Assisted suicide - thought?

Thanks to you both for the compliment. No one in cyberspace knows me. Because of my career, I have to keep the sometimes outrageous opinions in my personal life separate from my professional life.

 

I don't keep track of that part of her life, beyond satisfying myself that she accepts the scholarship and the search for peace, but not the woo-woo. From what little I've learned about the formal practice of Buddhism in Tibet, I don't think her version is very true to the original. No more than the American version of beer, football, or the English language.

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We're both Americans. We don't believe that the only way to approach an unfortunate event is to "prepare" for it. There's absolutely nothing wrong with seizing control of it to the extent possible. That is, after all, the American way.

Fourteen years ago we saw my mother die in disorientation, discomfort and depression while her so-called "caregivers" kept her body alive long enough to suck up a few thousand more dollars of her money, which she would much rather have donated to her favorite charity. And now it appears that we're going to have to watch my mother-in-law go through the same thing, complaining to everyone within earshot that she just wants her ostrich egg.

Experiences like this strengthen one's resolve. There is no way to "prepare for death" in a country that takes away what for many of us is the most kind, attractive, practical and economical option.

 

Well then, how nice for them. It would be great if this were a country where they could die their way and we could die our way.

As for "illegal," hey this is America. None of us have very much respect for laws. Our legal system is a training program to make us more clever. Besides, the doctor who was interviewed in that article had, among other things, learned how to make sure it was legal. The authorities know what he's doing and they can't find any legal way to stop him.

And I think tolerance of woo-woo is way too high a price to pay so some people can have a peaceful death without interference. Woo-woo is ruining this country.

 

I've never run across an account of one of those rare people. Have you? What kind of shape are they in? A person would have to be a really expert diver with practice diving from extreme heights (e.g., the Acapulco Cliffs) to hit the water in the right orientation so the impact would not break his spine and several other important bones and prevent him from being able to swim to the surface. Might even break his neck and not be able to breathe.

Either that, or sheer dumb luck.

But then he has the problem of momentum. He's hit the water at roughly 240mph/380kph. How deep is that momentum going to carry him before the force of buoyancy finally halts his fall--remembering that if he sticks out his arms to slow himself down, the water will probably rip them out of their sockets and he won't be able to do any more swimming.

My point is that he is going to go pretty deep. He might simply run out of oxygen and lose consciousness, once again making him incapable of directing his own motion.

If I fell off the Golden Gate Bridge and lived to tell about it, without spending the rest of my life as a quadriplegic, I would feel so lucky that I'd probably stop being depressed.

I have a friend who merely jumped off of a second-story balcony into a hotel swimming pool as a joke. He's been a quadriplegic ever since.

 

I suppose that's a qualitatively different question and probably needs its own thread. This discussion is about people who are facing an imminent end to their life simply hastening it. The key moral issues center on the facts that they're in serious discomfort and/or indignity, that they cannot be cured and given many more years of more-or-less healthy, dignified life, that their loved ones are already grieving, that they have already performed all of the appropriate transfers or attentuations of responsibility, so the future that society wants them to choose will only A) satisfy a moral code developed by an earlier culture with whose tenets we are increasingly at odds and B) siphon off their money into the treasury of the pointless-life-extension industry.

For a healthy person to make that choice is, well... it's not really the same choice, is it? Assuming by "healthy" you include psychological health. Then we have the amusing paradox that the same society which strives to deny the right to die to people who are healthy would define anyone who wants to commit suicide as "unhealthy."

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In any case, this person may leave his employer in the lurch, his spouse in stunned grief, his children orphaned, his dog in the pound, his band without a drummer, and/or his creditors taking five cents on the dollar once they've seized and sold his underwater-mortgaged house. Peace for him, perhaps, but not for those he leaves behind. I would suggest, as a minimum, that a seemingly healthy person contemplating suicide should be counseled. The result should be a list of things that have to be taken care of first... and a resolve to take care of them.

