Tough job to do

Would you voluntarily do the job of writing these laws or policies?

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Cunt
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Tough job to do

Post by Cunt » Thu Jan 17, 2019 5:31 pm

My friend just ended our chat because they have a meeting coming up with a lawyer. When I found out why, I felt a great swell of admiration for the job they just took on.

First, an article about the main subject - Medical Aid In Dying.

https://torontolife.com/city/life/john- ... d-suicide/
I was horrified anew in 1999 when the gifted conductor Georg Tintner, who was dying from a rare form of melanoma, jumped from the balcony of his 11th-floor apartment in Halifax to end his agony. Many Canadians would hear such news, shake their heads, utter a few sympathetic platitudes and move on. But I couldn’t just sit back and wring my hands. That year, I went from advocating for assisted suicides to facilitating them. Let’s not mince words: I killed people who wanted to die.
That article is from before there was legal support for this. The author takes you through many ethical questions, if you care to go try them out.

So getting back to my friend, it isn't as simple as Medical Aid In Dying. This friend is discussing how the issue is to be handled with people who have intellectual/developmental disabilities.

Holy fuck, I wish I could give that friend a hug.

In case you hadn't noticed, I'm trying not to say anything about this persons identity, but the fact that they are willing to tackle this kind of issue, while living in the echoes of forced sterilization of id/dd people, shows their courage and unblinking commitment to this community.

So my thoughts are pretty simple - mostly let people decide for themselves. That works for most of the people I chat with, as they are assumed to be self-aware, self-responsible. When a person loses their executive function (for example, as a result of accident) then we generally treat them a bit different. When someone has had such a limit for their whole life, it seems to elicit a different view.

This is a mess to think about. I thought I would see if anyone here had horrors, or maybe even decent experiences around it.

For myself, I've seen people suffer, and wish for death. I know a few who have gotten medical help in dying (first, my own grandpa in the late 80-s) but never have I been asked to help. Never have I had to be involved in any of these decisions.

I have taken responsibility for others at times. Some of them with ID/DD. I don't know what I would do if put in the situation to need to make a decision. I think I could only help someone who I thought was asking honestly, and knew what they were asking. Even at that, while I wish I could help in a situation where I should, I don't know if I could.

There is a famous policemans paradox, where you are an armed police officer, who comes across a man in a burning vehicle, who will surely die, and is screaming in pain.

You have a gun, do you shoot him, to reduce suffering?

No answers from me, just wringing my hands about a very difficult group of questions.

Pic slightly related - area near the cemetery.
20170503_140923 copy.jpg
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Joe wrote:
Wed Nov 29, 2023 1:22 pm
he doesn't communicate

The 'Walsh Question' 'What Is A Woman?' I'll put an answer here when someone posts one that is clear and comprehensible, by apostates to the Faith.

Update: I've been offered one!
rainbow wrote:
Mon Nov 06, 2023 9:23 pm
It is actually quite easy. A woman has at least one X chromosome.
Strong ideas don't require censorship to survive. Weak ideas cannot survive without it.

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Re: Tough job to do

Post by Brian Peacock » Thu Jan 17, 2019 6:13 pm

For me the matter rests on whether we own ourselves or not. I think we do, that ownership is fundamental and intrinsic to our existence as individuals, and therefore we have a fundamental and intrinsic right to stop existing if we choose to. But that choice must be a free choice, however, wherever, whenever it arises.
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"It isn't necessary to imagine the world ending in fire or ice.
There are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia."

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"This is how humanity ends; bickering over the irrelevant."
Clinton Huxley » 21 Jun 2012 » 14:10:36 GMT
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Re: Tough job to do

Post by Cunt » Thu Jan 17, 2019 6:32 pm

Brian Peacock wrote:
Thu Jan 17, 2019 6:13 pm
For me the matter rests on whether we own ourselves or not. I think we do, that ownership is fundamental and intrinsic to our existence as individuals, and therefore we have a fundamental and intrinsic right to stop existing if we choose to. But that choice must be a free choice, however, wherever, whenever it arises.
I'm with you on that.

Philosophically, I mean. I genuinely wish to never be tested on this...

Trouble for me comes when things get more muddy. As they almost always do when it drifts out of theory and into the 'lab'.

Is it a free choice if the chooser has a developmental disability? CAN it be a free choice, when such a person relies on others for understanding complex parts of life?
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Joe wrote:
Wed Nov 29, 2023 1:22 pm
he doesn't communicate

The 'Walsh Question' 'What Is A Woman?' I'll put an answer here when someone posts one that is clear and comprehensible, by apostates to the Faith.

