Suicide and Euthanasia

[Lokasenna]

I think euthanasia should be a basic human right. In many ways, it's rather ridiculous that it's still illegal in this country, as 90% of GPs have admitted in anonymous polls that they've carried it out. Some people argue that its legalisation would put too much power in the hands of doctors, and would lead to moral gray areas; that said, the hippocratic oath did nothing to stop a monster like Harold Shipman, and think if the system were more open, then there would actually be more scrutiny.

As for personal experience, I have two stories to relate. Firstly, there was my grandmother, who passed away at the respectable age of 88. She was already weak from cancer, and she took a nasty tumble down the stairs that resulted in her being bed-ridden. While I have no proof, I am nonetheless convinced that one of my cousins, who is a paramedic, eased her passing, which allowed my grandmother to die peacfully at home, surrounded by family, rather than slowly in some hospital somewhere. As a family, we don't talk about it, but I think we're all grateful to my cousin for intervening.

Finally, one of my father's worst childhood memories (that haunts him to this day) is his final visit to a dying uncle of his. His uncle had advanced spinal cancer. He was lying face down on the bed, the skin of his back rotted away to point that his spine was actually exposed. The air reeked of death and decay, and as his uncle had by now completely lost all bladder and bowl control, the bed was rank with urine, feces and blood. The pain was so intense that his last days were spent screaming and vomiting. As for what he was screaming (and this had the most profound impact on my father), he was begging, pleading for someone, anyone to kill him. Over and over begging the doctor and or his family to kill him. Whether the attending physician eventually did something or not, we'll never know, but I really hope so.

Out of the two deaths, which was better? I personally know which I would prefer to go through.

[Jozanny]

I think the right to control how we die is a somewhat different cup of tea than committing active suicide over non-terminal issues, and this is the distinction I am making, though these are, of course, not hard and fast categories.

One of our local, and prominent activists has been having strokes and seizures for the last three years or so, and while it is not as graphic as what Loka describes, I do not give a high holly for the disability credo here: I draw the line at living like that when the body is telling you otherwise. This man, like his soldier who just passed some weeks back, is basically in and out of the hospital, has basically lost his mind, though he could once keep up with me; he is not particularly literary but as a woman had completed his doctor's internship before his disease took hold--that is all gone and it is probably fortunate that he can remember my name.

His partner is an extremist and believes in life at any cost. In his opinion pieces he thinks Terri Schiavo was murdered; I do not, as the autopsy evidence indicates her brain had basically shrunk to death beyond its functional ability. I am ashamed of what havoc the activists wrought in her case, and my then editor simply whimpered, "I always said we should have never gotten involved."

I have little more than contempt for that reasoning, honestly.

End of life is not easy, by far, but here I think the activists hurt themselves, as in some manner some forms of existence are worse than death.

[kiki1982]

Yes, euthanasia should not be extended to helping people to die if they are depressed... However, that's also a problem because it excludes epople with bipolar who nearly always end like that. One would for less.

If it comes to people like Terry Schiavo, I would have preferred her to be 'killed' by an overdose of morfine or whatever than by turning her food off. I mean, would you like to be starved to death? Well, actually just left without drink until you finally pass on. I find that... well, just a little 'I can't be a**ed to do anything more effective'. I mean, what they use in Switzerland, you drink it, someone stays with you, you fall into a gentle sleep and you are gone within half an hour where you were still walking around an hour ago. That is how it is done. I find turning off machines a little cruel actually.

I don't know what I would do if there was a family member in that state. I'd probably prefer them to go as well, but turning off the machine, I find so cruel. Still, if I had no choice, I'd have to.

What Lokasenna tells of was to somewhat lesser extent the case with my grandmother. She didn't go to the hospital when she discovered a lump in her breast, let it get bigger until it got to her lymph nodes in her armpit, then got a swollen arm and eventually lay in the hospital with a lot of pain barely conscious. But, Catholic Hospital, they didn't do anything but keep her alive after the lymph got onto her lungs which made breathing vey hard. Fortunately she died before she really started to decay or so like Lokasenna's great-uncle. Still, they could have made it easier forher, poor woman.

Worst thing is, now that there is a law in Belgium to allow these things, there need to be two doctors who agree on euthanasia. But Cathonlic hospitals refuse to cooperate because of which people are still left in the lurch. The single doctor who is compassionate cannot do it because he can legally be accused of murder, and frankly, you can't really drag your family member off to another hospital just so they can get euthananised can you?

So really, sometimes, it is better that there is no law. It happened in Belgium as well like in Britain. I was quite shocked when I saw in a soap series two nurses discuss the fact that 'they would probably kill her if [they] moved her' and then did it so she didn't have to suffer any longer. Certainly medical personnel had a certian freedom (though some abused it) which they have now no longer. And it has come to the point where in Belgium, before certainly doctors did it if family members asked for it, and now, they refuse, because if the corroner finds out he can be prosecuted; Before, as euthanasia didn't 'exist', there was no prosecuion involved if the process wasn't right. Now, there is defined process. So, even if the doctor feels compassionate, and even if the family want it, they cannot because the person didn't make a document or the two doctors cannot agree...

