KSa
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Request for euthanasia or a cry for help to return to life?One of the hottest issues of the recent weeks in Poland has been the request of a young (32 years-old) man for euthanasia. Since a motor bike accident 15 years ago he's been paralysed from the neck down. He is attached to the device which helps him breathing. However, he can speak and is mentally sound. He has his own web site on which he contacts the real life typing with a pencil in his mouth. On this very site he announced that he would no longer stand his condition and he would want to end up his life. The media helped to make it public and then two things happened: 1) a businessman offered him a wheeling chair which can be steered using a joystick operated by the lips, 2)a charity foundation offered him a part-time job (searching sites in the internet). And then he suddenly changed his mind, he doesn't speak of death any more (although he didn't withdraw a call for the euthanasia referendum from his website) but he says he is happy that eventually he'll be useful! More, he'll be able to go outside his flat! Look, sometimes so little is required for a person who wants to die to change their mind! I came to a conclusion that call for euthanasia is often a message to society: "I need your help to return to normal life". I would advice all those "merciful" doctors who would rush to the patient's bed with a lethal injection to think for a moment whether they've done ALL to keep him/her alive. Sometimes so much can be done with so little effort.
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Pauline
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All people want to feel respected, to be valued and be valuable, useful i.e. capable to work and contribute to their life and the lifes of others. Everyone want to have a reason for get up each day, and some freedom, independance. For some people who consider suicide or euthenasia, if society would differently look to them and, for exemple, be respectful and put little bit effort for accept and enable the person to contribute, then it would have influence for sure. I don't say all people, but some and *every* life is important.
KSa, it's a very good exemple of how a person with extreme physical disabilities can find a valuable and fulfilling existance despite the enormous difficulties.
I know more that one person who killed themself, and for sure one girl would be alive now if someone /some people would have gave to her some opportunity for a valuable life. I think that it was a possibiity but it didn't occur and she died after the second time (the first time she survived it but about one month later she hanged herself in the hospital in the nighttime).
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KSa
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| Pauline wrote: | All people want to feel respected, to be valued and be valuable, useful i.e. capable to work and contribute to their life and the lifes of others. Everyone want to have a reason for get up each day, and some freedom, independance. For some people who consider suicide or euthenasia, if society would differently look to them and, for exemple, be respectful and put little bit effort for accept and enable the person to contribute, then it would have influence for sure. I don't say all people, but some and *every* life is important.
KSa, it's a very good exemple of how a person with extreme physical disabilities can find a valuable and fulfilling existance despite the enormous difficulties.
I know more that one person who killed themself, and for sure one girl would be alive now if someone /some people would have gave to her some opportunity for a valuable life. I think that it was a possibiity but it didn't occur and she died after the second time (the first time she survived it but about one month later she hanged herself in the hospital in the nighttime). |
Yes, Pauline, you are right that the same applies to people who attempt suicide.
I remember a story I once read or was told about a woman who phoned her neighbour and with a weak voice asked her to come and visit her. The neighbour found an excuse not to drop in but actually she had nothing important to do at the moment. On the following day she saw people carrying the dead body of the woman who called her the previous day - she killed herself. Then she realised that this phone call was the last call for help.
Now she says she cannot forgive herself that she didn't go. She is not sure if she really could help but who knows?
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Pauline
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| KSa wrote: | On the following day she saw people carrying the dead body of the woman who called her the previous day - she killed herself. Then she realised that this phone call was the last call for help.
Now she says she cannot forgive herself that she didn't go. She is not sure if she really could help but who knows? |
It seems like the last call for help. It can be that it would be a different consequence if she did go to her, but we can't know. It's very sad.
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Deborah
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Re: Request for euthanasia or a cry for help to return to li | KSa wrote: | | I would advice all those "merciful" doctors who would rush to the patient's bed with a lethal injection to think for a moment whether they've done ALL to keep him/her alive. Sometimes so much can be done with so little effort. |
(my emphasis)
Doctors don't rush to patients' beds with lethal injections. And if they help someone who really doesn't want to live anymore to achieve that goal, then in my book they are being merciful, and the word doesn't need to be sarcastically put in quotation marks.
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KSa
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Re: Request for euthanasia or a cry for help to return to li | Deborah wrote: | | KSa wrote: | | I would advice all those "merciful" doctors who would rush to the patient's bed with a lethal injection to think for a moment whether they've done ALL to keep him/her alive. Sometimes so much can be done with so little effort. |
(my emphasis)
Doctors don't rush to patients' beds with lethal injections. And if they help someone who really doesn't want to live anymore to achieve that goal, then in my book they are being merciful, and the word doesn't need to be sarcastically put in quotation marks. |
1. I didn't say all doctors but those doctors which means some doctors
2. I've been observing the process of evolution of the concept of euthanasia presented by its strong supporters since the very beginning. First - voluntary euthanasia for physically, terminally ill people. Second - voluntary euthanasia for all physically ill people. Third - voluntary euthanasia for mentally ill or even with slight mental disorders if they just want to stop it. The most scary however is a concept of involuntary euthanasia voiced more and more often - I'm simply in deadly fear. Putting the word "merciful" to describe these people in double or triple quotation marks is not enough.
3. I'm not totally against euthanasia.
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Pauline
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Re: Request for euthanasia or a cry for help to return to li | KSa wrote: | | The most scary however is a concept of involuntary euthanasia voiced more and more often - I'm simply in deadly fear. Putting the word "merciful" to describe these people in double or triple quotation marks is not enough. |
involuntary euthanasia is absolutly evil : it would be like T-4. If this would occur, then it would be evil who manipulate and control all the world to legalise this mass murder of innocent people.
| Quote: | | I'm not totally against euthanasia. |
I agree, I'm not totally against euthanasia, but *very* seldom it must be done, and with much care and checks, also after all humane treatments adn strategies haven't helped and the person consistently, freely and clear-thinkingly tells that it's their wish.
