To think people should not use 'we put pets to sleep' as an argument to allow assisted dying?

The surface issue of suffering aside,

It's not a surface issue, it's the whole point of the debate!

The rules are already very relaxed in that situation. If you give someone enough drugs to kill them then provided your intention was to provide pain relief then its legally permissible. An issue is that doctors tend to be scared of being sued so tend to veer towards conservative pain management.

I often find that people who are against assisted dying are very keen on improved palliative care which often seems to equate to enough drugs to keep you under and pain free until death essentially involuntary euthanasia.

No, palliative care with pain relief while in the active dying stage is not involuntary euthanasia. Involuntary euthanasia is just a fancy way of saying murder.

I just think we should be honest about it and give people the agency to choose.
People already have agency to end their lives. Assisted dying isn’t about agency or choice, it is about requiring another person, an NHS employee, to help a person take their own life or help state/abusers take the life of a vulnerable person.

This is a proven outcome. Innocent people will be coerced into assisted dying. The requirements for it will be relaxed. The law as currently written is open to people being euthanised without their consent- the Leadbetter committee rejected all proposed safeguards.

Thank you for clarifying further. It's a huge shame that fear of being sued can prevent people from spending their last days in a more comfortable state, and really not acceptable.

I do think that when someone is terminally ill, the rules around how much pain relief they're allowed should be relaxed.

Um, it is already. And it's possible to have good end of life care without paying for it in the UK. Though I would advise everyone to support their local hospice charity who IME do such excellent outreach work in this regard.

it’s not about comparing pets to people it’s about why do people have to suffer a terrible painful undignified death and their family having to experience such emotional turmoil when it is just not necessary

If suffering is the whole point, then by that rationale, people should be allowed to decide to end others' suffering, as happens with animals. But obviously, that's not what people are arguing for, so it's really not comparable.

My Grandad was on palliative care at home with cancer. In his final days he was in immense pain, confused, hysterical. We begged and begged for his suffering to stop. It didn’t. He died a most horrible, painful, undignified death which traumatised all his loved ones.

His daughter, my aunt, who witnessed her Dad’s suffering, had a similar death a few short years later.

Are you proposing full sedation for palliative care patients? As otherwise I can’t see how else their pain can be fully stopped? And is that much different from ending the suffering full stop. ?

My mother, shortly after witnessing her father then her sister’s awful deaths, made me promise that if assisted dying was ever legal when it comes to her time then that is what she wants. To alleviate her own suffering and to spare ours. My Mum has now been dying for years and suffering very very much. Her wishes will never be part of the assisted dying debate though as she has Dementia, the slow creeping crawl of dementia.

Over the last 10 years physically she has went from mobility aids, to wheelchair, to bedridden and moved around by a hoist, doubly incontinent. Mentally the deterioration has been slower but for years now she wouldn’t be able to tell anyone what day, month or year it was. Fortunately she has forgotten the trauma of watching her Dad and Sister both suffering traumatic deaths. Now we tuck her up in bed with her dolly while she cries for her daddy, like a 5 year old would, as somewhere mentally she seems to be back to her childhood. She attends a day care centre in an attempt to give her mental stimulation. We chat to her, play her music that she used to love, shower her with gifts, love her. She has no idea who we are. She can’t feed herself or even know what she likes to eat. Her eyesight has gone (cataracts) but the hospital say they can’t operate as she’s too fragile. She cries when she wakes, cries herself to sleep. My mum is 72 years old.

My dog is 5 years old, she has more free will and enjoyment from life than my Mum can ever have again. Yet, if she ever suffers from illness or injury that will leave her with a poor quality of life, I can agree that she could be euthanised, which I would absolutely agree to if it came to it, as I love her with all my heart and don’t want her to suffer. Why is our society kinder to animals than to our own fellow humans?

The options now are not so binary as either we introduce assisted dying legislation or we don't do that and everyone dies a painful death.

One of my fears around the introduction of assisted dying is that end of life care would become worse, not better.

Assisted dying is not proven to be pain free.

https://researchoutreach.org/articles/euthanasia-neuropsychiatric-researcher-raises-concerns/

F. Hanna Campbell, a researcher in neuropsychiatric AI therapeutics at the Center for Neuronal Regrowth, The Hague, Netherlands, has raised a number of concerns on current euthanasia practices. Campbell believes that patients choosing euthanasia are at risk of suffering pain during the process, and that there is not enough monitoring to ensure that patients experience the quick, painless death they were hoping for.

https://spectator.com/article/last-rights-assisted-suicide-is-neither-painless-nor-dignified/

As a doctor and expert witness against the use of lethal injection for execution in America, however, I am quite certain that assisted suicide is not painless or peaceful or dignified. In fact, in the majority of cases, it is a very painful death.
The death penalty is not the same as assisted dying, of course. Executions are meant to be punishment; euthanasia is about relief from suffering. Yet for both euthanasia and executions, paralytic drugs are used. These drugs, given in high enough doses, mean that a patient cannot move a muscle, cannot express any outward or visible sign of pain. But that doesn’t mean that he or she is free from suffering.

If my dog got cancer, I would be able to end her suffering. I have cancer, but I am being denied the option of making that same choice for myself. It's barbaric. You claiming that it's not about suffering, it's not right to compare people to animals is, in my opinion, nonsense. No, animals can't consent to being put to sleep, but we can decide it for them because we can see the greater good. In the same way that children can't consent to medical treatment, but we let the parents decide because they do understand the consequences.

Your logic is also flawed.

What we say about pets being put down is more about that fact that we don’t allow them to suffer, but we force people to suffer indignity.

