Comment by Freak_NL
3 days ago
It doesn't seem pleasant for the person themself either. Constant frustration, gaps in your memory growing ever larger, disorientation, loss — periodically augmented by brief flickers of recollection of what you used to be — and yet no one can legally end your misery, because you can likely no longer unequivocally consent to euthanasia or assisted suicide, even if you explicitly signed a declaration that you did not want to end up like this — legally, the current husk of your former self must consent, and it can't.
Some places permit consent in advance, the person specifies the conditions but hands the evaluation of whether they have been met to the doctor.
It’s still absurd despite what you say that we are implying that we should euthanize another human because they have become difficult to manage due to illness. Where do we draw the line?
> we should euthanize another human
You are shiftinf the topic. This is about self-euthanization, assisted suicide. Not others.
> Where do we draw the line?
As written elsewhere, having to draw a line does not mean that the only reasonable conclusion is to make it illegal in general. It's a hard topic without easy answers. "Don't allow it" is an easy answer that doesn't do justice to the topics complexity.
A good friend of mine passed away a year ago with an incurable disease, diagnosed 3 months before his death, and it was essentially guaranteed that he'd have to endure unbelievable suffering during the last weeks of those months. He didn't have the choice to end it early. It was heartbreaking.
I for my part hope that I can choose myself when the time has come.
It is not really a shift. The slippery slope is the heart of the debate. Once assisted suicide is allowed, the line between respecting autonomy and others making that decision blurs. Safeguards may help, but asking where to draw the line is the central problem.
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I am not implying that at all. People should be free to choose when to die, and people should be free to set conditions for their future wherein they no longer wish to live even if they could not express that at point.
That's a personal choice. Anyone not interested in that won't have to do anything and can just wait for the end.
It's not that simple. Once the option is there, there is incentive to encourage people to take it when their continued existence would be a burden.
You can quite easily draw a line that society does not get to force someone to live a tormented existence in spite of their prior declaration that they do not want to be tormented.
“It shouldn't be that way” is not an excuse to torture people through your moralizing indifference to the fact that it is that way.
I've wondered about this for my hypothetical future self.
Currently? I'd say that I wouldn't want to live with dementia, but what if my "demented self" (kinda hate the phrasing, sorry) in the future wants to live, or doesn't remember they don't want to live?
Do I have a say over the life of someone who doesn't remember they were me?
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The entire issue they're pointing to is that deciding that someone's existence is sufficiently tormented is difficult and morally fraught.
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But do people who have dementia or say a mental illness have the capacity to make that decision?
It sounds like Daniel Kahneman was suffering from depression after his wife's death and all he saw in the rest of his life was sadness. He had no hope. What day was the best day to die? What if the next day his hope came back?
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I think the implication was more "people should be free, when they're of sound mind, to choose euthanasia if they lose that sound mind".