Belgian doctors to euthanise healthy 24-year-old woman suffering from depression

[Shaker]

Mental illness is a totally different scenario to 'End of life' illness. My wife has worked in mental health services and it's not uncommon for suicidal patients to make a complete recovery.

That's splendid but my previous question remains unanswered. What of those who don't?

P.S. I wasn't suggesting that the mentally ill ought to kill themselves, simply pointing out the obvious truth that they can.

In the current system-which-isn't-a-system - let's call it the current state of affairs then - many (but not all) people are able to kill themselves by a variety of methods which can be (a) uncertain, with the potential for the act to be non-lethal and leaving the subject with long-lasting or permanent physical and/or psychological damage; (b) painful; (c) messy; (d) undignified; (e) protracted; (f) highly distressing for those who find the body or (g) any mixture of the preceding. Is this a desirable state of affairs? I say no.

[floo]

Evidently the heat today has done something to send your ability to comprehend short and simple sentences very badly awry. Have a cold drink and go indoors with a fan on or something.

I have noticed that cyberman doesn't seem to be comprehending today!

[L.A.]

That's splendid but my previous question remains unanswered. What of those who don't?

I'm sure you realise as well as I do that there is no simple answer to that question. Many treatments and therapies need to be tried. Support groups can make a huge difference. These people can be saved.

In the current system-which-isn't-a-system - let's call it the current state of affairs then - many (but not all) people are able to kill themselves by a variety of methods which can be (a) uncertain, with the potential for the act to be non-lethal and leaving the subject with long-lasting or permanent physical and/or psychological damage; (b) painful; (c) messy; (d) undignified; (e) protracted or (f) any mixture of the preceding. Is this a desirable state of affairs? I say no.

In a free society, people generally are able to kill themselves if they choose. I'm not saying this is a good thing but it's the way it is.

[Shaker]

I'm sure you realise as well as I do that there is no simple answer to that question. Many treatments and therapies need to be tried. Support groups can make a huge difference. These people can be saved.

All of them?

In a free society, people generally are able to kill themselves if they choose. I'm not saying this is a good thing but it's the way it is.

Why isn't it a good thing? You have a way of answering just slightly past the point of a sentence or statement which is almost, but not quite, entirely irrelevant. Is it right that people attempt to kill themselves (whether they succeed or not) by any number of methods the possibilities of which I listed (a) to (f) in my previous post?

[ProfessorDavey]

As I pointed out earlier, mental illness is treatable.

In all cases all of the time, or in only some cases some of the time?

While I fully accept that current treatments are not perfect, they can work for many, so offering such people an easy-option of suicide does not seem like a good idea.

What do you propose to do with the not-many?

Secondly, (as has been mentioned) those who are physically fit do not need any assistance to kill themselves.

Those who desperately need an option of euthanasia are those who are facing a slow painful/humiliating death but are physically incapable of taking action themselves or travelling to an overseas facility.

Perhaps it has a lot to do with the fact that killing people medically (typically via a large dose of barbiturates) is easy, quick, painless, dignified and certain whereas typical suicide methods (depending on specific method) are none of these.

You wish to die. You can either throw yourself beneath a train, with all that that entails for trauma to the driver, the team needed to scrape up the bits, delay and disruption etc., or you can fall asleep in bed and never wake up. Your call.

Mental illness is a totally different scenario to 'End of life' illness. My wife has worked in mental health services and it's not uncommon for suicidal patients to make a complete recovery.

No sensible person would do anything to make suicide easier for the mentally ill but no truly compassionate person would wish for a prolonged painful death for a terminally ill patient.


P.S. I wasn't suggesting that the mentally ill ought to kill themselves, simply pointing out the obvious truth that they can.

I find it frightening that some posters here cannot see the difference between "end of life" illness, and mental illness where the person can make a full recovery.



It sounds as if some of them would be quite happy to murder them even though the people with mental illness makes them very vulnerable at that period in time.

Can they  give their unbiased consent at that moment in time? I don't think so.

As someone who has had to deal with a situation recently, involving a vunerable person close to me, personally, their attitude is coming across as hard cold and unempathetic.

They are coming across as decidedly "callous"


Especially Shaker!

You seem to be 'tarring' all with the same brush, albeit with special focus on Shaker.

