Why do we put animals out of their misery but let humans suffer?

[Freshton]

A relative is currently dying a slow and horrible death from terminal cancer. In palliative phase and last few days now as can't swallow or take any liquids.

It's truly opened my eyes. I had no idea how medieval things were still when it comes to death. I've been truly horrified at what people are expected to endure in their final weeks and what their relatives have to witness.

I can't understand why we put animals to sleep to spare them suffering but humans still have to deal with this slow and undignified end.

I've never been much in favour of assisted dying as not had to think about it but after seeing what I've seen, I really hope something can change. I'll be haunted for the rest of my life by what I've seen in last few weeks.

Yes. Their method is much more humane than the swallowing handfuls of pills method in the bill.

https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/117263/pdf/

Why do people keep looking to Canada? Why not the other countries/states where there has not been the same controversy?

I think because it’s an example of how horrifyingly wrong it can go. And I don’t have any trust in our government not to fuck it up.

I think because the UK Assisted Dying bill most closely resembled the Canadian MAiD law when it was first passed there.

There have been the same abuses/slippery slope effects in other countries and US states that have legalised assisted dying, it’s just that their laws were not as similar to start with as the proposed UK bill (eg Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg went straight for euthanasia). Canada is the most comparable case study in terms of how the UK bill is currently written.

@AmberTigerEyes

you do realise that their are some illnesses and ailments that cause unbearable disgusting inhumane levels of suffering to a person that no amount of palliative care…even the best possible palliative care…can assuage? Why do you think people should be made to suffer and not be able to make decisions about their OWN life and their OWN body?!

I agree. I watched my mum dies for 6 weeks. She was in pain and begging for the end. I’ve told my husband that the minute they pass the assisted dying laws I’m making a will to say I choose that. I refuse to put my children through what I went through. I’ll never get over it. I won’t do that to them if there’s another way.

What else would you call killing someone against their will? Because if you really think there's no chance of an assisted dying bill carrying that risk, you must be criminally naive. Glad you find it so amusing, though.

@ruethewhirl

well apparently according to @AmberTigerEyes if you want to kill yourself you can already just kill yourself so by that notion if you want to murder someone you can just do regardless of this bill.
so it’s most definitely not a reason to pass it.
ones own body means one’s own choices, END OF

I don’t agree that palliative care cannot be better funded and improved to alleviate suffering. I think that even now, the number who cannot be helped by the best palliative care today is tiny.

Overall, I think that purchasing shorter suffering of a few is not worth the cost of the deaths of any innocents. All the evidence shows assisted dying results in people, (usually poor, older disabled women), being coerced into deaths they do not want.

coerced sex is rape, therefore coerced death is murder.

How can I support any bill that privileges a few dying with a smidge of control over their death for the cost of lives of the most vulnerable?

We abolished the death penalty when we realised punishing most despicable serial killers with death was not worth the cost of executing a single innocent man ever.

This is a feminist issue too. We won’t execute anyone because 1 innocent man’s life is so important (men are the 99.99% of serial killers).

But we will happily push for assisted dying that can only shorten not prevent or lessen suffering for an unknown number of people at the cost of more than 1 (usually a woman’s) life?

Studies on assisted dying show dozens of concerning cases per year where a person has been coerced into death. Dozens.

No amount of control over my time of death is worth the life of another human being.

That’s a false equivalence. Suicide is legal, murder is not.

@AmberTigerEyes

you are wrong. Palliative care can have billions of pounds pumped into it and people will still suffer pointless pain and indignity with a long drawn out death that they don’t want. They want quicker and with more autonomy. Do you not think it’s cruel to deny those people?

What do you think we are? Robots? 🤖

I think it's very unlikely that AD will come in in the UK, unfortunately. The House of Lords talked it out last time and are likely to do so again, despite it passing in the Commons. However, the poll on this thread is over 80% in favour of AD which reflects the national polls.

Most people are in favour of it, having watched the reality of someone they care about living with degenerative incurable illnesses where that person has stated their wish to end it but nobody can help them and their only option is to travel to Switzerland (which is only an option for the well off).

I wish we could go whenever we want to, even if we’re still healthy. Life is hard and getting harder.

I’ll still go when I’m ready, but it isn’t going to be comfortable or easy like it would be in an assisted dying facility.

Watching my dad slowly suffocate over several days has affected my mum so badly that she’s actually stockpiled some medication to take when she’s at the point where she doesn’t want to carry on. I’m not sure how palliative care would have helped him - a ventilator would have kept him breathing but he would have had to come off it eventually, it would just delay the inevitable.

I acknowledge that palliative care in this country is dire however it isn’t the amazing thing that will ensure you shuffle off this mortal coil smiling gently in absolutely no pain or distress that some think it is.

You can’t know whether investment into palliative care would come to nothing.
Imagine if you were the one making decisions on whether society should invest into better pain relief for childbirth. Or thought that five shots of whisky and a stick to bite on was the best we can ever do when amputating a septic limb.

I think it is more cruel as a society to decide that assisting the terminally ill in their suicide is worth murdering mostly vulnerable women.

It crosses a moral and ethical line, especially when these terminally ill people have the legal right and ability to take matters into their own hands and shorten their suffering. Not passing this bill doesn’t force anyone to suffer any longer than they can bear because suicide is not illegal. They still have full autonomy to choose when and how to die, they just don’t get to require the NHS help them with it and leave us to foot the bill when we are so broke that many lives are being lost due lack of healthcare, errors in healthcare, ambulances not showing up. A sooner death is so far down the priority list on what this country should fund imho,

This bill is requiring that the NHS provide a person medical assistance in their own suicide. Even setting aside the abusers and murderers that exploit assisted dying, think what would you cut in the NHS to pay for this?

I acknowledge that palliative care in this country is dire however it isn’t the amazing thing that will ensure you shuffle off this mortal coil smiling gently in absolutely no pain or distress that some think it is.

Neither is assisted dying.
In fact, witnessing assisted dying can also cause PTSD
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0924933810002683

and 3 in 20 assisted dying procedures experience one or more complications
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM200002243420805

It’s horrendous. I watched a parent die in agony over several days. They did nothing, the pain medication didn’t even touch the sides and I’ll never erase those screams when they were moved in their bed to try and prevent sores etc.

Utterly abhorrent that we subject people to that in this day and age.

If that’s what might be in store for me then I’d rather take matters into my own hands.

I often think that those who are against it would likely change their minds if they were subjected to watching a loved one go through it.

I agree with you.

And would you stand by that if it carried the risk that some would end up being killed against their will?

Witnessing a loved one begging for death for weeks on end can also cause PTSD.
A loved one at the end of life, especially one cut short with suffering involved, is awful for everyone.

Those studies linked to are from 2012 and 2000 so not exactly recent @XenoBitch. And yes, I agree with you - watching someone suffer dreadfully before they die is bloody awful and can cause PTSD.

You previously berated someone for bringing money into a conversation about life and death. This is the second time you've done it. So it's ok for you but not for others?

That bottom article is 26 years old! You're really scraping the barrel when you can't find anything that demonstrates current medical outcomes so have to go back over a quarter of a century. Furthermore, thats 85% that DON'T suffer complications. That's a pretty good rate! It is of course irrelevant anyway as you are continuing to focus on the death not the dying.