Update: I've been offered one!
rainbow wrote:
Mon Nov 06, 2023 9:23 pm
It is actually quite easy. A woman has at least one X chromosome.
Strong ideas don't require censorship to survive. Weak ideas cannot survive without it.

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Re: Tough job to do

Post by Rum » Thu Jan 17, 2019 6:57 pm

I’m not sure anyone is going to legislate about assisted suicide for those who aren’t competent to tick the box on the form any time soon. Be interested to know how that works in countries where it it is legal for those who are (competent). There is plenty of law around legal competency (guardianship, power of attorney and so forth) as it applies to other matters like finance, safety and so on, it is hard to imagine lawmakers applying those sorts of laws to a person who is not competent to make a decision to end their own life and someone wants to on their behalf.

I’m all for assisted suicide in the right circumstances, but where that right exists it is hard to see the mentally incapable being able to take advantage of it any time soon. As mentioned, be interested to know how it works in countries like Switzerland and Holland. (It isn’t yet legal in the UK)

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Re: Tough job to do

Post by Cunt » Thu Jan 17, 2019 7:02 pm

Rum wrote:
Thu Jan 17, 2019 6:57 pm
I’m not sure anyone is going to legislate about assisted suicide for those who aren’t competent to tick the box on the form any time soon. Be interested to know how that works in countries where it it is legal for those who are (competent). There is plenty of law around legal competency (guardianship, power of attorney and so forth) as it applies to other matters like finance, safety and so on, it is hard to imagine lawmakers applying those sorts of laws to a person who is not competent to make a decision to end their own life and someone wants to on their behalf.

I’m all for assisted suicide in the right circumstances, but where that right exists it is hard to see the mentally incapable being able to take advantage of it any time soon. As mentioned, be interested to know how it works in countries like Switzerland and Holland. (It isn’t yet legal in the UK)
It's legal in Canada, I understand hundreds of people have availed themselves of this relief.

This person is not working to create laws, but works with an advocacy organization which is run by people with ID/DD.

What impresses me most about their efforts, is that whatever horrors are later examined around this issue, their name will be right there as having been involved. Whatever decisions are made, they have offered themselves up publicly for blame, or credit.

It's a brave move. I barely feel comfortable talking about it here (and you guys have been pretty great about things, relatively speaking)
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Joe wrote:
Wed Nov 29, 2023 1:22 pm
he doesn't communicate

The 'Walsh Question' 'What Is A Woman?' I'll put an answer here when someone posts one that is clear and comprehensible, by apostates to the Faith.

Update: I've been offered one!
rainbow wrote:
Mon Nov 06, 2023 9:23 pm
It is actually quite easy. A woman has at least one X chromosome.
Strong ideas don't require censorship to survive. Weak ideas cannot survive without it.

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Re: Tough job to do

Post by Brian Peacock » Fri Jan 18, 2019 10:28 am

An interesting longish read in today's Guardian looking at the Netherlands: Death on demand: has euthanasia gone too far?

Last year a Dutch doctor called Bert Keizer was summoned to the house of a man dying of lung cancer, in order to end his life. When Keizer and the nurse who was to assist him arrived, they found around 35 people gathered around the dying man’s bed. “They were drinking and guffawing and crying,” Keizer told me when I met him in Amsterdam recently. “It was boisterous. And I thought: ‘How am I going to cleave the waters?’ But the man knew exactly what to do. Suddenly he said, ‘OK, guys!’ and everyone understood. Everyone fell silent. The very small children were taken out of the room and I gave him his injection. I could have kissed him, because I wouldn’t have known how to break up the party.”

Keizer is one of around 60 physicians on the books of the Levenseindekliniek, or End of Life Clinic, which matches doctors willing to perform euthanasia with patients seeking an end to their lives, and which was responsible for the euthanasia of some 750 people in 2017. For Keizer, who was a philosopher before studying medicine, the advent of widespread access to euthanasia represents a new era. “For the first time in history,” he told me, “we have developed a space where people move towards death while we are touching them and they are in our midst. That’s completely different from killing yourself when your wife’s out shopping and the kids are at school and you hang yourself in the library – which is the most horrible way of doing it, because the wound never heals. The fact that you are a person means that you are linked to other people. And we have found a bearable way of severing that link, not by a natural death, but by a self-willed ending. It’s a very special thing.”

...
Rationalia relies on voluntary donations. There is no obligation of course, but if you value this place and want to see it continue please consider making a small donation towards the forum's running costs.
Details on how to do that can be found here.

.

"It isn't necessary to imagine the world ending in fire or ice.
There are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia."

Frank Zappa

"This is how humanity ends; bickering over the irrelevant."
Clinton Huxley » 21 Jun 2012 » 14:10:36 GMT
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Re: Tough job to do

Post by Brian Peacock » Fri Jan 18, 2019 10:55 am


Cunt wrote:...