I say this as someone whose parent asked them to help them end their life, and who had to say no. My dad was no longer capable of it, had always told us that when he felt the time was right he would end his own life on his terms (he was disabled with several issues that I won’t detail here). Unfortunately he had a stroke and no longer had the ability to use his hands, so could not overdose on his medication. Instead I had to watch him slowly wasting away, unable to control his bowels, unable to walk, unable to leave his home for 3 years until he went into a care home (which he had sworn he would never do), forget who everyone was, cry for his mum and his brother because he thought he was lost and needed to find them, shout at my mum for cheating on him (that was his first wife not her), and basically become a shell of himself…then he died after 5 years of suffering.

We would NEVER EVER EVER let a dog or cat live like that, we would end their suffering. But a person cannot even choose to have someone else end it for them. I cried myself to sleep over and over because of how disappointed I was in myself for not helping him, even though I knew it was illegal, but because I knew it was what he wanted. All I could do was hold his hand as he died, not knowing who I was or where he was.

The analogy about not allowing pets to suffer the way we force people is valid.

I'm very sorry that you're suffering with cancer. But I just don't think that the comparison to owners euthanising their pets is necessary to argue in favour of assisted suicide. It's not very relevant or compelling, and there are much better arguments, imo.

As a pp said, it might be officially relaxed, but obviously that doesn't always translate to adequate pain relief being implemented due to other concerns, which is a real shame.

To go back to the pets analogy I suppose it seems pain free because they just go to sleep (due to paralysis of central nervous system) and never wake up. Possibly that last minute is terrifying though.

I think I’d still take the chance of a bit of possible pain versus months of likely pain whilst dying of cancer.

I don't agree. However you're entitled to your opinion. I doubt if anything I said would change your mind and nothing you have to say would change mine.

Im a vet, and put animals to sleep on a daily basis. I never put an animal to sleep unless in its best interests. People often ask me how I can d my job, but I genuinely feel it is a kindness. I cant do any more for the animal at that point other than prevent more suffering.
I get that it is a far more complex situation with humans, but I have watched family members dying, in extreme suffering, and seen medical practitioners shrug their shoulders and say "he/ she is dying, what do you expect?"
If i had left a dog or cat suffering/ writhing/ screaming in pain like that i would be struck off. That can't be right

Agreed. Many people nowadays also cause their pets extended suffering with the advances in treatment available.

I’m currently a year in to a two year chemo treatment. I’ve spent the last two days vomiting bile as every cycle gets tougher on my system. I can push through those days knowing what the stakes are and that next week will be better. I can also choose to stop the treatment and die if it becomes too much

I would never put my dog through this, because she can’t understand what’s happening and has no voice. I love my dog and will always try to make the right choices for her, but no one has the right to make those choices for me. Pets are not comparable to autonomous humans.

Your logic is deeply flawed because you are drawing a conclusion that does not flow from the valid starting premises that you lay out.

Yes you are quite right that animals are categorically different for all the reasons you state, with valid reasoning, in your OP.

The valid conclusion to draw from this is that it woukd be utterly wrong and criminal for any of us to make an assisted dying decision on behalf of another human - that's what Harold Shipman did of course, and it was murder.

Extending this to say that we shouldn't be able to make the decision for ourself as an individual is an irrational overreach because the person making the decision does have full understanding of their situation and should be credited with the respect and dignity of being believed that they know their own mind and their own wishes. What we do for animals because they cannot understand and cannot consent simply is not remotely equivalent to a scenario where a fully informed individual is making a decision about themself

Obviously there should be safeguards and I am glad that the latest vote failed because the safeguards on the proposed bill were thoroughly inadequate and various important safeguards were deliberately rejected from the drafting at committee stage which I find repellant. However a more ethically drafted bill, which has watertight criteria to verify that the person making the decision has full unclouded capacity to make the decision, is not under duress or suffering from depression, and is fully and accurately informed about the risks and probabilities for what is likely to happen to them both with and without assisted dying so they can make a fully informed decision, and in conjenction with fully funding the best possible palliative care options so that no one is pressured into choosing to die as a cost-saving exercise - that bill will I hope one day be properly drafted and should succeed.

I think it’s a reasonable argument that we treat pets humanely so why not humans

Genuinely what is the point in keeping someone alive with severe dementia or let them suffer through the enormous pain of late stages of cancer? It's inhumane.

What do you mean by 'keeping alive'? Do you mean medically treating, or caring for them, instead of letting them waste away and die? Or by 'keeping alive' do you actually mean 'not actively killing'?

If the latter, then as for 'what's the point in not killing someone' – well, there's very little 'point' in not killing many people, frankly. It's just that killing people is frowned on.

If nothing else, in regards to dementia, killing someone who cannot give consent to it in the moment seems highly unethical. Although I agree that it seems pointless to keep them alive, I'm not sure that playing god is a wise solution either.

But not for everyone. Surely you must know that?

I mean there are some people we should neuter but joking aside, it's about the compassion.

You wouldn't put your dog in a dog shelter to live out their days In one room, incontinent and wailing with confusion. We would be labelled cruel.

We put beloved pets to sleep if they're really ill with no hope of cure because we are responsible for them, and cats, dogs etc have no way, by definition, of understanding the situation or communicating what they would want.

Yes, but we also (as the law currently stands) don't take into account people communicating what they want, if that's assisted dying, so I don't see the relevance of that difference. Where people can communicate what they want, if that's an end to their suffering (and even the best palliative care does not stop all suffering), then as it currently stands they cannot legally be given that in the humane way that is available for pets. Opposition to other people choosing assisted dying is so cruel and inhumane that I can't get my head around it.