done??

Because these poor mindless bastids EQUAL BIG $$$$
PAYMENTS FROM THEIR FAMILIES AND MEDICARE ...

IT IS NOT QUALITY OF LIFE AT ALL..

IT IS TOTAL $$$$ GREED AND INCOME TO THE BOTTOM LINE THAT DRIVES IT...THAT IS The ONLY reason for it...

Depends on who you ask- many people do not believe in hastening death unless the person is in terrible circumstances.

My brother, a physician and an Orthodox Jew, did not want us to help us fulfill my dad's wishes for both medical and religious reasons. My mom, sister and I out-voted him without including him in the conversation or vote because we knew how he felt (and he lives out of town). When we told him he was gracious and told my mom it was truly her decision to make.
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