I genuinely wish to never be tested on this...
Don't we all? But when we think about it we all know we're mortal don't we, and knowing that that day is coming, perhaps sooner than we would like, wouldn't we all rather it passed with the minimum of physical or psychological distress? Thinking about it beforehand, thinking about the moment of out death and what that really means, is not just our only option (we can't think about it afterwards after all) but a kind of duty.
Cunt wrote:Trouble for me comes when things get more muddy. As they almost always do when it drifts out of theory and into the 'lab'.

Is it a free choice if the chooser has a developmental disability? CAN it be a free choice, when such a person relies on others for understanding complex parts of life?
I guess that depends on the circumstances, but I think a good first principle would be not to suggest but to respond to a request.
Rationalia relies on voluntary donations. There is no obligation of course, but if you value this place and want to see it continue please consider making a small donation towards the forum's running costs.
Details on how to do that can be found here.

.

"It isn't necessary to imagine the world ending in fire or ice.
There are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia."

Frank Zappa

"This is how humanity ends; bickering over the irrelevant."
Clinton Huxley » 21 Jun 2012 » 14:10:36 GMT
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Re: Tough job to do

Post by Cunt » Sat Jan 19, 2019 2:56 am

Seems I lost a response which I placed earlier today. Oops.

That was a terrible, well-written piece of work. I shared it with that pal I mentioned. Likely they are a bit more 'up' on the issue than myself, but you never know.
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Joe wrote:
Wed Nov 29, 2023 1:22 pm
he doesn't communicate

The 'Walsh Question' 'What Is A Woman?' I'll put an answer here when someone posts one that is clear and comprehensible, by apostates to the Faith.

Update: I've been offered one!
rainbow wrote:
Mon Nov 06, 2023 9:23 pm
It is actually quite easy. A woman has at least one X chromosome.
Strong ideas don't require censorship to survive. Weak ideas cannot survive without it.

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Re: Tough job to do

Post by Scot Dutchy » Sat Jan 19, 2019 2:24 pm

Brian Peacock wrote:
Fri Jan 18, 2019 10:28 am
An interesting longish read in today's Guardian looking at the Netherlands: Death on demand: has euthanasia gone too far?

Last year a Dutch doctor called Bert Keizer was summoned to the house of a man dying of lung cancer, in order to end his life. When Keizer and the nurse who was to assist him arrived, they found around 35 people gathered around the dying man’s bed. “They were drinking and guffawing and crying,” Keizer told me when I met him in Amsterdam recently. “It was boisterous. And I thought: ‘How am I going to cleave the waters?’ But the man knew exactly what to do. Suddenly he said, ‘OK, guys!’ and everyone understood. Everyone fell silent. The very small children were taken out of the room and I gave him his injection. I could have kissed him, because I wouldn’t have known how to break up the party.”

Keizer is one of around 60 physicians on the books of the Levenseindekliniek, or End of Life Clinic, which matches doctors willing to perform euthanasia with patients seeking an end to their lives, and which was responsible for the euthanasia of some 750 people in 2017. For Keizer, who was a philosopher before studying medicine, the advent of widespread access to euthanasia represents a new era. “For the first time in history,” he told me, “we have developed a space where people move towards death while we are touching them and they are in our midst. That’s completely different from killing yourself when your wife’s out shopping and the kids are at school and you hang yourself in the library – which is the most horrible way of doing it, because the wound never heals. The fact that you are a person means that you are linked to other people. And we have found a bearable way of severing that link, not by a natural death, but by a self-willed ending. It’s a very special thing.”

...
No. You are not told what goes on before the final act. It is not simple. You just dont pop along to your local GP and say can I die next week?

It has helped many people. My late girlfriend was one. She would have had a hellish slow death under any other system. She died in my arms and a more better way I dont think exists.

I will never suffer either. It is a great comfort to have the option. It is my life so surely I can decide when to end it. A very civilised way.
"Wat is het een gezellig boel hier".

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Re: Tough job to do

Post by Cunt » Sat Jan 19, 2019 5:58 pm

It's good that you have the option, Scot Dutchy.

Unless you are yourself a person with intellectual or developmental disabilities, I don't know how it relates.
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Joe wrote:
Wed Nov 29, 2023 1:22 pm
he doesn't communicate

The 'Walsh Question' 'What Is A Woman?' I'll put an answer here when someone posts one that is clear and comprehensible, by apostates to the Faith.

Update: I've been offered one!
rainbow wrote:
Mon Nov 06, 2023 9:23 pm
It is actually quite easy. A woman has at least one X chromosome.
Strong ideas don't require censorship to survive. Weak ideas cannot survive without it.