[OrphanPip]

The Quebec government is trying to decriminalize euthanasia, but the legality of it is questionable. The provincial government doesn't have the power to overturn the criminal code. A bill to legalize euthanasia was tabled in the federal parliament last year but failed to past.

[dizzydoll]

His uncle had advanced spinal cancer. He was lying face down on the bed, the skin of his back rotted away to point that his spine was actually exposed. The air reeked of death and decay, and as his uncle had by now completely lost all bladder and bowl control, the bed was rank with urine, feces and blood. The pain was so intense that his last days were spent screaming and vomiting. As for what he was screaming (and this had the most profound impact on my father), he was begging, pleading for someone, anyone to kill him. Over and over begging the doctor and or his family to kill him. Whether the attending physician eventually did something or not, we'll never know, but I really hope so.

Out of the two deaths, which was better? I personally know which I would prefer to go through.

That is so traumatic just reading that Lok. Like you I would pull the plug and be done with it, no-one deserves to die like that and no-one deserves to have to witness it either. Bless his soul for enduring that.

This poll leaves me feeling better about my brothers passing. I was so torn for so long and couldnt give a voice to my pain, now it'll get easier I hope.

[Jozanny]

kiki,

As difficult as the Schiavo case came to be, and as cold as this may sound coming from a disabled woman with life long discrimination on her back, I do not really think the woman was alive when the *evil* husband won the case to remove the feeding tube.

Now, medically, persistent vegetative states are inexact diagnoses. Doctors have been surprised by patients who woke up after a lengthy period of brain rewiring, and I even saw one remarkable case on tv where a musician made a 100 percent recovery from a brain injury because the family refused to institutionalize, and altered their lives and gave him intense therapy and round the clock support. I have never seen a case like it, honestly, which is why we can never be complacent with the pathology physicians know, but 8 times out of 10, that pathology is accurate.

Terri most likely had minimal brain stem function, such that her lungs breathed and heart beat, but the rest of her brain was dead. This is what the evidence amounts to. She never responded to any neurological therapy, and probably wasn't conscious of starvation.

In the US, passive removal of nutrient and medical technology sustaining devices is legally safer than actively drug overdosing. Now, my editor's partner countered me by saying even if she was legally brain dead, killing her was a lot like killing the disabled with minimal cognition whose limbs shook and had limited body function.

I really cannot argue with that, but I think modern humanity needs to make some hard choices about what quality of life amounts to. Anyone would say putting me to death would be wrong. I can think. I'm relatively smart--but the depth of my emotional pain did not come out of nowhere, and my inability to sustain a career, my social isolation, my constraints imposed by governmental statutory regulation that is insane, no one asks to be born into this, and this in a global superpower. Disabled contacts online have told me that it is as nearly insane in Canada and Europe as well, athough that of course I cannot judge--but we have to get better at the societies we create and stop killing each other slowly with it.

[kiki1982]

You are right about Schiavo. I do not argue that it was wrong to make her pass on... I have only my doubts about turning the food off. Even if she is not really conscious of it, even if it is legally safer (that was probably why they did that of course), still, it gnaws away at my conscience that I would let a creature in this world starve as it were. The same as I treat my plants. Well, maybe with an exception for weeds.

I agree with you as well about disabled people in society. I have found that it is better in the UK, from my perception that is, but for the rest, they seem to think that if you don't have any legs, you don't have any brain or something. As if you cannot do office work then. Even people with reduced learning abilities can do something useful which builds up their self-confidence... But I suppose it is cheaper to make 'normal' Chinese people work for a midget salary than to have disabled people work in the Western world at putting boxes together. Or even better, you buy a machine to do it... I suppose firms resent having to 'adapt' their car parks, their entrances, their inside in order to suit disabled people. That's the problem isn't it?

[Gladys]

... I have only my doubts about turning the food off.

Bedridden, my aged mother probably starved herself to the brink of death before an increased morphine dose killed her in hours. Six month earlier she had lost one leg above the knee and, soon after, the second. Her poor circulation bred bed sores and neither stump really healed, with appalling pain. But did she really want to die? In the end, it seems, the doctor decided for her.

I was reminded of Simone de Beauvoir account of her mother's terrible death in A Very Easy Death (1964) and Patrick White's The Eye of the Storm (1973).

Would legalised euthanasia have made my mother's final predicament better or worse?

[dizzydoll]

Aren't "serotonin levels in our synapses" a function, in part, of long term "attitude, worldview, lifestyle, etc"?

Our rather primitive knowledge of serotonin and its effects is substantially driven by the financial interests of pharmaceutical giants. They have less motive to research the impact of one's state of mind, dietary, exercise, social and sleep practices. The paltry research that has been reported on these life-style factors frequently correlates with depression and suicide, for instance.

