8mm
Posted on 07/08/2007 7:42:19 PM PDT by Coleus
Should laws against assisted suicide be rescinded as "paternalistic?" Should assisted suicide be transformed from what is now a crime (in most places) into a sacred "right to die"? Should assisted suicide be redefined from a form of homicide into a legitimate "medical treatment" readily available to all persistently suffering people, including to the mentally ill? According to Brown University professor Jacob M. Appel, the answer to all three of these questions is an unequivocal yes. Writing in the May-June 2007 Hastings Center Report ("A Suicide Right for the Mentally Ill?"), Appel argues in that assisted suicide should not only be available to the terminally ill, but also to people with "purely psychological disease" such as victims "of repeated bouts of severe depression," if the suicidal person "rationally might prefer dignified death over future suffering."
Given the emphasis assisted suicide advocates and the media normally give to the role of terminal illness in the assisted suicide debate, it might be tempting to dismiss Appel as a fringe rider. But he most definitely is not. Over the last several years, advocacy for what is sometimes called "rational suicide" has been growing increasingly mainstream, discussed among the bioethical and academic elite in mental health publications, academic symposia, and books. Indeed, it is worth noting that Appel's essay appeared in the world's most prestigious bioethics journal. As disturbing as Appel's proposal is—it is essentially a call for death-on-demand—it is refreshing that Appel has written so candidly. After years of focus group-tested blather from the political wing of the euthanasia movement claiming that legalizing assisted suicide would be strictly limited to the terminally ill, we finally have a clearer picture of where the right-to-die crowd wishes to take America.
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The natural trajectory of assisted suicide advocacy leads to such ever-widening expansions of killable categories: from the terminally ill, to the disabled and chronically ill, to the "tired of life" elderly, and eventually to the mentally ill. Appel understands this and approves. |
Moreover, unlike a restricted right to assisted suicide, Appel's call for near death-on-demand is logically consistent. There are two weight-bearing intellectual pillars that support euthanasia and assisted suicide advocacy: (1) a commitment to a radical individualism that includes the right to choose "the time, manner, and method of death" (often called "the ultimate civil right" by assisted suicide aficionados); and (2) the fundamental assumption that killing is an acceptable answer to the problems of human suffering. Appel describes these conjoined beliefs succinctly as the "twin goals of maximizing individual autonomy and minimizing human suffering" by avoiding "unwanted distress, both physical and psychological" through creation of a legal right "to control . . . when to end their own lives." Hoping to whistle past the graveyard, some might dismiss all of this as mere theoretical posturing. Were it so. Assisted suicides for the mentally ill are already taking place in euthanasia-friendly locales. Indeed, nearly every jurisdiction that has legalized assisted suicide for the seriously ill—as well as those that have refused to meaningfully enforce anti-assisted suicide laws—has either formally expanded the legal right to die to those suffering existentially, or shrugged in the face of illegal assisted suicides of the depressed. To wit:
Switzerland: In February, the Swiss Supreme Court ruled that the mentally ill have a constitutional right to assisted suicide, because, as reported in the International Herald Tribune, "It must be recognized that an incurable, permanent, serious mental disorder can cause similar suffering as a physical (disorder), making life appear unbearable to the patient in the long term."
The Netherlands: The Dutch Supreme Court issued a similar ruling back in 1993 when it approved a psychiatrist assisting the suicide of his chronically depressed patient who wanted to die due to unremitting grief caused by the deaths of her adult children—even though the doctor never attempted to treat the woman. The basis for the ruling followed the above described logic of euthanasia: Suffering is suffering and it doesn't matter whether the cause is physical or emotional, meaning that Dutch mercy killing need not be limited to the sick and disabled.
The United States: We saw a similar phenomenon in America's reaction to the decade-long assisted suicide campaign of Jack Kevorkian. Not only were the majority of Kevorkian's "patients" not terminally ill (most were disabled)—but several were not even sick. For example, Marjorie Wantz, Kevorkian's second assisted suicide who died on October 23, 1991, complained about severe pelvic pain. Her autopsy revealed that nothing was wrong physically. It turned out that she had been hospitalized previously for mental problems. In 1996 Rebecca Badger went to Kevorkian complaining of having multiple sclerosis. Her autopsy proved that she was disease free. It was later reported that she had been depressed and addicted to pain pills. Despite these and other such cases of his assisting the depressed to kill themselves, Kevorkian remained publicly popular until he was finally jailed in 1999 after he videotaped himself murdering Lou Gehrig's patient Thomas Youk by lethal injection.