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Re: Tough job to do

Post by Brian Peacock » Sat Jan 19, 2019 9:10 pm

The duty of care issue for those with certain kinds of impairment seems clear, at first glance - a duty of care is a duty to meet a person's needs. However, whether that means that they might need to die is a less secure, and more emotionally (and legally) fraught business than having an old and loved dog put down "For his own good." - and rightly so in my view. What it involves is making a judgment not on the value of a human life per se, but on the value of life to a particular individual, the value of their life to them, and where there are insurmountable barriers to that person's ability to understand and/or communicate then I think it's best to take the option of euthanasia off the table.
Rationalia relies on voluntary donations. There is no obligation of course, but if you value this place and want to see it continue please consider making a small donation towards the forum's running costs.
Details on how to do that can be found here.

.

"It isn't necessary to imagine the world ending in fire or ice.
There are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia."

Frank Zappa

"This is how humanity ends; bickering over the irrelevant."
Clinton Huxley » 21 Jun 2012 » 14:10:36 GMT
.

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Re: Tough job to do

Post by Cunt » Sat Jan 19, 2019 9:23 pm

Yes, and where IS that grey, slippery line?

I kind of liked when it was unlawful. See, if it is a crime, then anyone doing it would have to value the act so highly that it would matter more than their own personal life.

Not reasonable to expect that. There is much more humanity in allowing people to choose. Things get harder and harder as care services try to do better and better.
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Joe wrote:
Wed Nov 29, 2023 1:22 pm
he doesn't communicate

The 'Walsh Question' 'What Is A Woman?' I'll put an answer here when someone posts one that is clear and comprehensible, by apostates to the Faith.

Update: I've been offered one!
rainbow wrote:
Mon Nov 06, 2023 9:23 pm
It is actually quite easy. A woman has at least one X chromosome.
Strong ideas don't require censorship to survive. Weak ideas cannot survive without it.

User avatar
Scot Dutchy
Posts: 19000
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Re: Tough job to do

Post by Scot Dutchy » Sat Jan 19, 2019 11:27 pm

Fuck. You really hate a civilised world. I read your post for a change. After six Trappist beers I can face most things.
Dont worry I wont read anymore.
"Wat is het een gezellig boel hier".

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Re: Tough job to do

Post by Cunt » Sat Jan 19, 2019 11:35 pm

Scot Dutchy wrote:
Sat Jan 19, 2019 11:27 pm
Fuck. You really hate a civilised world. I read your post for a change. After six Trappist beers I can face most things.
Dont worry I wont read anymore.
Your words don't seem connected to any comments in this thread. Are you ok? Do you need us to call someone?
Shit, Piss, Cock, Cunt, Motherfucker, Cocksucker and Tits.
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Joe wrote:
Wed Nov 29, 2023 1:22 pm
he doesn't communicate

The 'Walsh Question' 'What Is A Woman?' I'll put an answer here when someone posts one that is clear and comprehensible, by apostates to the Faith.

Update: I've been offered one!
rainbow wrote:
Mon Nov 06, 2023 9:23 pm
It is actually quite easy. A woman has at least one X chromosome.
Strong ideas don't require censorship to survive. Weak ideas cannot survive without it.

User avatar
Brian Peacock
Tipping cows since 1946
Posts: 37953
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Re: Tough job to do

Post by Brian Peacock » Sun Jan 20, 2019 4:20 am

Cunt wrote:
Sat Jan 19, 2019 9:23 pm
Yes, and where IS that grey, slippery line?
There isn't a single, definite, absolute line. There's a number of lines - one for each set of circumstances.
Cunt wrote:
Sat Jan 19, 2019 9:23 pm
I kind of liked when it was unlawful. See, if it is a crime, then anyone doing it would have to value the act so highly that it would matter more than their own personal life.
I understand that. We all know where we stand with a prohibition don't we, but I think the objective here isn't to just adhere to the rules but to help people by preventing suffering.
Cunt wrote:
Sat Jan 19, 2019 9:23 pm
Not reasonable to expect that. There is much more humanity in allowing people to choose. Things get harder and harder as care services try to do better and better.
It's certainly a knotty issue that consistently resists a simple solution.
Rationalia relies on voluntary donations. There is no obligation of course, but if you value this place and want to see it continue please consider making a small donation towards the forum's running costs.
Details on how to do that can be found here.

.

"It isn't necessary to imagine the world ending in fire or ice.
There are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia."

Frank Zappa

"This is how humanity ends; bickering over the irrelevant."
Clinton Huxley » 21 Jun 2012 » 14:10:36 GMT
.

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