My involvement in this discussion is firstly to indicate why someone who wants to die might wish for medical assistance to help them rather than doing it themselves.

But additionally I have expressed my concerns over consent issues where someone is suffering from severe depression.

I also acknowledge that for many people depression is readily treatable and for them to be assisted in dying during a period where the depression is severe and treatment is not working wouldn't be right. However treatment is not successful for everyone, and there are people whose lives are permanently blighted and 'unlovable' due to the severest forms of depression. So the question is about those people, in other words people who:

1. Have suffered with very severe depression over many, many years.
2. Have attempted a variety of treatment option none of which have worked
3. Whose depression is such that they consider their life isn't worth living
4. Have a sure and settled view that they would prefer to die rather than continue to live a life so blighted by their illness
5. Want their suicide to be sure to succeed, to be painless and dignified
6. Do not consider that they can achieve (5) without medical assistance

and crucially

7. Are considered to have the capacity to consent.

I am not giving an answer because I think this is one of the hardest of hard cases for medical ethics, but maybe we can focus on a patient in those circumstances, and they do exist.

[Shaker]

Evidently the heat today has done something to send your ability to comprehend short and simple sentences very badly awry. Have a cold drink and go indoors with a fan on or something.

I have noticed that cyberman doesn't seem to be comprehending today!

I don't think it is Cyberman who isn't comprehending.

Just those who think it is ok to kill anyone they consider too much bother, and a bit of a embarrassing and inconvenient nuisance.

Mental health costs money I suppose, far cheaper to bump them off.

Especially if their particular illness involves wanting to die, at a given moment in time.

This is nothing to do with cost or inconvenience or any of the other feeble and fatuous Heinz 57 straw men your addled pate can dream up because you haven't the wits to argue on-topic with the details at hand as they actually are instead of how you think they are. This is entirely about Mill's principle of the sovereignty of the individual - what Kant would call treating people as ends in themselves (competent consenting subjects) and not as means to some other end, invariably as pawns for the (with assisted suicide as with abortion, often Catholic) god-botherers and their usual tedious perennial hobbyhorses.

[floo]

Evidently the heat today has done something to send your ability to comprehend short and simple sentences very badly awry. Have a cold drink and go indoors with a fan on or something.

I have noticed that cyberman doesn't seem to be comprehending today!

I don't think it is Cyberman who isn't comprehending.

Just those who think it is ok to kill anyone they consider too much bother, and a bit of a embarrassing and inconvenient nuisance.

Mental health costs money I suppose, far cheaper to bump them off.

Especially if their particular illness involves wanting to die, at a given moment in time.

Oh don't be so very silly. If a person genuinely wants to die because their life is unbearable due to physical or mental illness, they should have that right, always providing they are deemed capable of making the decision.

[Keith Maitland]

Eudaimonia or euthanasia? The latter being the only affirmative option after the irreparable failure to attain, or exercise, the former? Otherwise, at best, interminal ennui?

A question of ethics, not preference: does it harm or help more to assist or frustrate an uncoerced demand to die?

[Shaker]

I think that what's often at work in discussions such as these is that a majority of people desperately want to maintain a Pollyanna-ish facade that everybody can be cured eventually and there'll be a happily-ever-after for everyone in the end, if only there's enough time and effort and money spent in treating them - enough encouragement, enough support, enough medication, enough therapy ... When people like me and Professor Davey come along and point out, quite reasonably, (a) that this isn't true because (b) there are some people - not a numerous class but they do exist - whose lives are utterly ruined by mental illneses such as depression and stay ruined all their lives long, who earnestly and consistently wish to seek an end to their existences (as per the Prof.'s excellent #93), some people just don't know how to react to this ... perhaps since, given that one in four people suffer from some sort of mental illness at some point, it could in principle be any one of us. Not too many people can face up to the fact that some people simply have permanently near-unendurably miserable lives, who feel as though they'd be better off dead and who is to say they are wrong?

Who wants to think that it could be them?

