Legalising assisted dying option, do you support it?

[ForTheSakeOfThePenguin]

Hi,

I just realised there is a group advocating for the option of assisted dying for the terminally ill in the UK.

I am not a member of the group but this is an option I would like to have if I ever come to the point of having an illness that has taken away my quality of life (and that of the people around me) with no hope for improvement.

I've just added my name to Dignity in Dying's public record of support for legalising assisted dying. If you agree, add your name - it only takes ten seconds: action.dignityindying.org.uk/page/107124/petition/1?utm_source=em_share

Thank you

But in order to safeguard it you would have to die whilst you still had full capacity.

Do they? I understand that even in the countries that already support these options you have to show up substantial medical evidence that there is no possibility of improvement. It has never been an option free to take as people please.

I think she is doing her part by supporting people at the end of their life.

I assume as well that she has enough evidence working for the NHS that pigs will fly before good quality palliative care is available to EVERYONE as well as resources to support the families.

Not that we should not campaign for that too.

On the other side of the coin - who do you want to pay to kill people?

It would have to be someone's job. Would you want it to be done by the type of person who would apply for that job.

This gets glossed over as a "medical death" type thing. Are you going to pay doctors to kill people? Will they have targets to meet? budget balancing to decide?

The reality of it all is that someone has to do the "assisting" part, assisted dying is someone helping to kill someone.

If I knew that I was on a slope down to dementia, I would be ok with that. However, I don't see why I cannot put it in place now that once my competency is reduced, that is the time. I do not want to live in any kind of residential facility for people with dementia. They are hellish. If I cannot live on my own, look after myself, have a full quality of life, I am done.

No thanks.

I’m for it, subject to the required checks and balances being in place. They manage it in other countries, so there is no reason to suspect we couldn’t manage it here

would want very strict controls though- you would have to have signed up before you became ill. no relatives able to make that decision for you to stop abuse. Must be a terminal condition.

What about people with dementia? My mother lived with dementia for four years and had no quality of life at all.
I have signed a living will but if I had dementia I couldn’t consent.
Under no circumstances do I want to live with dementia for my sake and the children’s sake.

Palliative care did bugger all to help my mum. It just meant she "existed" rather than "lived".

There are some very difficult court cases around exactly this sort of issue from countries where AD is legal. It’s a minefield. Cases where someone with dementia has sanctioned AD at the point they need residential care then when that time came they have objectively been enjoying life and the activities and still loved seeing their family. Who then decides? And how do you stop families without the best intentions then deciding when granny is killed off? What is the staff disagree with the family.

Quality of life is so subjective. and it’s hard for us to judge how we will feel I’m a different body in the future. Lots of people say things like they wouldn’t want to live if they were in a wheelchair but clearly many people with mobility issues find their wheelchair a wonderful aid to living a full and happy life.

All the quality palliative care wouldn’t of bought my dad dignity, independence and quality of life

I used to go to sleep and pray for him to die
his last years were very cruel and also robbed my mum of a few of the good years she had left

My MIL has dementia, vascular, Alzheimers and already significant frontal lobe shrinkage. She was diagnosed 5 years ago.

"She" is still there... yesterday we spent the day together, laughing, joking... tomorrow may be different, the day after, different again. Who decides today is the day?

I’m all for it as long as it is tightly regulated. I sat with my wonderful Dad as he was dying. Even with palliative care he was in pain, distressed at times and it was so undignified and traumatic. Not the ending that anyone deserves.

We don’t allow our pets to suffer in the same way.

No, as someone with a lifelong disability I think it’s too slippery a slope. I have an amazing life, I just happen to spend it in a wheelchair. But I frequently meet people who think I have a poor quality of life and then when they talk to me and find out what I do are shocked.

I used to be very strongly in favour, but having seen what’s happening in countries like Canada and the Netherlands where it’s been legalised, I’m now not so sure. If it could be tightly restricted to those with a few weeks or months to live and who are in unbearable pain, that’s one thing, but there does seem to be an inevitable slippery slope.

My sentiments exactly.

