Mastodawn

'I'm dying, you're not': Those terminally ill ask more states to legalize physician-assisted death

https://lemmy.world/post/14353373

'I'm dying, you're not': Those terminally ill ask more states to legalize physician-assisted death - Lemmy.World

On a brisk day at a restaurant outside Chicago, Deb Robertson sat with her teenage grandson to talk about her death. She’ll probably miss his high school graduation. She declined the extended warranty on her car. Sometimes she wonders who will be at her funeral. Those things don’t frighten her much. The 65-year-old didn’t cry when she learned two months ago that the cancerous tumors in her liver were spreading, portending a tormented death. But later, she received a call. A bill moving [https://apnews.com/article/minnesota-assisted-suicide-medical-aid-dying-835b13e42cfd424218b69f727632a291] through the Illinois Legislature to allow certain terminally ill patients to end their own lives with a doctor’s help had made progress. Then she cried. “Medical-aid in dying is not me choosing to die,” she says she told her 17-year-old grandson. “I am going to die. But it is my way of having a little bit more control over what it looks like in the end.” That same conversation is happening beside hospital beds and around dinner tables across the country, as Americans who are nearing life’s end negotiate the terms with themselves, their families and, now, state lawmakers [https://apnews.com/article/minnesota-assisted-suicide-medical-aid-dying-835b13e42cfd424218b69f727632a291].

kromem Apr 16, 2024

The flip side of our ability to prolong life more and more successfully is that we equip ourselves to extend suffering more and more unbearably.

Puritanical attitudes around the right to die will impact a vast majority of people in terrible ways that will largely get ignored as on the other end of it the victims have no voice and often the family is mourning and wants to move on or just doesn’t even fully realize how terrible that end was.

But the doctors and medical staff…

The people I know well in those roles get upset when healthy patients take a turn for the worse and die when they had so much life before that. But by far the most upset I see them is when a family member of a patient decides because of beliefs to choose life prolonging options that are the equivalent of torture.

As our medical capabilities improve we really need to continually rethink just what it means to “do no harm.”

zqwzzle Apr 16, 2024

Ideas and times progress, maybe it’s time to change that oath to something along the lines of “do the least harm”.

HubertManne Apr 16, 2024

Best thing to ask your doctor is what they would do in the same situation. They usually give you the bestg medical advice answer but their personal answer can be very different with what they have seen. Although some won't answer that question which is in itself a kind of answer.

BubbleMonkey Apr 16, 2024

My mom was an RN and spent time doing basically everything. She said her time in oncology, geriatrics, and hospice made her never want to treat cancer or undergo prolonging, because the chance of it extending the quality life was slim and quantity isn’t worth it when it’s miserable.

She died of cervical cancer when I was 23 (it was stage 3 by the time she went in for dx, so she knew something was wrong and chose not to do anything about it) and the only treatment she got was oxycodone and having me get weed for her for the intense nausea that comes from smoking cigarettes on oxycodone. She was in hospice though.

I, similarly, probably won’t undergo treatment if I am similarly afflicted, unless our treatments evolve from a toxic cocktail to something with more chance of working and fewer horrible side effects.

HubertManne Apr 16, 2024

yeah if we get crisper vaccines then great but radiation and chemo well there better be like a 99% chance of reversal.

HobbitFoot Apr 16, 2024

There are actions you can take to catch it in Stage 1 or 2, which is far more treatable. You would also likely qualify for generic testing, which checks to see if you have generic markers which make you more likely to get cancer.

BubbleMonkey Apr 16, 2024

I’m aware. She chose not to go that route, and I can’t say I blame her really. She cared for both of her parents when they died of cancer, and having done that as well, yeah. I still wouldn’t go for highly toxic treatment either, even if it does have a better chance caught early. Screw that; I’m already full of medical issues, don’t need to feel worse.

I’ve already undergone genetic testing due to family cancer history. I’m clean for maladaptive genes, as far as they know for now (I have several unknown mutations, I get letters in the mail every few years when they figure one of them out). But the world is a lot more polluted than it used to be, and I haven’t always made the healthiest choices in life, so… meh.

Like I said, if treatments change maybe, but I’m not injecting a toxic cocktail. And a lot of early-detection cancers they find and treat aren’t ever going to kill a persons anyway because they are too slow growing. So even that early screening isn’t without risk.