[ProfessorDavey]

I think that what's often at work in discussions such as these is that a majority of people desperately want to maintain a Pollyanna-ish facade that everybody can be cured eventually and there'll be a happily-ever-after for everyone in the end, if only there's enough time and effort and money spent in treating them. When people like me and Professor Davey come along and point out, quite reasonably, that there are some people - not a numerous class but they do exist - whose lives are utterly ruined by mental illneses such as depression and stay ruined all their lives long, who earnestly and consistently wish to seek an end to their existences (as per the Prof.'s excellent #93), some people just don't know how to react to this ... perhaps since, given that one in four people suffer from some sort of mental illness at some point, it could in principle be any one of us. Not too many people can face up to the fact that some people simply have permanently near-unendurably miserable lives with equanimity.

I think that is right.

Cases that fit with my 7 criteria do exist. We might not wish them to, but that's another matter. In the real world they do.

Now they are likely to be rare, but that doesn't mean they aren't worthy of our consideration in exactly the same manner as any other patient. Again I am not saying I have the answer, but the answer is never to pretend these hard cases don't exist.

And it isn't just mental illness. I have watched both my parents die of cancer. In both cases their lives were clearly tolerably until almost the very end, but the clear distress and suffering both faced in their last few days was clear and obvious. And yet you hear people come out with glib comments that with good palliative care no-one need be in pain, distress of suffer at the end of life. It isn't true. They received excellent palliative care in a specialist unit but in neither case was their final few days free from pain, extreme distress and suffering.

We have to address these issues - we have to face the world as it is now, not the world as we might wish it to be by brushing the 'hard' cases under the carpet, pretending they don't exist.

[Shaker]

I think that is right.

Cases that fit with my 7 criteria do exist. We might not wish them to, but that's another matter. In the real world they do.

Now they are likely to be rare, but that doesn't mean they aren't worthy of our consideration in exactly the same manner as any other patient. Again I am not saying I have the answer, but the answer is never to pretend these hard cases don't exist.

And it isn't just mental illness. I have watched both my parents die of cancer. In both cases their lives were clearly tolerably until almost the very end, but the clear distress and suffering both faced in their last few days was clear and obvious. And yet you hear people come out with glib comments that with good palliative care no-one need be in pain, distress of suffer at the end of life. It isn't true. They received excellent palliative care in a specialist unit but in neither case was their final few days free from pain, extreme distress and suffering.

We have to address these issues - we have to face the world as it is now, not the world as we might wish it to be by brushing the 'hard' cases under the carpet, pretending they don't exist.

I am sorry to hear of your parents, and sorry for you

We are challenging a belief system here. That belief system may have elements of formal, organised religions mixed into it but in a way it's akin to a religious belief in its own right - the just world hypothesis (q.v.) where bad people get their just desserts and good people have long and happy lives, where dearly loved parents don't have cancer (your case) or die too early (mine) and nobody's son, daughter, brother, sister or anything else has a life, all of it, royally shat on from a great height by mental illness. And yet these things do happen; and as with all religious beliefs, when the belief bangs up against reality which says otherwise the believer has the option of reaching for the most ridiculous, inane, far-fetched pseudo-explanations in order to rationalise the belief, or abandoning it.

It all depends on how desperate you are to hang on to the belief, I guess. Most seem to go for the first option.

They say that hard cases make bad law. Correct, no doubt. But like you I'm irritated by those who blithely wave aside the hard cases as though being few in number means they don't need to be addressed. And I'm the one called callous 

[ProfessorDavey]

I think that is right.

Cases that fit with my 7 criteria do exist. We might not wish them to, but that's another matter. In the real world they do.

Now they are likely to be rare, but that doesn't mean they aren't worthy of our consideration in exactly the same manner as any other patient. Again I am not saying I have the answer, but the answer is never to pretend these hard cases don't exist.

And it isn't just mental illness. I have watched both my parents die of cancer. In both cases their lives were clearly tolerably until almost the very end, but the clear distress and suffering both faced in their last few days was clear and obvious. And yet you hear people come out with glib comments that with good palliative care no-one need be in pain, distress of suffer at the end of life. It isn't true. They received excellent palliative care in a specialist unit but in neither case was their final few days free from pain, extreme distress and suffering.

We have to address these issues - we have to face the world as it is now, not the world as we might wish it to be by brushing the 'hard' cases under the carpet, pretending they don't exist.

