Assisted dying bill (TW assisted suicide discussion)

I personally believe antibiotics should be given unless otherwise stated for UTIs for the same reason as you would give them to someone with a dental infection, to alleviate pain and delirium. What I don’t understand is people with dementia in care homes being put on a diet because they gained weight sitting down all day. And yes, this is something I have witnessed! I think the primary importance is to keep them content and pain free. I have also witnessed the absolute horror of having both parents stuck in an angry or terrified state, which can only be temporarily relieved by drugs, and even then given sparingly. I would rather not live in a state of permanent terror.

Please don't sneer and suggest people are too thick so a public referendum would be inappropriate. This is a highly emotive subject that I expect we all have experience of.

Distressing symptoms can be managed with pain control, not antibiotics. Patients should not be having fingers pricked to monitor blood sugars to tick a GP's box.

As I have said money and education needs throwing at GP services and of life care. Symptoms can be alleviated without unnecessary interventions like antibiotics that prolong the inevitable.

Yes this. Most infections make you feel terrible and should be treated regardless of life expectancy.

I don’t know why your FIL’s pain wasn’t treated. Clearly something went wrong there but I just want to note that shouting and screaming isn’t necessarily due to pain.

Infection causes pain. They treat the infection to make the patient more comfortable.

It's so hard - how can someone with dementia meaningfully consent when they no longer have power of attorney to control their own bank account? But they can still feel joy and have the capacity of a toddler.

In Canada, over time fewer and fewer applications get rejected, and, it has indeed created a culture of expecting people to do themselves in.

Where will the pressure be to improve palliative care if we're busy investing in assisted dying?

And this is why it’s absolutely terrifying that people think this issue should be put to a public referendum.

You criticise the fact that antibiotics are prescribed in end of life care when those very drugs can significantly improve the quality of life by reducing or eliminating pleuritic pain or the pain associated with UTI’s. Infection is a significant cause of delerium yet you dismiss attempts to treat and manage it?

And presumably your contempt for the safe and effective monitoring of blood sugars in order to identify hyperglycaemia and all of the distressing symptoms that can cause means that really, people at end of life shouldn’t be given steroids which often have an important role in pain control, management of nausea and vomiting and impact on reducing seizures, raised ICP and managing confusion and distress associated with primary and secondary brain cancers?

I think you have beautifully illustrated why the very last thing we need is a public referendum….

I think everyone should be able to make a decision about their own life or rather the end of it.

The main issue being it wouldn't just be the individual making an unbiased decision.

How could people like the OP's mum have had a good death?

@Onand What's a medical reason, though? That's not a clear line.

I've known of people who are terminally ill suffering yet are still being treated. One gp wanted a lady with weeks to live have her blood sugars monitoring as she was on steroids! or given antibiotics to treat an infection. Just why. Yes alleviate suffering with opiates but ime it is GPs who need updates and guidelines on what not to treat to prolong suffering.

Government needs to throw money at end of life care.

Fwiw I agree with it in principal but it's open for too much abuse.

A man in Canada applied for assisted dying as he was homeless.
He was approved.
Crowd funding then gave him a home.
He decided against it.

How do we stop that from happening?

Where's the line drawn?

I've had mental health problems since a child. I've accepted I'll never be happy or feel happiness. I live for my dc essentially. I suspect if dc wasn't here I'd apply to but then where do we draw the line again?

It's not a case of it being only offered to those terminally ill. It may begin like this but it would be expanded.

I watched my dear uncle die a long and painful death from terminal cancer. Again, it would be great in those circumstances but unfortunately, it won't remain so.

I love my cats more than anything. If they were in pain I would make sure I did everything in my power to end it, even if I had to do it myself. It would haunt me for the rest of my life, but I would do it.

This seems to be an acceptable opinion throughout most of society, but then we expect humans to die in painful, undignified, terrifying ways.

But we don't assess pets' mental health, do we? We essentially are in control of animals.

I don’t expect assisted dying to be voted in. Government doesn’t really represent public opinion and the minority of people opposed are incredibly vocal. just because it’s a minority doesn’t make it wrong.

Even you agree that this should just be the beginning and that a slippery slope needs to happen. You say that you want the opportunity to die at a time of your choosing, well if this bill passes this isn’t going to include you if you end up with dementia.