FraidyBear Apr 16, 2024

My grandpa passed a year ago now, COPD. Likely honestly a heart attack after all the steroid meds for his lungs created heart problems including a heart aneurysm. When he was diagnosed way back in 2006 they told us he had 5 years if he was lucky, I didn’t think he’d see me graduate HS. Well he had a lot more than 5 years in him but after about 2014 it was all shit. He started telling my grandma that he was ready to die, wanted to die, in 2018, he begged for it on hard nights. He tried to kill himself in 2021 and 2022. Both attempts left him strapped to a hospital bed “for his safety” as he struggled to breathe, he hadn’t been able to reliably breathe laying on his back for several years by then but they didn’t care as long as he lived.

I never felt anything but sympathy for him after those attempts. As someone with chronic lifelong asthma, I know how my end will go. I know what it’s like to suffocate and struggle to breathe and in case anyone wonders, it fucking sucks. It’s terrifying, it’s slow, and you know it’s coming. Panic is inevitable. He felt like that for nearly 10 fucking years. He told me once after it had gotten bad that he’d always felt so bad for me as a kid to have asthma but now he finally understood, he said I was so brave to have dealt with it for so long but in that moment I didn’t feel brave I felt lucky. When I use my inhaler I can breathe again, for him it just made him struggle less. For a long time I wished he would die, my absolute favorite person on the planet, and I wanted them dead. It destroyed me mentally for years. When he finally did die it was horribly sad and also such a massive relief for everyone to know that at least he wasn’t suffering anymore.

I say all this, partially to get it off my chest but mostly to say, if we are going to prolong life we need to also give people the option to check out. Life isn’t life without quality of health, it’s just suffering. Prolonging suffering makes use torturers, it’s not a saving grace. If we have the capacity to do this for our pets then people deserve the same mercy.

SadSadSatellite Apr 16, 2024

But what about the pharmaceutical company shareholders? Don’t they get any say in how long we need their products? Yes one person might be in terrible pain for years, but at least twelve people will make a lot of money.

nac82 Apr 16, 2024

Making suicide profitable surely won’t have any kind of twisted dystopian effects on companies…

SadSadSatellite Apr 16, 2024

With how much they can charge for every individual comfort, suicide will never be more profitable than suffering. It it was, we wouldn’t be having these debates.

nac82 Apr 16, 2024

It doesn’t have to be the most profitable in all scenarios to be an optimization aspect of business to cheapen services and increase fees. Long-term care has long-term costs, if it is cheaper to push somebody to suicide, there will be economical vectors that seek to exploit the opening for profit.

tsonfeir Apr 16, 2024

I shouldn’t need a reason.

Flying Squid Apr 16, 2024

This is not so much about giving you a reason than giving a doctor the legal option to assist you.

tsonfeir Apr 16, 2024

I understand. And, that doctor should be able to deny.

MisterD Apr 17, 2024

Futurama suicide booths?

tsonfeir Apr 17, 2024

Well, yes and no. I don’t want to be hacked to death inside an outhouse by a machine. But… maybe some kind of sleepy time tea and goooooogniiight.

Flying Squid Apr 18, 2024

Futurama was parodying Star Trek, which came up with the idea.

memory-alpha.fandom.com/…/Disintegration_station

Disintegration station

Casualties of the war between Eminiar VII and Vendikar had twenty-four hours to report to a disintegration station. This machine disintegrated them and recorded their deaths in accord with the terms of the treaty that governed the war. Like the society that created it, the machine was neat and orderly. The red rotating door opened, revealing a small booth. Individuals entered the booth, and the operator pressed the leftmost button on the small panel. The door closed, and the operator pressed the

Memory Alpha

Gonkulator Apr 16, 2024

10,000% this needs to be a thing. Its obvious. Its also a cheaper option for health insurance companies. I fear how they will leverage right to die as a “medical option” and coerce policy holders to suicide themselves. You know itll happen.

colforge Apr 16, 2024

“Off yourself by X date and your loved ones will receive a payout equal to 5% of the expected healthcare costs of managing your condition until your inevitable agonizing death! Act now and we’ll throw in an additional funeral package at no cost!”

Flying Squid Apr 16, 2024

I don’t know about the funeral package. Those things are expensive and you’re talking about insurance companies.

colforge Apr 16, 2024

Hey I didn’t say it was even a decent package!

msage Apr 16, 2024

Burn it. Burn it all.

isles Apr 16, 2024

“Thanks for calling Joe’s Crematorium, you kill 'em, we torch 'em, what can I do for you?”

