Why are people forced to live involuntarily?

Discussion in 'Ethics, Morality, & Justice' started by Mr. Hamtastic, Aug 30, 2008.

  1. Asguard Kiss my dark side Valued Senior Member

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    mr ham, if you honestly think that death should be your choice alone why did you tell me not to apologise for trying to stop you?
     
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  3. CheskiChips Banned Banned

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    Our society values life highly. When someone considers murdering someone else, we consider them mentally unstable (even if they have only attempted to do it) and therefore unable to make lasting binded choices. When a person considers murdering himself, he's also considered unstable and unable to make the same choices.
     
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  5. Bells Staff Member

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    It stands to reason that they care about you just as much and would feel pain and suffering if you were to kill yourself. No one can force you to live. That is something that remains solely in your hands, accidents and illness aside of course. You just need to ask yourself one question. And that question is whether you care enough about yourself and your loved one's to try to fight to remain alive and not be drawn into suicide. You are still alive, so we can assume that you wish to fight for yourself and for them.

    Do not kid yourself. Suicide has a tremendous impact on those left behind and it will remain with them for the rest of their lives.. And that impact is not a positive one. I know people who have taken that route in their suffering and pain and I can assure you, their loved one's still feel the pain of their loss on a daily basis.

    I can understand why someone in the end stages of a terminal illness would want to kill themselves and I doubt their loved one's would try to force them to remain alive and be in physical and mental pain for their (loved one's) own personal benefit until they die of their disease. That would be unbearable for the terminally ill individual, and to force them to live with that kind of pain when they do not want to is unethical and, for lack of a better term, an act of cruelty. But the man dying of AIDS and you are two completely different cases and situation.

    Do you think a person with a mental illness or suffering from depression is the same as someone who is in the final stages of cancer, for example,? Do you consider yourself in the same boat as the poor fellow you met in the psychiatric hospital? While the pain you might be feeling is mental and physical, you are physically healthy and have every reason to live (wife, kids, pets, friends and family). You have a life to live and you have a future (compared a person with a terminal illness faces the prospect that the end of their life is fast approaching and that road will be a painful and horrible one). Whether you wish to accept that is up to you entirely.

    I can assure you, if a person in the end stages of a personal illness were given a chance to live, they would grasp it with both hands and run with it. Do you wish to do the same with your life?
     
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  7. Challenger78 Valued Senior Member

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    Euthanasia is different from suicide. To look at it cynically, The state can still use you for forced labour if need be.
     
  8. visceral_instinct Monkey see, monkey denigrate Valued Senior Member

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    Is a slim chance that such a thing will be created reason enough to force someone to keep suffering?

    If you're dying of AIDS and you still want to fight, fair enough. But don't force that on someone else. That's considering your own beliefs and not his/her reality.
     
  9. Cellar_Door Whose Worth's unknown Registered Senior Member

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    There is a difference between Euthanasia and allowing people to kill themselves because they are heartbroken or depressed. If you are in the last stages of HIV, there is very little hope for you. If you find out your wife is going to leave you, and take the kids with her, then although it seems like the world has come to an end, there will come a time when you are glad you didn't end it all then.
    Life has crushing lows and amazing highs, do you not agree there are certain times when it's best to make an important decision and other times when it would be inadvisable?
     
  10. visceral_instinct Monkey see, monkey denigrate Valued Senior Member

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    Yes and I was referring to the AIDS scenario.

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  11. Oli Heute der Enteteich... Registered Senior Member

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    Okay, when would be a good time to make that sort of decision?
    It's not like it turns up out of the blue, it's deeply considered (over a long period in some cases).
     
  12. Norsefire Salam Shalom Salom Registered Senior Member

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    11,529
    Euthanasia is one of the few liberal things that I approve of.
     
  13. Asguard Kiss my dark side Valued Senior Member

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    can i just point out to people that to compare "your wife leaving you" with true clinical depression is a fase.

    yes loss and grief can LEAD to depression and even cause similar acute symptioms they are 2 compleatly seperate things. to the point that if your partner dies unless you already suffer depression you cant actually be concidered to be clinically depressed for i think 6 months to eliminate the grief
     
  14. Asguard Kiss my dark side Valued Senior Member

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    23,049
    bells whats worse psychological pain or physical pain?

    for instance would you rather see your children tourchered or be tourched yourself physically?

    humans are VERY suseptable to psychological pain which can be more painful than physical pain, this is why self mulitilation exists. the physical pain of being cut dampens the physchological pain and can be treated.

    now if we take the case of bipolar there IS no cure, treatments exist but are not 100% effective, as you age you slide more towards cronic depression

    how is that any different from living with cancer?
     
  15. Mr. Hamtastic whackawhackado! Registered Senior Member

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    4,492
    So to sum up-It's ok to kill somebody that has a terminal physical illness but not one with a terminal mental illness. It is more appropriate to kill someone else than to kill yourself. Causing your children ongoing psychological trauma is better than a brief sharp trauma followed by a lifetime of healing.

    Alrightythen
     
  16. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    37,884
    That's a new one on me, I confess

    A "terminal mental illness"?

    What, exactly, does that diagnosis look like? I mean, when I was sixteen, finding out that the girl you liked was fucking a complete sleazeball could inspire what felt like a terminal mental illness. Don't take me wrongly; I would think a TMI would be something more substantial and severe, but I don't actually know what you mean by the phrase.
     