Oregon : Advocates for legalizing assisted suicide frequently tout Oregon's law as proving that assisted suicide can be restricted to the terminally ill. In actuality, little is known about what is happening in the state because it gets information about these practices almost exclusively through self-reporting by participating doctors.
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With the truth now clearly in view, the time has come to have real debate about the so-called right to die. This debate should not pretend that the practice will be limited and rare and it should fully address the societal implications of transforming assisted suicide into a mere medical treatment. |
Even so, the curtain was pulled back briefly when a peer-reviewed article in the June 2005 American Journal of Psychiatry appeared describing a potential assisted suicide of a psychotic man that was disturbingly similar to what is happening in the Netherlands and Switzerland. After cancer patient Michael J. Freeland received a lethal prescription, he had to be hospitalized for mental illness. Despite being delusional, his psychiatrist permitted him to keep the fatal overdose, in the doctor's words, "safely at home"—even though this same doctor advised a court that Freeland would "remain vulnerable to periods of delirium" and would "be susceptible to periods of confusion and impaired judgment." (Freeland died naturally nearly two years after receiving his lethal prescription—meaning he was also not terminally ill as defined by Oregon's law when he was prescribed the lethal overdose in the first place.) Needless to say, nothing was done to remedy this apparent breach of law.
The natural trajectory of assisted suicide advocacy leads to such ever-widening expansions of killable categories: from the terminally ill, to the disabled and chronically ill, to the "tired of life" elderly, and eventually to the mentally ill. Appel understands this and approves. He writes:
Contemporary psychiatry aims to prevent suicide, yet the principles favoring legal assisted suicide lead logically to the extension of these rights to some mentally ill patients. But now that several Western nations and one U.S. state have liberalized their laws, it seems reasonable to question the policies that universally deny such basic opportunities to the mentally ill.
With the truth now clearly in view, the time has come to have real debate about the so-called right to die. This debate should not pretend that the practice will be limited and rare and it should fully address the societal implications of transforming assisted suicide into a mere medical treatment. So, let's argue openly and frankly about the wisdom of permitting near death-on-demand as a method of ending serious and persistent suffering. Let's discuss whether "choice" and "individual autonomy" requires that we permit licensed and regulated euthanasia clinics to serve anyone who has made an irrevocable decision to die. Indeed, let's argue whether or not society owes a duty of prevention to the self-destructive who are not acting on mere impulse. But finally, let's stop pretending that assisted suicide legalization would be just a tiny alteration in public policy restricted only to the terminally ill. That clearly isn't true.
Attorney Wesley J. Smith is the author or co/author of 10 books. His most recent book Consumer's Guide to a Brave New World, ponders the dangers and potential benefits of human cloning, stem cell therapies, and genetic engineering. Among his other books are Culture of Death: The Assault on Medical Ethics in America, Power Over Pain: How to Get the Pain Control You Need, and Forced Exit: the Slippery Slope from Assisted Suicide to Legalized Murder. He is currently conducting research for a book he will write on the animal rights/liberation movement.
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Suicide is wrong and assisted suicide is even more wrong. I am deeply disturbed that people would help and it’s like giving a license to murder anyone not deemed to be worthwhile.
*THAT*, in a nutshell, is where they want to take us, with some nameless, faceless beaureaucrat as the ultimate "deciding authority" as to who is "worthwhile", and who is not. Make no mistake, this isn't about "death with dignity", the real end game is "elimination of useless eaters/human weeds", as defined by a self anointed, self appointed, and self perpetuating "elite"...
the infowarrior
There is no such thing as "assisted suicide". If you are killing another human, it is homicide. Period. The "assisted suicide" label is just an attempt to turn attention away from what it truly is: State sanctioned homicide performed by licenced medical professionals. Just like abortion is.