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KSa
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Re: Request for euthanasia or a cry for help to return to li | Pauline wrote: | | KSa wrote: | | The most scary however is a concept of involuntary euthanasia voiced more and more often - I'm simply in deadly fear. Putting the word "merciful" to describe these people in double or triple quotation marks is not enough. |
involuntary euthanasia is absolutly evil : it would be like T-4. If this would occur, then it would be evil who manipulate and control all the world to legalise this mass murder of innocent people.
| Quote: | | I'm not totally against euthanasia. |
I agree, I'm not totally against euthanasia, but *very* seldom it must be done, and with much care and checks, also after all humane treatments adn strategies haven't helped and the person consistently, freely and clear-thinkingly tells that it's their wish. |
Yes. Still I think it should not be doctors to perform euthanasia. Doctors should be associated as those who help people to get better and not bring their life to an end. There should be executioners trained to carry out the act of euthanasia - to make an injection you don't need to study medicine for 6 years. Maybe it's a symbolic detail but very important.
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Loic
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All medicos should remember the Hippocratic Oath they swore to undertake when they entered medical practice, viz- saving lives and not taking them.
Euthanasia is a slippery slope that can lead to eugenics.
However, I am sympathetic towards patients who want to die and who are only kept alive by virtue of medical assistance. Their requests have more merit than people who can function perfectly well without medical help but who yet want to terminate their existence.
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Fredrik
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Oh, that's such a nice and hopeful tale, KSa! Although life is rather fascist, as Tonio Kröger ascertained, there is always some intervention of divine grace that can lighten the world. I know very well from my own experience how some change of surroundings and prospects can totally alter the picture. Some years ago, I felt so totally trapped in my hometown, I hated my media studies and all my friends had gone away to other places. I wouldn't say I was actually suicidal, but my thoughts evolved scarily much around suicide and the desperate need to escape. But after the summer, I moved away to Bergen, started studying German and made new friends and everything became so much, much better! In fact so much that when I almost drowned in a lake the following summer, I was very glad that I survived! 
I would say that the fight against most forms of euthanasia is the fight against the fascism within us. It's very easy to succumb, because the world can be very fascist and hard for outsiders with problems, and fascism is just too well ingrained in our darwinistic nature, but there is something more to being human than just fascism.
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Uriel
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I would not want to live that way. I've seen what paralyzed people go through, and no thanks. I can't think of too many things worse than being of sound mind, but trapped in a useless body.
Paralyzed and severly debilitated people rarely die of old age, either. Their condition usually kills them eventually through complications.
There was a similar story about a man who was horribly burned when a natural gas leak near him caused a spark from his broken-down car to ignite as he was working on it. He ran to a nearby farmer, still on fire, and begged the farmer to shoot him. The farmer of course refused and hosed him down instead. The poor man was horribly disfigured and spent over a year (if I remember correctly) in burn units in excruciating pain (burns are some of the most agonizing, long-term injuries you can have). He wanted to die and tried over and over to get someone to kill him, but of course, no one would (or could). Eventually he healed up as much as he was going to and even got married. So people assumed that with recovery from his dire situation he must have reversed his stance on being euthanized, right? Wrong. He still advocates the right to die, and says that had his wishes been followed, he would have been saved the years of tremendous pain and damage that he had to endure, and that his wishes should have been respected at the time.
I have to agree.
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KSa
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| Uriel wrote: | I would not want to live that way. I've seen what paralyzed people go through, and no thanks. I can't think of too many things worse than being of sound mind, but trapped in a useless body.
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I would not want to live that way either. But we should bear in mind there are people who are very keen on living despite what happened to them and we should respect their will.
| Quote: | He still advocates the right to die, and says that had his wishes been followed, he would have been saved the years of tremendous pain and damage that he had to endure, and that his wishes should have been respected at the time.
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He hasn't been paralyzed so he has been capable of terminating his life by himself. I think it's immoral to ask other people to help you go to the other side if you can do it yourself. It's sort of sharing responsibility.
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Pauline
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| KSa wrote: | | I think it's immoral to ask other people to help you go to the other side if you can do it yourself. It's sort of sharing responsibility. |
For sure the man who was burned, because it would be murder, so the other person would go to prison. It's not about respect or disresepct of his wishes, but ask a person to kill you isn't a request possible to satisfy.
If this wouldn't be like this (legally murder or at least involuntary homicide, but I can't imagine how would it be the second one) then all the murderers can defend themself that they killed the person for prevent suffering and that the person asked them to kill them.
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Uriel
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| KSa wrote: | | Uriel wrote: | I would not want to live that way. I've seen what paralyzed people go through, and no thanks. I can't think of too many things worse than being of sound mind, but trapped in a useless body.
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I would not want to live that way either. But we should bear in mind there are people who are very keen on living despite what happened to them and we should respect their will.
| Quote: | He still advocates the right to die, and says that had his wishes been followed, he would have been saved the years of tremendous pain and damage that he had to endure, and that his wishes should have been respected at the time.
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He hasn't been paralyzed so he has been capable of terminating his life by himself. I think it's immoral to ask other people to help you go to the other side if you can do it yourself. It's sort of sharing responsibility. |
Well, I never said ALL paralyzed people should be put to death, Ksa! But if they want to be, that should be their choice.
The burn victim essentially wanted to refuse treatment and be euthanized at the time of his injuries, but that was not possible then. He was not physically capable of doing it himself while he was in the burn ward, due to the extent of his damage. Yes, now he would be able to, but his point was that he had wanted it then.
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