They don't want us to have a choice over death do they?

[Hunnymonster1]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2lyl8jrvlo.amp

This is so bloody annoying why are we so backward compared to other countries? Other countries have this sorted like america.In some states, belgium, holland, Switzerland.
They are not gonna allow this to happen are they? Which means the rich will go and pay dignitas and the poor will suffer. I am starting to get so annoyed by the mps of this country
Am I being unreasonable into thinking that they are backwards and should have given maybe the British public a referendum on a subject matter so important to individual people. If not a ref why is our country so backwards

Surely at the very least, when you’re reaching the point of having everything stopped and withdrawn, there is no hope left for a recovery, concerns about coercion and such become void. It seems clear to me that this is the final stage, but it’s not legal to hasten it. When the treatment etc are withdrawn, that decision is being made anyway, isn’t it?

All I'm saying is I think if you think it's simple, you don't really understand the issues.

I think it's possible to have all kinds of reasoned positions on this question, except thinking it's simple. It's not simple. People saying it's obvious or simple are writing off a whole section of humanity (either the people who will be murdered or the people forced to live against their will).

You would think a cabinet minister would vote unreservedly for assisted dying, if only to bring in inheritance tax receipts much quicker.

“Do you think people will happily chose death when they still right enough in themselves?”
Well they do now don’t they- they travel to Dignitas before they are ready, there was that nurse that slit her wrists, was interrupted, monitored and then escaped and jumped of a bridge. I mean, is that more palatable?

I am 46, healthy and sound of mind, if I get cancer and I’m in pain I’m ready to go thanks- same if I get dementia and can’t swallow, recognise my family and soil myself every day ~ I’m good to go thanks.

If you want to sit and suffer in agony, screaming in to the void, choking on your own faeces feel free!
People seem to romanticise death. God knows why.

One of them is a lot cheaper than the other though.

You are 46. You have absolutely no idea what it is like to be old and ill. You in fact are the one who is romanticising it - extremes and horrors that don't happen to the majority of people.

@timbitstimbytes I have Ehlers Danlos Syndrome. I assure you, many of us suffer so horrifically that we consider this option. Again, how can you know the extent of suffering one is enduring. You've just swallowed this narrative that it's no biggie. The medical profession don't understand the condition, they gaslight people and don't diagnose it so people have to go and pay for diagnosis. It comes with multiple co morbidities that are absolutely life destroying. This condition is on record as causing for many a level of pain akin to final stage cancer. I attest to all this. My bowels exploded, I vomited my own feaces, I developed sepsis, I lost my bowel. This is one tenth of what I suffer. You'd never know this from the headline you just quoted. People have to read beyond the bullshit.

I feel certain that there will be cases where it's recorded as just ' depression ' but there's likely additional conditions going on that have not been referenced. It's all red herrings.

You have to live it, experience it, see it and then your views might change.

Ref the ramp - ' thanks but no thanks. Now where's my ramp you jobsworth '

Oh I bloody well do. I watched my father die from pancreatic cancer. Nan from ear cancer and now DM so don’t you bloody dare.

What is better - thousands of people dying horrible deaths, or thousands of people being coerced into taking their own lives? There are no easy answers here.

In addition, my understanding is that this bill would not cover people with dementia in any case, so your second example would not be solved by assisted dying. An improvement in social care is the only solution there.

The post i was replying to was about you and your wishes.

It would have been nice for my mum to have been able to say a proper goodbye to everyone rather than drag out her last days with none of us knowing when it would happen. To be fair she was so pumped full of morphine for the pain, she didn't know what was happening.

I would like to think this proposed bill becomes law as I will likely inherit the disease my mum died from and I don't want to put my children through the same.

@Tittat50 i have ME and many of us live a life completely isolated, bedbound. Sometimes unable to cope with light and sounds. That’s 25% of us.
Im in the lucky 50% who is just moderate and has their daily life curtailed by 75%.

A lot of people with ME commit suicide. One of the illnesses with the highest suicide rates. I believe it’s also the main cause of death.

Unfortunately, EDS isn’t the only illness that has been ignored and dismissed by the medical condition, leaving people with poor quality of life
(As you will EDS often happens concurrently with ME, MCAS or POTS)

However, this doesn’t mean that anyone who suffers from those illnesses want to die. Those who do are often in untenable situations that could easily be solved with good (and adequate to them) social care.

I appreciate you are finding living with EDS hard. That’s your experience and I recognise it. But not everyone would then automatically agree AD is THE answer.

Wes Streeting was on LBC earlier - he said that in order for AD to be truly a choice, palliative care needs to be improved. I agree. I'm also very concerned about the (foreseen and unforseen) consequences of legalising AD.

This brief NS article lays out some of the points.

https://archive.ph/oJ4Az

@RickyGervaislovesdogs with all due respect, and I really mean that, I don’t think anyone has any idea of how they will react when facing death or potential death.

But there are risks for everything. Should we stop driving cars because thousands of people are killed on the roads each year? Should we stop selling alcohol because people die of liver disease and beat up their wives? Should we stop selling cigarettes because of lung cancer?

Why is this risk worse than any other risk in life?

And it should start with palliative care being part of the NHS rather than being hospice care run by charities.

You are in NO position to comment on me or my wishes and that is not what you said at all!

@ComingBackHome oh yes absolutely. I agree with that entirely. The point is trying to encourage people to move away from thinking that certain things surely can't be that bad. For many, they really are. For others, not so.

No, they don't. But they happen to enough people to to make millions of people worried about what is going to happen when they are old.

I'll be okay because I can afford to go to dignitas. I just feel sorry for people who can't afford to.

It is very unfair that people with money have a choice and those without do not.

@RickyGervaislovesdogs I of course am in a position to reply to a post you make on a public forum. My reply was that at 46 and in good health it is easy to say you would want death if you had cancer. You have no idea how you'd react.

Your mum was very lucky that she was pumped up with morphine. So many people in the UK die in pain which goes on for days if not weeks.

There was someone on MN the other day who said that the nurses said they would come next week when she asked for stronger painkillers for her husband because she knew he was about to die. She said she needed the painkillers now and not next week but they still didn't come.

And yet still worth living.

I agree that yes things CAN be that bad.

But we also need to stir away from a discourse that says that if your life is curtailed that much by pain, weakness, whatever then your life is clearly not worth living.
Because that’s what a lot of people think (ableism) and if the a law is put together based on that sort of assumptions, there are many disabled and chronically ill people that will be ‘offered’ AD as THE treatment option. Because who would want to live a life like that?

I really hope that it is legalised here. Everyone should have the basic right to choose how and when they die. Having watched people close to me suffer with terminal neurogenerative disease, I think it's inhumane not to offer a dignified death

@ComingBackHome no we can't make comparisons like that. I can guarantee you my level of suffering is probably worse than most. I won't reel it all off. It really isn't about not being strong enough. I did luck out in my presentation plus multiple autoimmune condition morbidities including crippling and disabling neurological ones. Some people have ME and do just fine. It has killed others - not by suicide either.
It's as always a case by case basis.

I would rather die slowly and painfully myself than risk my children being killed if they have mental health problems when they are older. My DS when he was aged 9 told us to throw him under the car so he could die. His medication was badly adjusted but if we'd been relying on mental health care we wouldn't have known that - as they refused to see him because he wasn't bad enough.
That's what's happening in other countries and as I say, I'd rather die in agony than run that risk.