I’ve had to think very hard about this lately.
My 89 year old grandmother is in a nursing home close to my house, and I spend an hour or two with her nearly every day.
She hates her life, and tells me every time I’m there that she’s ready and wanting to die. She has had multiple strokes and has lost much of her mobility. She CAN walk, but only about 10 feet. She’s suffering from moderate dementia and hallucinations, and everything is very confusing and frightening. She’s still pretty together mentally sometimes, and when she realizes she’s stuck in a wheelchair in the non-ambulatory ward of a home, with a bunch of people who moan and scream and drool all day she’s mortally horrified. I get to see her realize this over and over each week.
She can’t feed herself (strokes affected ability to swallow), and has a feeding tube, which she rips out every few weeks. She’s been functionally blind for the last 15 years, so really can’t do anything but sit there, day after day.
So what would I do if she asked me to kill her? I wouldn’t be surprised at all if she did. At least in today’s world, I can’t do anything. It would be murder, fair and square. In another time, before we had all kinds of fancy machines to keep you alive, she would have passed away after not eating for weeks, despite everyone’s best efforts.
I wouldn’t ask a doctor to ever violate their Hippocratic oath.
This all still bothers me though.
People’s lives belong to themselves, as far as any freedom-recognizing system of law is concerned. If they want to end it, that’s their own business, and if they need they asistance to carry out their wishes, they should be entitled to receive it from anyone who is willing to assist.
If a pedophile believes that there is no realistic chance for his mental illness to be cured before he rapes and permanently traumatizes another child, I’m not interested in seeing the state prohibit him from getting assistance to off himself on the grounds that he’s “mentally ill”. Yes, he IS mentally ill, but that doesn’t mean that his decision to off himself is not good and rational, especially given that our society simply refuses to keep people like this locked up on a permanent basis.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
You say you fear this question because she hates her life. What could you do to make it not hateful to her? Where can you show her worth where she sees only worthlessness?
I think there is a critical difference between killing someone, a deliberate action, and in not prolonging a life filled with suffering that would end naturally, but for intervention. As such, I do not hold the voluntary declining of treatment to be suicide, nor the following of that decision by a doctor to be homicide.
Unfortunately, the ability of medicine to prolong life in the face of horrible affliction has always outstripped its ability to cure those afflictions. Yet, it is the prolonging of the state that has always led to the knowledge needed to find cures.
That can be legally challenged.
But, that decision should never be the choice of the State. And history shows that when euthanasia is legalized, it isn't long before the State starts determining who gets it, whether they want it or not.
You know, if I had had a really long day, and was really worn out by stuff, I could possibly interpret this as you saying I’m creating part of her problem. Like I’m not doing a good enough job.
But I’ll try not to.
I have been racking my brain trying to find something productive for her to do, I’ve been working with our local Braille association to figure out things she might find enjoyable, I read books that she picks out to her, I do my best to be positive and distract her for at least a few hours a day.
She doesn’t want to do anything. Everything I think of she flat turns down. If I try to get her to help think of something she says she won’t do anything until she’s out of there and has her own apartment. She’ll ask for a book, and I’ll go buy a copy to bring in the very next day, and she doesn’t like it anymore by then.
About the only thing that works consistently is just talking about my day and what I happen to be thinking about at the moment, and be satisfied that it will be an entirely one-sided conversation where I try to think up positive things to say for two hours, and hope she won’t yell at me for not getting her out of there immediately right this second.
What would you have me do, oh sage.
Not at all. I just found through my own experience that the feeling of uselessness surrounding a disability can be helped immensely by finding that key to a new interest for the person. It sounds as if you are already seeking such an interest for your Grandmother. For my Grandfather, it was the introduction of a pet kitten which eased his last days.
Don't give up. Sometimes, all that's needed is for you to carry them for a while. Bless you for your love for her, and know that whatever the outcome, you are a better person for the experience and for having known her.
PS: Would she be interested in audio books? That way she could stop and start them as she wished.
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Prayers for you, on this very hard road. I have no answers for you except to not become weary in well doing. This experience has a hidden blessing in it somewhere and you may never discover it’s hiding place until you too cross over into eternity.
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