To be very anxious about the assisted dying bill?

[bipbopdo]

I’m surprised by how anxious I am about it. I don’t agree with it at all and I’m not sure there will ever be enough safeguards to justify making it legal. As it currently stands, it’s theoretically possible for someone with anorexia to qualify.

It took less than ten years for Canada to expand eligibility well beyond the original criteria. Assisted dying now accounts for one in twenty deaths there. I’m scared that could happen here.

I’d be more anxious about being force fed antibiotics should I be incapacitated with dementia etc. in a care home.

Years ago,
it wasn’t uncommon for visiting district nurses to help the terminal patients on their way, drifting off peacefully in their own bed with a shed load of morphine.

I don’t want us to end up like Canada but there has to be a way for people to end things on their own terms.

My added paragraph to the H&W was very specific about circumstances- if I had not just dementia, but any condition where I was unable both to care for myself and speak - with full mental capacity - for myself.

I am confident that whoever will then have P of A - probably dds - will stand by wishes made known when I did have full mental capacity.

I have elderly parents who spent a lot of time in hospitals, rehab units and nursing homes. The sight of how people in there live is enough to make my bloody run cold - I do not want that for me. Shoot me - whatever but bloody hell, don't make me endure the torture people go through in these places in their old age is enough to scare anyone into AD. My Mum's aunt had 4 years of being envious when someone died, she was in huge amounts of pain...how can that be right? I'm so glad I have an option now, I'm still haunted by the elderly people I have seen in pain or distress.

Respect your opinion, @noodlebugz but for me, as long as people are needlessly dying in tremendous pain, I think they need to be given the right to end that awful process, as soon as it feels right for them. By your own admission, palliative care is a lottery. I recently lost a friend to cancer, and it was horrendous how lack-lustre the efforts to manage his pain were.

@Zimunya I think the key thing is we need to ensure we are making sufficient sustained national competent effort to get rid of the NEEDLESSLY being in pain / suffering in addition to AD for people to have genuine choice - and that’s what we are falling down on!
Then we can legislate it and do it well.
I just don’t see an appetite for that, and I’m so sorry your friend died in pain. It’s not what I aspire to in the job I do.

I support it. Currently watching my dad deteriorate day by day in pain with no quality of life and my mum doing literally everything. We’re just waiting for him to die to end his suffering.

Actually, I don't see why trying to avoid being a burden isn't a good reason to want to die. I certainly wouldn't want my children to be lumbered with caring for me if that seriously ruined their lives. Nor would I want them to have to spend thousands on keeping me in a miserable care home. I'd rather die. Obviously, it wouldn't be right if people were made to feel they were a burden - but that's a different story. With no discussion or coercion at all, I definitely do not want to make life difficult for my children.

I would not want to be a burden on my kids either but seriously, sitting in a nursing home - have you done that recently, it's horrific, even if it's a good one. I don't want that for myself. I really do not want other people to feed, clothe and toilet me and in old age that's not going to improve - I'd rather be dead.

Why would it be.? It’s a conscience vote, not a party line. It reflects the opinion of the public.

So did brexit...

Difference is that those of us who didn’t want Brexit have had it inflicted on us anyway. Assisted dying affects only those who opt in.

Unless you're being abused or coerced of course...

It’s still an opt in. You don’t want an assisted death but you want to deny it to the rest of us and deprive us of the choice.

No....the primary reason I'm against is it is not because I want to deny other people a choice...it's because I believe the potential for abuse and coercion of the most vulnerable in society is too high.

It makes no difference what your primary reason is. The result of not legalising assisted dying is denial of choice for everyone.

I live in a country with assisted dying, and have never heard such nonsense!

Oh the irony

I would say it is for the benefit of the patient. I certainly would rather be sedated if I was in great distress/pain than just left to get on with it.

Oh do grow up! I did not "shame" you because you haven't chosen assisted dying, I merely said you are talking nonsense, which you are.

People dying at home probably do have a choice.

My mother said, after my father’s death that she had a stack of morphine.

He had the choice of taking it all at once? My family were all doctors, and he had done a year of medicine. He knew that morphine depresses breathing, and a big enough dose will kill someone. After all, his father used to go round with a bottle of morphine in his pocket, as he said it was a good cough medicine (for his smoker’s cough). It was something our ancestors (qualified as physicians and surgeons), used to do for terminally ill patients.

After his death, a GP and family friend said of his death:

“Any doctor on the scene would have known what to do - a big injection of morphine!”

(That was in 2005)

I want everyone to have a choice, not just the very small number of people with a convenient stockpile of morphine. 🙄

@Comedycook

no. People should not be denied the choice just in case others get coerced into it. There are lots of things in life people could get coerced into but we don’t take them off the table as an option for everyone.
those suffering with no hope of getting better should have the choice to end that suffering. END OF.
it’s part of a humane, civilised society.

I can remember when the organ donation register was considered dangerous, and a slippery slope to hospitals deliberately dispatching patients just so they could harvest organs for transplant.

My FIL believed this. It took me a long time to convince my dp otherwise. I have never pushed him to become an organ donor, bit he at least is ok with me being one.

Strangely, he's all in favour of assisted dying though. Certainly since we watched our fathers both dying in distress from cancers. It's not a nice prospect.

I am in favour of it. The thought of not having the ability to end one's suffering when one chooses is just wrong. People shouldn't be forced to pointlessly suffer against their will. It seems to me like one of the most basic rights.

What assurances can you give us, that eventually those with disabilities won’t be forced into AD, as “useless eaters”?

There’s a peer, an accountancy lecturer, who apparently is always complaining about private equity companies. His latest complaint is that the number of animals being put down is increasing, as private equity companies take over veterinary practices and owners can’t afford their fees. People keep talking about how animals are better off, because they aren’t left to suffer - the euthanasia of animals, because they are unwanted or their medical care is too expensive, is the flip side of the coin.