I am sorry to hear of your parents, and sorry for you

We are challenging a belief system here. That belief system may have elements of formal, organised religions mixed into it but in a way it's akin to a religious belief in its own right - the just world hypothesis (q.v.) where bad people get their just desserts and good people have long and happy lives, where dearly loved parents don't have cancer (your case) or die too early (mine) and nobody's son, daughter, brother, sister or anything else has a life, all of it, royally shat on from a great height by mental illness. And yet these things do happen; and as with all religious beliefs, when the belief bangs up against reality which says otherwise the believer has the option of reaching for the most ridiculous, inane, far-fetched pseudo-explanations in order to rationalise the belief, or abandon it.

It all depends on how desperate you are to hang on to the belief, I guess.

I think it is more complicated than that.

There are many people who, in the hypothetical world, pretend these cases don't exist and therefore those hard questions don't need answering. But in the real world they know they do, because many people will have lived them too. My examples (and by the way both my parents died too young in my view - both between 70 and 80) aren't uncommon at all - indeed talk to the palliative care nurses and the kind of experience over the last 2-3 days of life I experienced with my mum and dad are pretty standard. So many people who want to pretend these things don't happen will have experienced them too with their loved ones.

Now again I'm not saying I have an answer, just that we have to face these hard ethical dilemmas. In my case do I think my mum and dad wanted to die in the last few days of live - yes, there is very little doubt - they had had enough, enough of the pain, enough of the suffering of the distress of the indignity. And crucially in those last few days they had deteriorated to an extent (in part driven by the morphine load needed to control pain) that no meaningful interaction with loved ones was possible  any more.

What do I think they (and I) would have done had their been an option to end their lives a couple of days before they actually died to avoid those horrible last few hours. I don't know.

[floo]

I think that what's often at work in discussions such as these is that a majority of people desperately want to maintain a Pollyanna-ish facade that everybody can be cured eventually and there'll be a happily-ever-after for everyone in the end, if only there's enough time and effort and money spent in treating them. When people like me and Professor Davey come along and point out, quite reasonably, that there are some people - not a numerous class but they do exist - whose lives are utterly ruined by mental illneses such as depression and stay ruined all their lives long, who earnestly and consistently wish to seek an end to their existences (as per the Prof.'s excellent #93), some people just don't know how to react to this ... perhaps since, given that one in four people suffer from some sort of mental illness at some point, it could in principle be any one of us. Not too many people can face up to the fact that some people simply have permanently near-unendurably miserable lives with equanimity.

I think that is right.

Cases that fit with my 7 criteria do exist. We might not wish them to, but that's another matter. In the real world they do.

Now they are likely to be rare, but that doesn't mean they aren't worthy of our consideration in exactly the same manner as any other patient. Again I am not saying I have the answer, but the answer is never to pretend these hard cases don't exist.

And it isn't just mental illness. I have watched both my parents die of cancer. In both cases their lives were clearly tolerably until almost the very end, but the clear distress and suffering both faced in their last few days was clear and obvious. And yet you hear people come out with glib comments that with good palliative care no-one need be in pain, distress of suffer at the end of life. It isn't true. They received excellent palliative care in a specialist unit but in neither case was their final few days free from pain, extreme distress and suffering.

We have to address these issues - we have to face the world as it is now, not the world as we might wish it to be by brushing the 'hard' cases under the carpet, pretending they don't exist.

My father was terminally ill with prostate cancer in 2005, he was in a lot of pain which his morphine dose wasn't easing. As a family we insisted the dose was upped so he wasn't in any pain even though we were warned the result would be his death. He died within hours of the does being increased. We were relieved he was no longer suffering.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

I think that is right.

Cases that fit with my 7 criteria do exist. We might not wish them to, but that's another matter. In the real world they do.

Now they are likely to be rare, but that doesn't mean they aren't worthy of our consideration in exactly the same manner as any other patient. Again I am not saying I have the answer, but the answer is never to pretend these hard cases don't exist.

And it isn't just mental illness. I have watched both my parents die of cancer. In both cases their lives were clearly tolerably until almost the very end, but the clear distress and suffering both faced in their last few days was clear and obvious. And yet you hear people come out with glib comments that with good palliative care no-one need be in pain, distress of suffer at the end of life. It isn't true. They received excellent palliative care in a specialist unit but in neither case was their final few days free from pain, extreme distress and suffering.