  17. Asguard Kiss my dark side Valued Senior Member

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    23,049
    tiassa firstly depression and other mental illnesses kill through suicide and risk taking behavor like reckless driving and drug and achole abuse

    secondly we already have people on palitive care orders whos OWNLY complaint is massive chronic pain.

    as i said what is worse, physical or psychological pain?
    i dont know the answer to that but i do know that mophine can treat physical pain but the psychological?

    bipolar is a chronic illness with a close to zero chance of cure, in MOST cases it can be controled but not all. even those that can be controled require large doses of mind altering drugs which have to be taken constantly and alot of people eventually figure that the treatment is worse than the cure

    if we take the HIV example the treatments which are avialable have a 98% success rates at preventing the dieases from progressing into AID's, yet the drugs needed are VERY complicated. some have to be taken with food, some without, some with fatty foods ect ect and ALL of them have to be taken at the EXACT same time every day.

    its quite concivable that after 20 years a pt might just decide that they would rather die than keep taking all these drugs, under the Australian medical system the right to refuse treatment is the pts choice EXCEPT for treatment for a mental illness.

    so a pt with HIV can decide they are ready to die but someone with bipolar cant

    is that right?
    which is the worse disorder?
     
  18. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    37,884
    Er ... um ... okay

    Nonetheless, these do not amount to terminal mental illnesses.

    We might as well revive the bumper sticker that says, "Life is a 100% fatal sexually transmitted disease".

    How is a terminal AIDS patient the same as a "terminal" bipolar patient?

    Seriously, if the terminal AIDS patient doesn't kill himself, the disease will finish the job. If a bipolar doesn't kill himself ...? Believe me, I understand a bit about the risky behavior and depression, but no. The suggested breadth of the definition seems to imply that if I die of lung cancer, it might actually be terminal depression that compelled me to smoke for years. And that's ... well, as a social services issue, there is an abstract merit, but as a medical diagnosis, no.

    A truly terminal mental illness would leave no room for doubt. Nobody—even the vigilant—would see it coming.
     
  19. Asguard Kiss my dark side Valued Senior Member

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    ahh but HIV ISNT terminal, in 98% of cases it can be controled, so how do you explaine that?
    could well be that the reason the HIV pt went off there meds and is there for terminal is no different from the reason i smoke (ie depression)
     
  20. lepustimidus Banned Banned

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    979
    He said AIDS, Asguard, not HIV. There's a difference. But I guess you could quibble about whether AIDS is chronic or terminal. Notably, it's usually not AIDS which kills you, but a different infection that takes hold as a result of immunodeficiency.
     
  21. Asguard Kiss my dark side Valued Senior Member

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    i realise that, however how different actually IS it to the difference between nicotine adiction and lung cancer.

    i must point out however that i am talking about AIDS and HIV in the sence of countries which have low to no direct cost, universal health care, where treatments are freely and reliably avilable like Australia and europe. not getting into a debate about the lack of health care in the US and i dont mean to compare it to poor areas of africa where the treatments symply dont exist.
     
  22. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    24,690
    As most of the members know, I'm both a capital L and small l libertarian. One of the most basic tenets of our philosophy and planks in our party platform is: Consenting adults must have the right to do anything they want, so long as it causes no direct harm to others.

    We interpret rules very conservatively, so that "direct harm" thing isn't open to a lot of argument. It means you can't decide to go out and shoot somebody, steal his car, tear up his lawn or lie to his boss so he loses his job. It does NOT mean that you can't decide to quit your job and go back to school because it will cause hardship for your wife and children. That's not DIRECT harm.

    Based on that bit of common sense, it follows that you also have the right to kill yourself, even it it's going to cause hardship for your wife and children.

    So my position on this question is as simple as that. Every adult must have the right to do whatever he wants to his own body. Including letting it get fat and lazy, not getting it medical treatment, taking it out for a motorcycle ride with no helmet, filling it with enjoyable but occasionally harmful drugs... or killing it.

    Yes I know that some people are impulsive and have poor judgment, and might kill themselves in a fit of depression, when tomorrow might be a better day if only they were more patient. And it's the job of their friends and family, who know them very well, to tell them that IF IT'S TRUE.

    The problem with letting the government make this decision for them is that the government is unutterably stupid and cannot be trusted to make important decisions. I know Azzy is going to jump in now and insist that the Aussie government is wise and kind and never does anything stupid and I'll have to take his word for it. But the government in my country doesn't know its ass from a hole in the ground and hasn't made a correct decision in decades. They are the absolute last people who should be in charge of deciding whether people should live or die. (Yes that means no U.S. government employee should be allowed to have a gun.)

    The government was wrong when it decided that all those people in Afghanistan and Iraq had to die. Why should we assume it's any less likely to be wrong when it tells your buddy that he has to LIVE?
     
  23. Asguard Kiss my dark side Valued Senior Member

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    23,049
    god you missread me mate, i never EVER said that the goverment was "wise". my argument with you is wether we a) pay them only to forbid as you seem to want or wether we pay them to provide services as is ovious in australia and b) wether the pollies self interest or a company executives self interest works more in the PUBLICS interest.

    my opinion is that companies working in there own self interest work AGAINST the public good MORE often than pollies wishing to get re-elected.

    this is shown in health care most acutly, if the goverment wishes to stay in power they provide a level of health care DEMANDED by the public, a private insurance company works in its own best interest by DENIYING health care.

    there is a HUGE difference between that and what your aleging.

    the issue with mental health care and involentary detention has to with wether a person who is mentally ill has the capacity to act in there own best interests
     

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