I support it in principle. I've seen people close to me go the awful, protracted deaths from things like MND, cancer and dementia which hardly made for a comfortable or dignified death. I would hope to have the option of choosing when, where and how to go myself if I should ever become that ill.

However, I am still concerned about what safeguards could or would be put in place because sadly, there is the potential for unscrupulous people (even members of the same family in some cases) to abuse this if it is legalised.

It is something that would have to be very carefully thought through from every possible angle. For instance, what should happen if someone has lost capacity to make rational decisions for themselves? How do we know that all of those who emerge suddenly knowing that assisted dying is "what the person would have wanted" actually do know that for sure?

People always bring the pets argument in, but, sorry, now insurance is ubiquitous people do make pets suffer.

Chemotherapy to gain 5 months life, epilepsy medication that causes many side effects. Itch medication that can result in skin tumours. Medication for "fur-babies" survival is a multi billion pound industry now.

Support in principle. I know the details matter, too.

The case of Debbie Purdy haunts me. She established the principle that her partner would not be prosecuted for assisting her travel to a clinic where she could take her own life. She wanted to delay her end until her quality of life was too poor. Then Her quality of life was very good until... she was too disabled & ill to travel. She spent the last year of her life in a residential facility trying /waiting to starve to death. Which was awful for her. How shit is that? Barbaric.

I agree. I wonder who they are thinking of employing to do the ‘assisted dying’? Any doctor or nurse would be not doing what they sign up to do when the qualify in their professions, so that’s them out of the picture. So who else? People thinking it’s what should be done, should get the job, surely. Mostly signed by people who have limited experience of death or even palliative care imo!

... the lesson learned is that if a person wants a dignified end without a long pointless possibly very unpleasant existence preceding their death, they have to cut their life short while the quality is still such that they would actually prefer to keep living. How completely shit is that?

Decent end of life care should also extend to having a route out that includes assisted dying.

I nursed my dad right up to the end with MND. No amount of palliative care can compensate for aspirating on your own saliva because you can't swallow (amongst many other horrible aspects of MND). It was fucking horrific. That wasn't living, that was being tortured to death.

If that's in my future I'll honestly take my own life than endure what my dad did. Hopefully before then the UK will find a route to dying with dignity for those who have the shit choice of being tortured to death or dying quickly and painlessly.

No

Yes.
Agreements made with lawyer and medic as to when that option should kick in whilst person still of sound mind. (As we are all different)
Sign off by lawyer and medic at the time.
Simple.

It worries me that people supporting assisted dying actually don’t work in or have experience of palliative care or the realities of assisted dying in other countries. So it is all based on ethereal ideas and concepts not actual reality.

Amongst medical professionals who work in palliative care, care of the elderly and general medicine the consensus is strongly against. Because they see the vulnerabilities of people and how easily AD could be misused.

@YesNoMaybeAlways 100% this. Nobody wants to die in pain or watch their relatives die an unpleasant, drawn out death.

But there's a reason why we don't already have AD in the UK.

People who are in favour of it often don't know the reality, and it's based on ideas and assumptions about what it could be or what they want it to be. Often idealised.

People need to look at the reality of the situation of the health system in the UK, consider every angle before jumping to an opinion either way.

To just say 'I shouldn't have to die in pain/ my relatives shouldn't have to, we should have the choice, so I support it' is an over- simplified view.

My mum had spent at least a year telling me she was ready to die, that she had no purpose in life etc etc - she was a fit and healthy 72 year old but refused to seek help for the obvious (to me) symptoms of depression. She had a very severe stroke which was caught very early and she was in A & E begging not to die. She has recovered very well and albeit much less mobile could have a full and active life if she wished.

When she was in the rehab unit in the 6 weeks following her stroke there were 2 ladies there, both in their 90s, skeletally thin, unable to talk or eat or move, doubly incontinent, both regularly crying out 'just let me die'. But the drs and nurses had to keep them alive because thats what they do. The ladies families visited once a week, didn't want to be there, just sat next to the bed not even attempting to communicate with the patient. Surely it would have been more humane to provide these two very elderly ladies with no obvious quality of life except the ability to breathe unaided a dignified and peaceful end without tubes and needles and bed baths and suchlike?