Assisted dying debate next week… To think this is a relief. So glad they’re finally debating this important issue.

[Mavenss]

We will be able to see which MPs are for or against assisted dying.

This Monday 29th April, assisted dying will be debated in Westminster for the first time in two years. An absolutely incredible 203,000 people added their name to the government petitionspearheaded by Dame Esther Rantzen to make this happen, creating the largest ever parliamentary petition on assisted dying.

There will not be a vote on Monday, but this debate will be the last time before the General Election that MPs have an opportunity to show you that they are listening to our calls for safe and compassionate choice at the end of life. A majority of voters in every constituency support an assisted dying law.

The debate starts at 4:30pmand you can watch it live online through the UK parliament website.

YABU- it’s a silly idea, why are government even debating it? Assisted dying is a terrible idea.

YANBU - I support the debate and assisted dying (under the agreed circumstances)

I’m interested in the MN feedback here.

We all have them ;)

There's nothing natural about artificial feeding or pumping drugs into people to keep them alive either. If everything was left to natural there wouldn't generally be any need for this discussion as majority of people would've died much sooner

‘The Roman Catholic church, alarmed at the precedent the law would set, poured millions of dollars into campaigning against it by claiming that assisted dying would encourage a rash of suicides. The archbishop of Portland, William Levada, called proponents of the law “murderers in the name of mercy”.’

🙄

Well if they need resuscitation then they are actually dead at this point so obviously are at a natural end of life

No one has said medical care is natural. Natural or not is irrelevant.

This is clearly not what I said and you know it. It is easy to take things out of context and twist them to support your own agenda.

There are plenty of people here (care home) whose lives are very different from what they once were, but are in no way candidates for AD either now or probably in the future. But for those whose situation changes they should have that option.

You are obviously anti AD and that is your prerogative, but it is not your prerogative to make decisions for others.

The only part you said was the part in bold. The rest was me asking you a question. No where have I said that you said my question to you.

Your posts do have a theme of due to unbearable suffering caused by poor, underfunded care we need AD.

The problem with legalising AD is that it is also legalising two doctors to make that choice for others. The person or their relative with POA may request AD but it is the doctors that ultimately make the decision.

This view is from my own, current, personal situation. For instance reading the reviews of this care home from the perspective of family and visitors gives a very different idea from the reality of being here. As I say there are plenty of people here, the majority of whom have dementia, for whom AD is not necessary, but for those who are it should be a viable option. The staff I have spoken to agree that in certain cases it would the kindest and most humane act.

In the outside world there are cases where a husband or wife of 50+ years has felt compelled to end the suffering of their spouse because they could no longer tolerate the pain. They do this in the knowledge that they can be prosecuted for murder but it is the last act of kindness and love they can give to that person.

AD is not murder it is Assisted Suicide. It is something that the person would do for themselves if they physically could. To make someone end their lives by spending their last days or weeks in agony, begging to die is inhumane and cruel. I know I have said it before, but you would not subject your pet to this (you would be rightly prosecuted if you did), but its okay to allow humans to suffer in this way.

Did you bother reading the last part of my sentence or just choose to ignore it?

It’s speeding up the natural process for someone whose death is imminent and for whom it will be a merciful release.

Those who watched Liz Carr’s documentary did you find the doctor in Canada both bizarre and terrifying with all the laughing?
I used to completely agree with assisted dying thinking it was purely about allowing people with terminal illness the choice to escape the final weeks/days but this is not the case. I can’t see how it could be operated safely to stop people being “helped” to die for other reasons.

If assisted dying is legalised in the UK then we will end up like Canada and it won’t just be the the terminally ill who are offered it, but people with mental health issues and the homeless as well.

A few months ago someone created a post on here suggesting that it would be better for older people not to go through treatment for conditions such as cancer because they are old. It’s obvious AD will be used as a cheap alternative. Ageism is rife on here but even that post shocked me. Instead of being given a chance of recovery, treatment is more likely to be withdrawn and the patient given AD. They have paid into the system their whole lives, why should the elderly be made to feel guilty for being alive?

The population of this country is increasing exponentially which means each year there will be less and less funding in the NHS. And now there are growing calls for AD. How convenient 🙄

A study..

Title: Legal physician‐assisted dying in Oregon and the Netherlands: evidence concerning the impact on patients in “vulnerable” groups

Conclusion: Where assisted dying is already legal, there is no current evidence for the claim that legalised PAS or euthanasia will have disproportionate impact on patients in vulnerable groups. Those who received physician‐assisted dying in the jurisdictions studied appeared to enjoy comparative social, economic, educational, professional and other privileges.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2652799/

Technically yes from a cardiac arrest but people are saved in that situation all the time. I do agree with your other posts about unnaturally prolonging life but to the family I'm sure all they can think is she's probably been robbed of what could've been another 20 years. She didn't have cancer or dementia. Personally I'd rather go the way she did than most other ways, but I do think it's tragic if she would've wanted to be saved to watch her grandson grow up.

It was better in my grandmother's day-both her parents died after very short illnesses, they didn't need care for years and didn't lose any of their faculties. I'm sure dementia wasn't half as common as it is now.

A 2007 study that has been proven wrong by actual events and later studies already posted in the thread.

Suicides amongst women increased 40% after legalisation of AD in US States:

”Posner hypothesised that the legalisation of assisted suicide may substitute for unassisted (unregulated) suicide. We test predictions arising from this hypothesis using data from US states that have legalised assisted suicide. Event studyregression estimates provide strong evidence that legalisation of assisted suicide is associated with an increase in total suicides, especially for females and older people. There is some evidence that assisted suicide laws are also associated with a smaller increase in unassisted suicide, though the statistical significance is weaker than for total suicides. Results using the synthetic control method (SCM) are generally consistent with the regression estimates. Overall the US experience to date provides little evidence in support of the Posner substitution hypothesis.”

