Euthanasie, dont legalise in UK.

[MrsMarkieParkie]

I just read that 8% of deaths in Canada last year happened via euthanasia. This doesnt sit right with me. Also, as described in the article, the protocol seems mostly the same as the US death by lethal injection.
Do we want this in the UK?

So the system worked then? All good.

I am very happy for you.

Your mother's experience is not what happens to everyone. Palliative care does not provide sufficient or sufficiently effective pain relief for everyone.

Yes I want this. I believe it would be a good thing for society and individual choice.

I believe safeguards can be put in place as they are in many countries to prevent exploitation of vulnerable individuals.

A DNR again is do not attempt cardiopulmonary resuscitation it does not mean don't offer any medical assistance it's different to an advanced decision. Even then an advanced decision only covers what is written. If someone has a sudden catastrophic illness , cardiac event , injury , choking CPR is very good for that. If someone is already very frail in declining health terminal then CPR won't do anything. It doesn't cure the underlying condition and prolongs the death in a horrible way. The body is still structurally failing and CPR won't reverse the disease process. It's why DNRs will always remain a clinical decision.

DNR is in place for people who may live quite a few years. Once you reach a certain age resuscitation is very unlikely to work. My father in law had a DNR in place for about five years. It does not mean you are necessarily going to imminently die.

I think it was once you hit 90 a DNR is recommended.

The concerning thing about a DNR is that I've heard it being applied to younger people with learning difficulties when they are physically well.

Its nothing like 8%.

If you are physically well a DNR is irrelevant, obviously.

Dial down the drama.

I am pro human euthanasia. Belgium and The Netherlands seem to have got it right.

A lot of safeguards need to surround it however. I know far too many family members of vulnerable elderly people who can't wait to get their greedy mits on the money.

Yes, it's frightening.

I don't find it frightening. It's normally a consequence of witnessing a relative or beloved person die in a slow and awful manner which strips them of dignity. I wouldn't want that for myself if given the choice. I'd hope that my choice would be respected when I became too demented to care for myself.

What’s frightening is having to endure a long and painful death, and knowing you are going to have to go through it, without any person or any medication to ease your suffering.

@AskMeMore is right. Deliberately causing the death of someone who does not want to die is murder.

What would you call it?

No one is calling for people who don't want to die, to die.

There will be a laws and safeguards. No one is setting out to intentionally cause someone else's death.

So yes, dial it down.

Eh? But that’s not what it’s about. Why have you just invented that?

You can have well managed deaths with good painkillers. My parents both had this. We should be campaigning for everyone to have a good death.

But not everyone can, though. Because the painkillers don’t work on some people and some diseases. Even with the very best palliative care available. It’s very naive to think that. It’s great that your parents had pain-free deaths. But not everyone gets that - even with the best palliative cate available. I think it’s about a third of people don’t. I’ll have to look up the stats. They are very, very sobering. Yes, we should campaign for better palliative care, but that won’t solve the problem.

@AskMeMore as has now been said many times on this thread, palliative care does not work for everyone. Please, please get that through your head and preferably into your heart.

This should not be a zero sum game. We need outstanding palliative care alongside the option of assisted dying so that people have a choice when palliative care fails them.

There is always something who will slip through the safeguards.

The trouble is if this is the case and people accept there will be some failings the result is severe. Ie death when not wanted

I get the arguments for but this seems very difficult

www.ohe.org/publications/unrelieved-pain-palliative-care-england

In summary:

378,427 people receive palliative care a year in England.

125,971 end-of-life patients receiving, or in need of, palliative care suffer from unrelieved pain.

16,130 patients experience no relief from their pain at all in the last three months of life.

Some suffer unnecessarily because of variations in the quality of care.

Even if unrelieved pain rates were the same as they are in hospices, there would still be 50,709 dying in some level of pain.

5,298 would still experience no pain relief at all in the last three months of life.

A few posters here, including you, think that if someone signs an advance directive requesting euthanasia if they develop dementia then they should be held to that directive and euthanased even if showing extreme resistance and having to be held down to administer the drugs.

Here are your words:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4780333-euthanasie-dont-legalise-in-uk?page=15&reply=125336123

A woman was held down and killed when she did not want to die. You think holding her down and administering the drugs against her will was the right thing to do.

What safeguards would you put in place?

You seem very passionate about legalising assisted dying, have you worked out exactly what you are asking for? What you would like the law to say?

I'm assuming this poster was putting forward her experience as a balance to the experiences elsewhere on the thread, eg the poster who said that as she had witnessed a death from cancer, she was all for euthanasia.

If one personal experience counts, so does the other.