I am absolutely for not extending life unnecessarily and I do believe that the “life at all costs” has multiple arguments against. But anyone can sign an advance directive to this effect so that is also worth looking into.

But the idea of holding down a terrified dementia patient to essentially put them down is barbaric. And that is what they do in some parts of Europe.

The Netherlands now allows assisted dying for couples who have had a long marriage and who have the wish to die together. But that has been proven to be rife with coercion by one or other party.

In Canada people with mental health conditions, disabilities, the homeless are recommended assisted dying instead of help.

How long do you think it will be before the PIP application process includes the question as to whether the person applying has considered assisted dying and if not, why not, and for the pip Assessor to refuse the application on the basis that assisted dying is available.

The reason why it’s the minority that are so vocal is because the minority can see where this is heading and don’t want it to.

The blunt truth is that the majority want the slippery slope. They want the bill to ultimately be extended to the disabled, the elderly, the mentally ill, basically for anyone who is suicidal at any time to be able to pop to the dr’s and have a doctor kill them so they don’t have to d it themselves, or anyone who feels they’re a burden to their family for whatever reason. And then it becomes a short step to it not being about assisted dying, but expected dying.

Having watched my mum die a drawn-out painful death that people would deem it extremely cruel to put a dog through, I hope the bill passes. My mum spent the last 6 weeks of her life in a hospice. The doctors and nurses were wonderful, compassionate people but there was still a limit to what they could do to alleviate her suffering. I don’t think improving palliative care and introducing assisted dying (shortened death) need be mutually exclusive.

My mum (who had cancer) had written an advanced directive to refuse treatment. Quality, not quantity, of life was what was important to her.

100% support after watching both of my grandparents die from cancer. We wouldn't let animals die like that. It is something I would want if I was in that situation. I think everyone should be able to make a decision about their own life or rather the end of it.

“Lets also not forget the avoidance or trauma for the loved ones who stay until the end and then have to live with the recurring nightmares and visions of what happens in those situations.”

This is precisely why the Bill must fail.

Can you imagine the pressure on the dying person to submit to the needle so their relatives won’t suffer?

My DM was denied drugs to help her in the midst of psychotic dementia symptoms because there was a 1% chance of stroke from taking them. People with a terminal illness at the end of life are refused morphine, or morphine at a dose that will help relieve terrible pain because of risks to breathing. Medics seem intent on keeping patients alive at all costs snd I wonder what is driving this, certainly not empathy or compassion.

My parents both died in a horrendous way. My dad from a melanoma. Towards the end I had to watch blood seep into the roof of his mouth and mix with food, he had tears of blood from his eyes and blood haemorrhaging from his nose. There were pools of blood on his carpet. His back also crumbled and was classed as broken. He had the tumour also in his lung and kidney. He wanted to live until the last 6-8 weeks when he began to slump and was bedridden. Those last weeks were Hell for all of us and him.

As for my mum she died of dementia starved to death with no morphine.

I am scared and don’t want that. I want my dogs death and an injection to end things swiftly.

There is. My dad had one.
Morphine and it's very peaceful.

VioletSpeedwell · Today 01:40

No one is stopping you or anyone else from committing suicide
And how do you suggest they do that without access to the right drugs?

Suicide doesn’t require drugs but if drugs are your preferred method, you can get what you need in your local neighbourhood. It might be more challenging for a respectable-looking older lady, especially if housebound, but there are always workarounds.

I get that people want to be upfront. It’s becoming clear to me that people don’t just want a lack of state intervention when helped by family, they want state approval. They want the machinery of the state to deal with the ‘unpleasantness’. Everyone is free to argue for their own vision of society. What you can’t do is proclaim that unless other people (medical professionals) do your bidding, your human rights are being breached.

Medical professionals are not robots, minions or lapdogs that exist to do whatever the patient wants. They didn’t sign up to be purveyors of death and assisted dying changes the scope and image of the profession, even if only a minority of doctors are involved. It is far from clear that only a minority of doctors would be involved.

Absolutely not! The last one was a complete disaster.
The only referendum I'd entertain is rejoining the eu.

Both my father and brother ended their lives with suicide. I'm very aware that suicide itself as a means of death has ramifications. I firmly believe whether it's controlled, legalised whatever those ramifications will still exist and affect families in ways they hadn't anticipated.