”For total suicides (Table 3) the total policy impact of assisted suicide laws is estimated to be positive and strongly significant. The average treatment effect on the treated (ATT) of 17.71 implies an increase of around 2 suicides per 100 thousand per year in assisted suicide states than might have been the case without assisted suicide. Given pre-legalisation suicide rates, that implies an increase of around 18%. Although the ATT is slightly lower for females (16.11), female suicide rates are typically about a quarter those of males. This means the implied percentage increase in total suicides is much bigger (closer to 40%) for females. The estimated effect on total suicides is also relatively large over-64s. In contrast, the ATT for under-35s is small (though still positive) and statistically insignificant, consistent with the fact that assisted suicide is almost non-existent in that group.”

Canetto and McIntosh (2022) “posit…that higher take-up may reflect disempowerment of those who are more vulnerable to social pressure to die by suicide, for example through feeling a burden to relatives or society and that women are overrepresented in such groups. The confirmation in our research that suicide rates for women are relatively more affected by assisted suicide laws than for men makes the resolution of such debates even more critical.”

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0014292122000551?via%3Dihub#sec0012

And in Europe as well
”Conclusion
This paper has provided further context for the OECD Suicide Data identified by Lowe and Downie. In particular, it has assessed the contention that, in Switzerland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Belgium "suicide rates either stayed the same or decreased after MAID legislation" (Dembo et al., 2018, p. 453). Upon examination, this reassuring claim is not borne out by the evidence.
When data from these jurisdictions are compared with those of neighbouring non-EAS states; significant dates are included; suicide (inclusive of assisted suicide) or intentional self-initiated deaths are included; and rates of male and female non-assisted suicide and suicide (incl. AS) / ISID are considered separately, a different and more concerning pattern emerges:
• In all of the four jurisdictions there have been very steep rises in suicide (incl. AS) or in ISID after the introduction of EAS. A striking example is the suicide rate (incl. AS) of women in Switzerland which has roughly doubled since 1998. Many more people have died prematurely after these changes.

• In none of the four jurisdictions did non-assisted suicide rates decrease after introduction of
• EAS relative to the most similar non-EAS neighbour. There is no indication of prevention of non-assisted suicide at a population level.
• In one of the four jurisdictions, the Netherlands, which has the longest history and greatest number of deaths by EAS in Europe, the rates of non-assisted suicide have increased since EAS was legalised by statute. This was both an increase in absolute terms and an increase relative to its only non-EAS neighbour: Germany.
• In another of the four jurisdictions, Belgium, which has the second highest rate of the death by EAS in Europe, while the rates of non-assisted suicide decreased in absolute terms, they increased relative to its most similar non-EAS neighbour: France. It is striking that Belgium now has the highest female non-assisted suicide rate in Europe, based on OECD Suicide Data.
• In all these respects the pattern that emerges from the European data conforms with the pattern that Jones and Paton discovered in the United States data.

The data from Europe are not reassuring: The non-assisted suicide rates have not declined relative to comparable non-EAS countries, whereas there have been very large increases in suicide (inclusive of assisted suicide) and in intentional self-initiated death, especially among women. Neither these data nor those from the United States give any grounds for believing that EAS constitutes "an effective from of suicide prevention" (EXIT, n.d.) at a population level whether this is understood as preventing suicide (incl. AS) or as preventing non-assisted suicide. There may be other things that can be said in favour of legalising EAS but there is no evidence that it would be beneficial in relation to suicide prevention overall. Indeed, if one considers the community as a whole, it is not the prohibition of EAS but the introduction of EAS that is associated with "evidence of premature death" (Carter v. Canada [Attorney General], 2015, para. 58). Furthermore, the data from Europe and from the U.S. indicate that subsequent to the introduction of EAS, it is women who have most been placed at risk of avoidable premature death from changes in rates of intentional self-initiated death and from changes in rates of non-assisted suicide. More research is needed but consideration of prima facie descriptive data on non-assisted suicide, assisted suicide, and euthanasia in Europe raise serious and concerning questions.” https://jemh.ca/issues/open/documents/JEMH%20article%20EAS%20and%20suicide%20rates%20in%20Europe%20-%20copy-edited%20final.pdf

From 2021
https://bmcmedethics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12910-019-0426-2

God, SummerFeverVenice, that is some particularly damning evidence.

It is the point addressed in the last article, the devaluation of the lives of those living with disabilities in the wake of assisted suicide legislation that is really frightening and distopian.

Thank for reading, I thought I might be over doing the long cut and paste posts so just linked the last article.

No, it worth reading, as grim as what it tells us about society. Thanks for the link.

I’m unsure as to why you are so keen on not giving people who have an incurable, degenerative, disabling or debilitating condition, the right die with dignity, if that is what they choose.

For you the rights of ‘others’ (who usually do not have an Incurable, degenerative, disabling or debilitating disease) take precedence.

It is deeply arrogant and shows a significant lack of empathy for what others are going through every single day of their lives.

Did you read the any of the linked work?

Do you know what I think is arrogant, and juvenile, is having a feeling about how things should work as you wish and continuing to demand it even though it has been demonstrated to not work how you wish.

Unless, of course, you think the widespread disregard of those living with disabilities and a withdrawal of medical and societal support of those whose lives are devalued in the wake of assisted suicide legislation is okay with you?

Over several posts I and others have stated our position on this matter, and the reasons for that. You have stated yours.

Not sure why you are being so aggressive. Associated with lack of empathy I guess. I don’t need to discuss this with you any further.

Ah, more foot stomping and emotional blackmail masquerading as the moral high ground. Okay.