Old people who are already on a first-name basis with the Grim Reaper don't have such a long list, and we have already been tending to it. We sure don't have minor children in the house! The Mrs. and I already have wills that go down to the level of detail of transfering ownership of our pets (and the money to care for them) to an organization that's in the business of caring for pets whose owners have died. And we have people who check in on us frequently enough to know when it's time to drop in and collect the pets (before they've missed too many meals) and spirit them away to that organization.

Perhaps the catchy slogan I'm looking for is: Death with dignity... and responsibility!

Yeah okay, so maybe we'll carve out this exception, which nonetheless won't be easy to define. Don't we all have a "mental illness" or two? Still, I understand that some people are wired so wrong, or have been damaged so badly, that there is no hope for them... or if there is they might have to spend ten more years of intolerable pain (and perhaps equally intolerable therapy) before they get to it.

Why should I have to die a gruesome death? Only because you guys make it so difficult for those of us who want to change it into a peaceful one.

For all my ranting I'm a good American and I actually support Freedom of Religion. If only for the very pragmatic reason that societies that don't have it invariably end up being worse than ours. But that doesn't mean that religious people should get to tell the rest of us how to live.

 

If you argue against assisted suicide every time the subject comes up as strenuously as you do here, then you are indeed attempting to affect the opinions, morality and politics of your friends, family, colleagues, and people you interact with in other milieux. Either to strengthen the resolve of those who agree with you or to persuade those who don't that they're wrong.

Yes yes I understand that you're just one person and your individual effect on American culture is too small to measure. But you're one of tens of millions who share your attitude. Tens of millions of you do indeed have an aggregate effect on the country's culture and politics.

And that effect is, precisely, to make it difficult--in fact nearly impossible--for my wife and me to make the end-of-life preparations which, for us, would lead to the least unpleasant and most socially responsible conclusion.

So yes, you are in fact one of "you guys," unless you limit your discourse on this subject to places like SciForums, where it's not only appropriate but encouraged to disagree with people vociferously on extremely personal issues.

Despite my sometimes caustic disagreement with Wynn, I think its extremely unfair and even rude to accuse him of trolling. (Her? I forgot how that question was resolved, if at all.) As I opined before, I think this issue touches a nerve and evokes a strong reaction, for reasons that perhaps he himself can't figure out. Let the man talk. He's certainly being polite about all this, despite our hostility. A model SciForums member, if you ask me.

That's okay, it touches a nerve and evokes a strong reaction in me too. Of course an important difference is that you all know why: My wife and I are old enough for this to be a prominent issue in our lives. Even though we're both blessed (and I use the word metaphorically, not literally) with the rather good health typical of the War Babies mini-generation, no one can escape the cold hard numbers in the actuarial tables. The odds of one of us dying in the next two or three years are low enough to pay in advance for our next vacation, yet also too great to ignore completely.

And we are completely stymied by the quite reasonable scenario of one of us having a stroke in a public place and being trundled off to the ER by kind, well-meaning EMT's, over the objections of the other one (if he or she happens to even be there). From that moment the probability is high that he or she will never again be capable and/or permitted to make his or her own end-of-life decisions.

As I already pointed out:

• DNR orders are a fucking joke in America.
• "Doctor Death" will not be allowed through the front door of any hospital in the country.
• The only remaining option is for the healthy spouse to miraculously sneak the bulky gear and materials needed for an assisted suicide past the guards, orderlies and nurses and into the room of the spouse who wants to die, to miraculously find it unattended, and to miraculously have enough time to assemble everything and execute the procedure successfully. (The article I keep citing did not tell us how long it takes but I'd guess at least 20 minutes for someone who has never done it before, and it doesn't seem to be something you could practice on a mannequin.)

And then after it's over they'll certainly know who did it and the surviving spouse will be arrested and prosecuted. I'd rather suffer a traditional American prolonged, despondent, humiliating, estate-depleting death than put my wife through that.

It's a goddamned shame that this is my only choice! And yes, I hold Wynn collectively responsible for this state of affairs. If it were not for him and the millions like him, who believe that for some unfathomable reason they should be able to decide how the rest of us are allowed to take care of our own business (and doesn't this sound an awful lot like the way religious people think? "You're an unenlightened idiot so we have a responsibility to protect you from your own bad choices"), we would be able to take care of our own business!