You are far along into life, nothing but pain, no medical interventions can make you better. If you have a terminal illness, should you have the legal right to end your own life?

Discuss.

no..........they should put you in jail if you kill yourself.

I like the morphine drip method

andy put it correct to hell with legal rights

let them charge you

for that matter don't pay any of your bills before hand and let the credit companies collect from your dead fingers

Now moral right to do so is another ball of polymers

i think the issue extends to whether one can/should be able to get assistance. also, what does that do to insurance and possible estate issues? what $$$ issues are in it for the doctors possibly influencing their diagnosis/decision?

i don't have answers. i personally would like to have that power and the assistance if needed. but how you would write a law that would sufficiently address the situation....i don't know.

and of course, the morality issue won't be left out.

I would get a fat chick to sit on my face . . .

I shouldn't joke about it. It is against the law, but that didn't stop my uncle . . . dang it.

Your uncle died, because a fat chick sat as his face.

Man, that's wild.

I would go that way, I wuz sayin' . . .

My Uncle Hung Himself . . .

on my Grandaddy's Birthday and we buried him on my Birthday . . . Last Summer Sucked.

Keep a Close Eye on Loved Ones on Anti-Depressants.

I used to take them to help quit smoking and they had a good effect on me. Norm, the other hand . . .

Law is a crazy, bizarre, and sometimes wonderful thing. Not many seem to actually realize that law isn't a thing, with mass, that it doesn't exist externally from us. Law is an ideal, an idea, nothing more nothing less.

Nothing highlights the nature of law like laws against suicide. Is it against the law to commit suicide, one may ask? Well, any yokel can jump off a cliff. Like Andy said, so sue them.

We're all born and we all die. Sometimes checking out isn't so nice. Many countries have Dr. assisted suicide programs, humane laws designed to aid those in dire straights. In socially backwards America, one state has Dr. assisted suicide laws: Oregon. Recently, beacon of intelligence & reason, ex-attorney General John Ashcroft hatched a brilliant plan to thwart humanitarians in Oregon by charging that Dr.s in that state were illegally using drugs to assist the terminally ill die a humane, peaceful death. Today the US supreme court ruled against Ashcroft and said it's the states that get to decide, not the US dept. of justice. Interestingly, new supreme court appointee, John Roberts, dissented, saying Oregon doctors should be criminalized for helping terminally ill Oregonians.

Ironically, those in the medical profession have been helping folks check out with dignity since before written history. Now days, if you're in a state other than Oregon, they call it "the double effect." Since doctors (and nurses) are the ones that have to deal with these issues, if a person is in such dire straights they need, errr, medical assistance, doctors commonly prescribe enough pain medication to relieve the discomfort of certain terminal cases. Since the amount of morphine required to ease the sufferings of those so afflicted also results in death by (not so) accidental overdose, it's called the double effect: relieve pain and cause death simultaneously.

The only difference is that in Oregon it's out front and in the open; people get to make that choice for themselves. In every other state it's done behind closed doors and in clumsy secret.

Reminds me of your take on swearing. If I wasn't too bright, you'd sound bright to me.

8, I don't see the tie in with cheese? What's up? D'you move?

Rug, that notwithstanding, I'm unclear on your take on physician assisted suicide.

Guys, it goes way beyond physician assisted suicide and whether or not we have the "right" to terminate our own lives. When I get home from class (I am waiting to walk another female classmate out) I will find and re-post the link to the Useless Eaters site. This is how the extermination of the physically and mentally handicapped started off in Nazi Germany.

A lot of good pious morality is going to do some poor bastid facing non-remedial pancreatic cancer. Let people decide for their own selves. Where is it written that government needs to control every birth, death, and thought an individual has?

What if human life is intrinsically valuable, even if the human is suffering? What if there is value in the endurance of suffering? Don't we all, at some point in life, suffer? Who is to decide what suffering justifies suicide and what does not? What if the suffering individual would like to stick around but doesn't want to burden his family any longer? What if the suffering person is unable to express his own opinion but the consensus is that he'd be better off dead?

Value in (gulp!) suffering? I'll pass thanks, but feel free to knock yourself out. Who is to decide what suffering justifies suicide should be between an individual and their physisian.

In reality, it isn't an unreasonable stretch of deduction to typify cases in which suicide is preferable to sheer tongue-chewing suffering. Doctors and nurses deal with such matters on a daily basis. Why not ask them?

You've never suffered? Or you've never grown out of suffering? There is great value in enduring suffering.

At what point does my dwindling ability to continue to pay the doctor come into play?

http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0211/reviews/chevlen.html 

Nice to see you back Wjm. I just think it's appropriate that individuals be allowed to decide for themselves. That's what I would prefer for myself. Fortunately, and despite the efforts of Darth Vaders like Ashcroft, there's always the Hemlock Society, or other means for those unfortunate enough to find themselves faced with unpleasant realities. I just don't see why it can't all be above board and out in the open, instead of "the double effect" and the blatant denial of the current system.