I cant help but agree with you on this score. However I am back to remind us that suicide can also be a slow self-inflicted, destructive curse to some of us who drink or smoke themselves to death. I cant help wondering who on earth would choose such a slow, tortuous, uncomfortable death. And the worst part is they know it, they know their lungs, throats, skin etc were not designed to handle tobacco, and their livers are slowly dieing by any number of diseases, but they carry on regardless putting this filth into their bodies. What a painful death to choose.! So I am here to ask, why would anyone choose to kill themselves slowly like this? Gosh, isnt it better just to pull the trigger and be done with it instead of dragging it out year after year until you eventually croak?

[hillwalker]

Dizzy,

The problem with smokers and drinkers who can't stop even though they know it is wrong is not because they are chosing to kill themselves. It is a common psychological flaw in man - something called 'cognitive distortion'.

Our subconscious is unable to cope with conflicting messages - it's impossible to accept that something is right and also wrong at the same time. So your mind distorts reality to make the situation more logical.

How many times, for instance, have you given yourself excuses to drive above the speed limit? You know it's wrong, but you need to get somewhere in a rush perhaps, or a running late. So if you were to get stopped by a traffic cop you would probably come up with an excuse
- the road's empty
- I'm a careful driver, have an unblemished record
- the car behind me was tail-gating so I had to put my foot down
- I don't know why this section of road needs such a low limit, etc., etc.
We've all done it (those of us who drive).

The same applies to smokers/drinkers - they are fully aware of the medical consequences, but their body craves nicotine/alcohol.
Their subconscious knows that logically it is wrong to smoke or drink to excess but also it is right because doing so gives them pleasure.
So they kid themselves
- I know of people who smoked all their lives and never got cancer
- If I didn't smoke I'd put weight on
- I smoke low-tar so that's ok
- Smokers/Drinkers pay more taxes because they buy tobacco/alcohol so people should be grateul
- I can hold my drink better than other people
- I'm only being sociable
- there's no harm getting drunk on special occasions
- just one more for the road

So the fact is that suicidal feelings don't enter the equation.

[dizzydoll]

There are programs to help people quit smoking and drinking. I smoked all my life from 14 years old... many, many years. More than half my life, I went for hypnosis 8 or 9 years ago and stopped immediately. One of the reasons for doing this was I had this annoying little cough, and the last thing I wished was to bark over some basin every morning for the rest of my life.

Same with drinking, although not my problem I have watched friends kill themselves by drinking... a very painful death. They too had many opportunities to stop drinking but didnt preferring to let it get out of hand, so if they did eventually stop they weren't even allowed to toast at a wedding. But then again, an ex boyfriend stopped drinking many years after we broke up because he was an alcoholic. I often worried about him and was delighted to find out he had kicked the habit. Where there's a will there's a way, otherwise its slow suicide.

These two habits are slow suicide, no getting away from it. Okay, 10% will dodge the bullet, the rest of the 90%... they may as well put one in their head right now if they are to allow either of these poisons to become habits.

[Gladys]

There are programs to help people quit smoking and drinking ... These two habits are slow suicide, no getting away from it.

Most smokers and drinkers are not bent on intentionally killing themselves. So, as Hillwalker suggests, these habits are not strictly 'suicidal'.

[hillwalker]

On a similar note, there are other lifestyle choices that could also be considered 'slow suicide' - such as living on junk food, over-consumption of calories in general, couch-potato syndrome, and other forms of drug-taking.....
And in every case the decision to fall into the destructive habit starts off with a bit of 'cognitive distortion' (as detailed in my previous post).

To make matters even worse, advertisers in general play to this weakness. They kid people into thinking that life will be unbearable without their product - be it mouthwash, mineral water, vitamin supplements or probiotic yoghurt for example.

Many medical experts would confirm that all of the above are generally unnecessary under normal conditions and do little to promote healthier living (or oral hygiene for that matter). But the message from the advertisers is so persuasive that many fall for it - telling themselves:

- it's something I don't need, but other people are using it so I'd better try it
- I really can't afford it, but obviously my life will be enriched if I get some for myself
- it's new and exciting, therefore it must be wonderful

It really is a cynical ploy to get people to spend more and more hard-earned cash on frivolities - but of course, that's how the cigarette companies worked their campaigns back in the early days, so none of us should be surprised.....

H

[caddy_caddy]

Our soul is not ours .
God gives , God takes .

[Gladys]

On a similar note, there are other lifestyle choices that could also be considered 'slow suicide' - such as living on junk food, over-consumption of calories in general, couch-potato syndrome, and other forms of drug-taking.....And in every case the decision to fall into the destructive habit starts off with a bit of 'cognitive distortion' (as detailed in my previous post).

Willy Loman, in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, is a fine example of cognitive distortion. For Willy, suicide becomes an upbeat solution to a shattered life, a way of achieving the American dream, of setting up son Biff for life. Since Willie scarcely seems to understand the nature of suicide - as we learn from wife Linda's final confusion - can we really call his car-accident death a suicide?

Maybe, many a suicide could be better described as the unintended climax of a distorted dream.