Only people who have 6 months to live or less.
Euthanasia need to be considered in UK?
- Thread starter area51_for_psx
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Without trying to play devil's advocate a family friend was given 3 months but lived well over 2 years?!?
Did they have a good quality of life in that extra time or would they still have chosen the assisted dying? Obviously things like that will happen but the choice is given to the person who is suffering.
It is an estimate. Presumably if they lasted well over two years, they didn't spend all that time in an "end state" where they would have felt opting for immediate assisted dying was their only option.
But if we are comparing anecdotes, I have known a number of people with cancer diagnosis who were given an estimate of a year to live, but actually died within a few months. Made me wonder whether there was a tendency to over estimate.
So what? It would have been that person choice to go out on their own terms.
My wife was a ward caterer/cleaner on a hospice ward and she would say the people you would think were on deaths door lasted for months but someone who walked in to the ward for say pain control died within the week.
It's complicated. Some people respond better to treatment, some have more fight left in them, some are probably just unlucky.
As I understand it the assisted dying bill is framed to kick when you are at the medical "all hope is lost" stage when you've had enough and decided that the pain of hanging on for a few more weeks or months just isn't worth it.
I had a great aunt who was twice on death's door and both times got back on her feet for another ~5 years or so before the 3rd time sadly got her.
Soldato
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I've seen some idiots on this forum, usually right wing types - but I have no idea what you are, other than vile - also, uneducated & talking nonsense.
What exactly is 'my type' - you don't even know me.
Oh, by the way, I did work in immunology for 4 years doing lab work in collaboration with scientists designing new disease detection methods, which requires a great deal of understanding of molecular biology - so when you say vaccines cause autism, it immediately reveals your complete and total lack of scientific knowledge - so I'm not worried your role in the NHS is anything important or even anything to do with medical care - you demonstrably don't have the knowledge.
Also while I greatly disagree with a huge amount of people on this forum, a lot of whom are right wing IMO, I'd never wish any of them death or ending up in hospital - so give your head a wobble pal, discussion yes, hoping someone ends up in NHS care is abit much!!.
Soldato
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frankly I wish NO ONE could meme. The vast majority are lame imo. its right up there with leet speak imo.
Soldato
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To be honest I think this is where I stand as well...... of course its easy to be all judgy when it isnt your life which is miserable and you are being told what you can and cant do with it.
But i do accept that there are some truly horrible people out there who would perhaps pressure people who essentially had a bit of potentially decent life left in them to end it because of being a burden................. and also things like depression whilst terribly de-habilitating maybe once the right meds are sorted out things can improve. Whilst safeguards would obviously be put in place, with the system creaking as it is am sure there would be cracks......... so best play it safe imo.
but when all that is left is misery and pain, what is the point ? i watched as my grandma essentially rotted away with cancer, her skin was just covered in weeping abscesses, she was barely conscious and when she was she was in pain . if those last few months could have been stopped i dont think anyone could have seen her and then said nope!, she needs to carry on.
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Associate
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This is the UK not Canada. Canada is a much more permissive society. For example, they legalised cannabis for recreational use there in 2018 (they were only the second country in the world to do it). I doubt that will ever happen here given the number of ignorant tabloid-reading reactionaries and right-wing zealots we have.
The Assisted Dying Bill only passed its third reading in the House of Commons by a small margin, (its pass margin had halved since second reading). It is extremely unlikely that any future Amendment Bill, which proposes expanding the right to non-terminally ill people (who are mentally ill or disabled), would pass a vote.
The slippery slope argument is reactionary rubbish. For example, abortion was legalised in England, Wales and Scotland in 1968. The Abortion Act 1967 initially allowed abortions up to 28 weeks, but despite religious people complaining at the time that it would lead to the killing of unwanted full-term babies, the term limit for abortions was actually reduced to 24 weeks in 1990.
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Careful with saying Gen X mate, that's the one generation you don't want to speak it's name into the mirror three times.
Or boomers for that matter, we'll take your money, jobs and houses
More to the point, why would we not want the better systems that Canada and Holland have to come to the UK?
You're right that slippery slope arguments are invalid: sometimes the slope is slippery, sometimes it isn't. But every country that has introduced assisted dying has gone on to widen the scope, and it is likely the UK will do the same. This is a very good thing. The bill as it will be passed is far too restrictive but it will be improved as time goes by and the arguments against are seen to be the bunkum that they are. People will get used to the idea that it is possible, that a small number of people choose the option, and they'll wonder why it isn't available for this other group of people undergoing intolerable suffering.
Well unlike my time on the forum last weekend, I don't do my job in the NHS under the influence of alcohol, especially a type I shouldn't have had during the especially tumultuous world / mind-changing events last weekend.
I can immediately chalk you up as an 'I'm an expert' type, repeating by rote what the leading politically and socially acceptable trusted narrative types in your field say, while dissenters with greater qualifications and less financial incentive to toe-the-line are not only side-lined but actively censored, by those with or without the qualifications to do so. This happened so openly during COVID it's undeniable to all but the most entrenched.
Just about everyone in my family who has been confronted by a diagnosis the current healthcare system can merely 'manage', say symptomatically, even with a fatal outcome still expected, has had some basically miraculous turn arounds and the end of their disease, for example MS. Likewise, many I've seen have been burned by the healthcare-by-unquestioning-rote system we have, whether it's by vaccines or other debilitating medication that's prescribed like it's no big deal. Those that have overcome their condition have found their solutions from top-of-their-field qualified respectable scientists and medical experts before their fields decided to ostracise them. Usually their greatest crime is arriving at alternative treatments and actual cures that are terrifyingly cheap, but they have the science to back up their claims as well as explain how their solutions are suppressed by the industry.
In the context where almost any chronic condition can be seen as valid grounds for assisted dying, to me this raises the question of the whole healthcare-for-profit system we have. Of course the NHS as an entity doesn't have profit, but the rest of the healthcare-pharmaceutical complex that supplies it does, from operation tools right up to the latest patented medication. And beyond that, the unfunded ultra-expensive options, i.e. stem cell treatments, when there are simpler and better solutions in other forms, even down to the pharmaceutical industry's own now-out-of-patent and thus cheap and unprofitable medication.
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Stunning work. I take my hat off to you.
Unfortunately there are people out there that really believe this stuff.