We have to address these issues - we have to face the world as it is now, not the world as we might wish it to be by brushing the 'hard' cases under the carpet, pretending they don't exist.

I am sorry to hear of your parents, and sorry for you

We are challenging a belief system here. That belief system may have elements of formal, organised religions mixed into it but in a way it's akin to a religious belief in its own right - the just world hypothesis (q.v.) where bad people get their just desserts and good people have long and happy lives, where dearly loved parents don't have cancer (your case) or die too early (mine) and nobody's son, daughter, brother, sister or anything else has a life, all of it, royally shat on from a great height by mental illness. And yet these things do happen; and as with all religious beliefs, when the belief bangs up against reality which says otherwise the believer has the option of reaching for the most ridiculous, inane, far-fetched pseudo-explanations in order to rationalise the belief, or abandoning it.

It all depends on how desperate you are to hang on to the belief, I guess. Most seem to go for the first option.

They say that hard cases make bad law. Correct, no doubt. But like you I'm irritated by those who blithely wave aside the hard cases as though being few in number means they don't need to be addressed. And I'm the one called callous 

You are trying to make out that this is a ''fact'' movement against a religious movement. It isn't.
What you represent is a hegemony desiring Lordship over what you see as the lesser population that has got to include the power of life and death.

[Shaker]

What you represent is a hegemony desiring Lordship over what you see as the lesser population that has got to include the power of life and death.

Oh, bullshit.

Delusion knows no bounds with you, does it?

[Shaker]

What a lot of rubbish! This has nothing to do with religious belief.

No? Who is more likely to be found agitating to deny people freedom and choice in their own destinies and in the course and conduct of their own lives and deaths - atheists or religionists?

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Delusion knows no bounds with you, does it?

You are the one who thinks he represents ''the Facts''.

[Shaker]

... which is more than you've ever done or will ever do.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

... which is more than you've ever done or will ever do.

Any evidence Shaker?...........or is it just sanctimonious Shakeshit?

[Shaker]

It's not either, or

It's certainly not an answer to the question I posed, that's for sure.

[cyberman]

Evidently the heat today has done something to send your ability to comprehend short and simple sentences very badly awry. Have a cold drink and go indoors with a fan on or something.

I have noticed that cyberman doesn't seem to be comprehending today!

I don't think it is Cyberman who isn't comprehending.

Just those who think it is ok to kill anyone they consider too much bother, and a bit of a embarrassing and inconvenient nuisance.

Mental health costs money I suppose, far cheaper to bump them off.

Especially if their particular illness involves wanting to die, at a given moment in time.

Oh don't be so very silly. If a person genuinely wants to die because their life is unbearable due to physical or mental illness, they should have that right, always providing they are deemed capable of making the decision.

She does have the right to die. Suicide is not illegal. the question which shaker was pretending not to understand was - why does she need a doctor to kill her? why can't she just kill herself?

[Shaker]

Shaker understood the question and answered it. Why are you pretending not to understand the answer? Or are you not pretending at all and just, in fact, stupid?

[cyberman]

Shaker understood the question and answered it. Why are you pretending not to understand the answer? Or are you not pretending at all and just, in fact, stupid?

You know you have not answeed the question. Why wouldn't she take some prescribed meds, prescribed for the purpose (just like they do in Switzerland) and kill herself? 

Your only answer has been to say that she wants to die, doesn't want to use a train, and wants to die peacefully in bed. You have not explained why that requires someone else to kill her.

And you know you haven't, which is why all you can do is keep repeating the lie "I have answered that and you're just to stupid to see it" (rather like the emperor's new clothes).

Why does she need to be killed rather then kill herself?

[BashfulAnthony]

Shaker understood the question and answered it. Why are you pretending not to understand the answer? Or are you not pretending at all and just, in fact, stupid?

[/b]

Usual recourse to casting aspersions on someone's intelligence  -  and this from the professor of all-knowledge:  philosopher, theologian, scientist, and anything else you care to mention!!

[jeremyp]

Surely helping a person to end appalling suffering is better than living in a state of utmost misery?

If assisted dying became legal in this country, I would be prepared to help people die if proper training was offered first.

So you walk in on a friend who you know suffers from depression but they are unconscious on the floor having apparently taken an overdose of pills.  I would call an ambulance.  What would you do?