Why do we put animals out of their misery but let humans suffer?

Hang on. That's not fair. It was you that brought money into it by saying you didn't want the government spending money on assisted dying.

Never mind the relatives. I'd rather not have a slow painful death for myself

You’re just using whataboutary rather than addressing the point. Read @Woodywasatwatt’s post at 19:34.

I agree. Although my brother died from cancer rapidly in 4 months from diagnosis to death, the last month was horrific. I watched him waste away in pain and die a very undignified death in a hospice where he appeared to be choking, then stopping breathing, then gasping and clearly distressed. It was barbaric and really awful for his wife and I to witness. He should have been able to drift off painlessly at least a month before.

No it isn't - you're confusing three different things.

1. Personal choice over how and when someone choses to end their own life. I would be happy to save myself and others money - rather than suffer for longer than I should; just because someone like you thinks you have control over my autonomy.
2. We have a democratic voting system. Do you really think any government (in the foreseeable future) would get away with that? Just look at the pair of flip flops we currently have in the prime ministers and chancellors chairs - as soon as the voters complain, the policy direction changes.
3. I didn't mention coercion to reduce the benefits bill at all. Do you not believe some people would actually choose a managed death, rather than suffer? Do you not trust safeguarding?

I disagree that it's the circle of life. We keep people alive through medical advancement now even if it isn't what's best for them. If assisted dying is unethical then so is artificially keeping people alive when they are seriously unwell.

My nan, who had dementia, got sepsis and we didn't think she'd make it. We were called into the relatives room and told to say goodbye. They gave her antibiotics and she pulled through. At the time we were grateful because selfishly we didn't want to say goodbye. If I'd known at the time how horrific her death would be in the end I would have wanted her to go when she had sepsis. At least she looked peaceful then.

My grandma had COPD and couldn't breathe. They kept her alive with breathing apparatus and she begged them to take it off. She kept trying to pull the tubes out but they said she didn't have capacity because she was hallucinating. They ignored her wishes and kept putting them back in until she was too weak to argue any more.

People are being left to kill themselves while in secure mental health units, plus a single suicide attempt doesn’t get you sectioned, you’re sent back home after a few hours free to try again.

This assisted dying concept has already changed people’s attitudes from seeing wanting to die as a mental illness where the person needs help to who could be bothered with the extra money and faff to treat depression, let us help push them off a bridge or give them a bottle of pills and cheer them on to end their lives.

No mention is made of improving the horrendous living conditions, poverty, deprivation, or poor palliative care that lead to the depression in the first place.

Dying is sad, unpleasant and of course difficult to witness.

That said, no we shouldn't hurry the process along and treat people like we treat animals and pts The solution is adequate treatment to control symptoms. Sadly, many GPs are crap and hospice care is limited.

If pain and symptoms are managed effectively then spending time with a dying relative should be a privilege.

While I understand and theoretically support the "when we have good palliative services, social services... we can discuss", I'm very afraid that this status is becoming more and more unreachable.

So the question is, what's more harm? Current situation or a choice, accepting that there will be some cases where the choices made could had been different with better services?

100% agree with you. I'm sorry you're going through this. I've been through this myself a few times now, it's traumatic.

Until I experienced this the first time I had no idea people could survive a week with no water, I thought it was 2 days maximum. If someone is so unwell that they're unable to eat or drink, to the point that you have to repeatedly swab their mouth so stop it drying up, it's cruelty IMO to let them suffer.

I don't know how anyone that's been through this could say they don't agree with assisted dying in situations where the person is never going to survive.

This has happened in assisted dying of humans as well.
Sometimes the person goes through the gastro intestinal agony of vomiting, shitting themselves, writhing in pain, passing out and then wake up to realise they aren’t dead but are now paralysed or blind and then have to endure attempt #2 to poison them.
One person changed her mind at the last minute minute and despite being slipped a sedative into her final tea (without her knowledge) started to fight the euthanising doctor. Kicking the drugs out of her hand, saying she didn’t want to die. You know what happened? Her relatives physically held her down until the doctor had forced the drugs into her and she had died. It was brought up for review by the authorities as possible malpractice and the relatives had many many comments about their elderly female relative being a burden and how they didn’t want all their inheritance eaten up in care fees. Everyone was acquitted, nothing to see here. Just an animal being pts for the convenience of her heirs.

