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Well, I found out today that the only thing keeping my grandma alive is her pacemaker. She has been reliant on it for almost a year, and I don't know if she understands this. The weird thing is that when our family chose to do this, we took away her ability to die peacefully, in her sleep one night. Now, when she goes, it'll be due to sickness and it'll probably involve a mess at a hospital.

I know that in general, unless you have substantial do-not-resuscitate orders in place, hospitals and doctors do everything in their power to prevent death, regardless of quality of life. When my granddad (her husband) died, even with the DNR orders they tried to pressure us into saving him. He had been mentally gone for years, and was bedridden. We decided to let him go, simply cause there was nothing left of him anymore. What wouldd you do in a similar situation? What would you want if it was you? Would you rather just go, or do you want a horrible fight? Assisted suicide?

I know it's morbid, but it's just on my mind right now.

I'm a firm believer that people should be allowed to choose when to die.

Really?

Should a shizoprhenic be allowed to try and kill himself? Should someone with depression, who, if they were on the right medications and had good therapy would be perfectly happy, slit her wrists and be able to refuse medical help?


In those instances, people aren't in the right frame of mind. They aren't thinking clearly. Death is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. I know more than one person who has attempted suicide. Once they were stabilized, they went into psychotherapy and spoke with psychatrists and doctors.

Years later, they're glad they're alive.

Not always. Some problems are pretty permanent.

This.

Most thoughts of suicide come from either mental disorders or are trigger based. Someone with a mental disorder can get treatment or help. People with depression live with it for their entire lives, but they don't have to live with the sadness. With proper treatment, it's not a permanent thing.

Trigger based events are obviously not permanent. For example, men are more likely to commit suicide after a divorce (Source). They're depressed. They feel like they've got no wait out. So they turn to suicide. Teens and young adults are more likely to commit suicide after problems at school (grades or otherwise) or the loss of a family member.

Family and sexual abuse is a large contributing factor, but it isn't permanent. It can be dealt with. People can help.

If you go to the Netherlands you do have that option. In fact that what a lot of people who are diagnosed with terminal diseases (in the UK at least) do. They just head off somewhere else so they can die before there condition reaches a stage where they aren't really getting any sort of decent standard of living anymore.

I think, if someone has a terminal illness, with no hope of a cure being found any time between when they are diagnosed and the time they are likely to die then yes, they should have the choice. Is it really fair to force that person to suffer so much pain and agony through a terminal illness just because the people close to them can't cope with them dying? They are going to end up dead anyway, and at least people can have the decency to all them to die with dignity rather than as a shadow of their former selves cooped up in a hospital, or a nursing home, or whatever until their final days.

Ah, the old euthanasia debate?

I think people should ******** the Hippocratic oath, if I can be saved, but I will be a vegetable the rest of my life, I'd sure as hell want an out.

In my mind, Jack Kevorkian was a brave man, and I am on his side. What he was doing was generous to the people who wanted it. After all, they WANTED it. You can't call it murder. You can call it assisted suicide, but even then, at least they were put to rest like that wanted to.

After watching The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and finding out it was a true story of a man who could only control his one eye and eyelid due to locked-in syndrome he got after having a stroke and crashing his car, I really began to support assisted suicide. I can only imagine the unbearable frustration one must feel trapped in their body and not being able to do anything they once did such a short while ago. Fascinatingly enough, he wrote an entire book by blinking and could communicate by blinking, but I could not imagine how angering that must be to have to live like that. I know if I was in that situation, I would prefer to die than wait if there was no possible cure for my syndrome and it really should be or choice when to die if we were to fall under such extenuating circumstances.

I believe there should most definitely be a check to see if someone is in their right mind at the point of the decision or if they have had previous bouts with mental disorders before the procedure happens, of course.