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.

I believe that people don’t know how awful it is until they have to see a relative go through it with their own eyes. I strongly believe in assisted dying and think that all those who voted against it in parliament can’t have had to go through it themselves yet

But she wouldn’t have the capacity to choose to die, so a change in the law wouldn’t protect her.
Andvit would be unethical for her relatives to decide

Yes, I agree and for the House of Lords to talk out the AD bill is outrageous.

They are mostly a privileged group who don't have much idea of what life is like for ordinary people. They're happy to take away other people's choice because their wealth insulates them from reality.

I think we should have a law where people can choose AD whether they have a terminal illness or not and before they lose capacity. Of course safeguarding would have to be robust. I dread the thought of languishing in a care home for years on end, unable to manage my own personal care. Others may not think like that, which is fine, but I think there should be a choice.

That will never happen in the UK unfortunately.

I couldn’t agree more. The idea of languishing in a care home, waiting for someone to change my nappy and do even the most basic things for me for goodness knows how long is absolutely abhorrent to me.

I appreciate others may not feel the same and that’s their prerogative but I don’t see why my choice is any less valid than theirs.

Why whether they have a terminal illness or not?

You can have poor quality of life, and no prospect of recovery, without actually being terminal.

My mother spent 9 years in a care home, due to loss of mobility, getting gradually worse. At the start she was OK other than being unable to stand, walk or do anything physical like dress herself, but she had years of this, much of the time in pain, and starting to lose her mental faculties. Her last 6 months were awful. She had many health conditions but she wasn't terminally ill.

I can't speak for her, but if it were me then at some point I would have wanted it all to end.

Not all illnesses are terminal however there are some which will make quality of life pretty grim @ruethewhirl My mum has a degenerative condition which isn’t terminal but will make the last few months/weeks of her life bloody awful. She has expressed that she wants to die before getting to that stage and apparently has ‘plans’ in place to do just that. I support her choice.

If the timescale of the condition is tied to the timescale of her life (as it appears from your description) then I’d have thought it would be considered terminal. Mind you that’s academic until AD is available.

I think people should have the choice to have an AD if they don't want to spend possibly years incapacitated in a care home, due to a degenerative illness, old age, dementia etc.

If people do want to carry on living, and don't want an AD, that's great. But there should be a choice that people can make before they lose capacity, something like a Living Will / Advanced Decision which exists already.

I don't think it will happen in the UK because there are too many vested interests. But I hope it might become law somewhere like the Isle of Man or Channel Islands.

I agree, that's a much more frightening prospect to me than the thought of dying. The key is choice.

I understand that, and I'm sorry to hear your mum's going through this.

Just want to clarify something.

In principle I'd never begrudge someone the ability to end things at a time of their own choosing, and I agree with those who are saying people should have control over their own departure, so to speak. But in a way that's partly why I don't feel able to unequivocally support an assisted dying bill unless certain conditions are met which in practice would be difficult to meet. To take the example of the Canadian lady who was killed on the orders of her partner - the choice of when to go was robbed from her. Hopefully that's an isolated instance but it demonstrates that it can happen.

I just see massive potential for abuse, all the more so because it's already going on in other countries. If it was possible to come up with an iron-clad agreement that could guarantee the person's wishes be respected at all times, and (more difficult but potentially more problematic) if there was some way to guard against coercion, I'd feel differently. And I absolutely believe that coercion (even if subtle) would be an issue - sadly, too much of society already sees the elderly and disabled as a burden (as has been seen in a ton of MN threads recently), and for many it would take very little for them to be convinced, for whatever reason, that there is no point to them any more. There's a world of difference between a person making that decision for themselves and giving in to familial or societal pressure to make it.

Yes, these are the kinds of objections raised by the House of Lords when they tabled enough amendments to the AD bill to make sure it ran out of time.

They will probably do the same if it's raised in the next Parliament, which it most likely won't be.

So people won't be able to choose AD in the UK, even though most people are in favour of choice. Going to Dignitas or Pegasos in Switzerland is an option but it's not ideal.