No the Swiss system is also facing challenges of abuse.

One of their questions was why does the bill allow a proxy person to give consent on behalf of the patient? This is very much like the woman killed in Canada against her own stated wish for palliative care because her husband was burnt out and felt he couldn’t cope with waiting for his wife to die. MAId was approved within hours of his request and she was killed that very same night. Her refusal to consent and repeated requests for palliative care were ignored.

My when my poor dad was still lucid enough at the start of dementia and knew what was happening, he tried to take his own life.

He didn’t do it well enough though and was found and “saved”. He was then sectioned as he made his intentions of wanting to die clear and said he’d try again.

I wish he’d been successful, because what followed was 4 years of utter hell before he eventually died of thirst over 3 days, skeletal and a shadow of the eloquent, funny man he once was.

If I didn’t have young children, I would have helped him on his way and taken the prison time. I’ve been left with PTSD from those 4 years, fighting two care homes that he was abused in and sitting and watching his horrific death.

The second you make the argument that euthanasia is best because it saves the government money is the second you are admitting that the government will use cost savings to justify withholding disability benefits, active treatment or palliative care from the most sick and vulnerable regardless of what the patients want or need. Coerced into dying early to reduce the benefits bill is state sanctioned murder.

If this is a surprise to you, then you clearly haven’t done your research on the subject.

I'm so sorry about your husband. The problem is that the people trying to push the bill through that just failed voted down the amendments that were proposed in order to protect vulnerable people from coercion. That's why the bill failed in the end. There are too many people with their own dangerous agendas who want to prevent these protections being put in place.

My husband has advanced cancer. I was praying for the assisted dying bill to go through and that he would benefit from it. Why can we not agree a system that allows people to end their suffering when agreed by medical professionals - other countries can do it. Its barbaric and unnecessary.

And the abuse argument isn't a good enough reason to stop the bill going through. Appropriate checks and measures should be in place.

Massively agree that we should be able to choose a medically-assisted death.

Then how come so many people want an assisted death (and travel to get it) for themselves? Yes, survival instinct is strong, but not when you're suffering horribly - at that point, you just want to stop suffering.

Of course it's an assertion. But it is undeniable that the assisted dying bill that was recently dropped would have increased the risk that vulnerable people could be coerced into using the provisions within it. In my opinion, it isn't worth the danger that this bill would have put the most vulnerable in.

What's wrong with funding care through charity? Whether it's through people paying taxes or people giving to charity, its all coming from the public. Charity is simply a voluntary tax.

Being against assisted dying is taking away choice. Why do you get to choose how I die but I don't get to choose how you die? Is that really fair?

You know why. We all know why but it's hard when you see your relative in the final stages of life. It is terribly sad but part of the circle of life. I've seen relatives die this way but they are on lots of drugs and not in pain. It is more painful for us to watch them this way than them. Dying is a natural process.

I'm so sorry you're having to go through this OP. 💐 If we could bring in assisted dying in this country and make sure it was always freely chosen without coercion I'd absolutely 100 percent support it. But unfortunately in other countries like Canada where it happens it's being used for people without terminal illnesses, and many of them who ask for treatment and care for their disabilities are being refused it due to lack of funding and having assisted dying pushed on them instead. There are people in hospital without terminal illnesses being asked if they want to die constantly even when they have made it clear they don't want that. With assisted dying the people who support it do so for different reasons, some because they very understandably want to give people choices about their death and not force them to die slowly of a terminal illness if they don't want to, but others support it because it saves a lot of money, and many of the people who want to to save money are happy to ignore coercion or actively participate in it. Some of the first group also turn a blind eye to the second group, or are quite willing to ally with them in order to try and get the laws they want passed. The bill that failed recently in the uk didn't succeed because it didn't make provision to prevent coercion, and in fact the people pushing it voted down most of the clauses intended to prevent coercion. There's also the issue that the drugs that are used for assisted dying haven't actually been proven to cause a peaceful death, in fact it seems that it may be quite the opposite in many cases.o