Lesrid Apr 16, 2024

This is the largest reason why it has to remain illegal. Capitalism will find a way to make it marketable.

EonNShadow Apr 16, 2024

I remember when this was a ballot initiative in CO.

I voted for it, but it was shocking to see just how much negativity there was surrounding it.

Gonkulator Apr 16, 2024

Did it pass?

This is fine🔥🐶☕🔥Apr 16, 2024

No, it’s still on live support…

Kalkaline Apr 16, 2024

I work as an EEG tech. I see some really awful cases where there’s no hope for a meaningful recovery. Lawmakers should be required to do a month of hospice/palliative care rounds before signing any legislation on right to die. There is so much misinformation and misunderstanding surrounding what that care entails. The patients I see often don’t have the ability to make that choice and are left up on life preserving care for days to months at a time without any chance at meaningful recovery.

ButtCheekOnAStick Apr 16, 2024

Forcing lawmakers to research a topic before deciding on it? This is America dammit! We don’t even make them READ the bills before deciding on them!

Bluefalcon Apr 16, 2024

For the last 10 years I have been saying this should be legal. As long as you are determined to be of sound mind and not influenced by one, then let them make the decision. You will have many arguments against it (religion, could be cured unexpectedly) but it’s the patient’s decision.

The only argument would be if doctors and nurses should assist. This is a huge argument against state sponsored executions. Maybe a device that can safely and painlessly assist the patient could be a resolution.

SendMePhotos Apr 16, 2024

I’m in agreement. My concern is that this gives people in control the ability to feign choice. “They wanted this route” when in reality, it was murder.

Just need some decent protections in place for things like these.

Bluefalcon Apr 16, 2024

I agree, it needs to be a very strict and regulated process. No power of attorney or anything like that. The person needs to undergo a psychiatric evaluation by two or three psychiatrist that specializes in suicidal thoughts or self harm. It needs to be a somewhat long process. But, I don’t want it to be a multi year process either.

n2burns Apr 16, 2024

In Canada, 2 doctors have to agree that the patient is of sound mind, wants Medical Assistance in Dying, and their condition meets the minimum legal threshold. I think that system has been working fairly well.

SendMePhotos Apr 17, 2024

Sounds good…but in america…we’re prone to finding ways to fuck up.

TopRamenBinLaden Apr 16, 2024

So what you are saying is that we need some of those suicide booths that they had in Futarama.

You bring up a good point that it would be hard to find many doctors or medical professionals willing to focus their careers on euthanasia, as it goes against their oaths.

Bluefalcon Apr 16, 2024

I would love a Futurama world.

😈MedicPig🐷BabySaver😈Apr 17, 2024

The “oath” isn’t legally binding. They should help those that are suffering no matter the expected end result.

Patches Apr 17, 2024

The “Oath” isn’t why they can’t go around assisting in suicides. It’s because they will literally go to jail in the same way as a murderer

whotookkarl Apr 16, 2024

It should also be noted that these decisions primarily affect people who are too poor to afford to travel with their loved ones to places that currently allow assisted suicide. If you’re wealthy you are able to die how you want.

ChunkMcHorkle Apr 16, 2024

deleted by creator

antlion Apr 16, 2024

We need a federal constitutional amendment of bodily autonomy. Abortions, tattoos, personal drug use, gender reassignment, plastic surgery, suicide, neuralink, etc. All the same issue: My body, fuck off. You can make it more complicated than that but it’s not.

It doesn’t matter whether you agree with face tattoos or not. Nobody is making you get one. It’s not your concern. An artist can choose not to give face tattoos, as a doctor can choose whether they want to give a vasectomy to a young child-free man. But the government should have no say about what a person is allowed to do or have done to their own body. The government can regulate to make it safer, but not disallow.

Phoenixz Apr 16, 2024

Though I mostly agree with you, I think its a more complicated issue than the picture you’re painting.

If I want to kill myself, it’s my life right? Only many times people get suicidal due to mental illness or hardship and don’t really want to does it’s more an “temporary issue”, if you will, that can pass with time, or can be cured with medication, therapy, or resolving the situation that caused the suicidal thoughts. So government steps in and outright stop you. Euthanasia laws exist to make sure that people only end their lives when there is no way for the person to continue living without suffering, and it requires some bureaucracy.

Facial tattoos? Sure, do what you want but I think many people underestimate the issues that will enter their lives if they get them. It might cost you a great job, you ready for that? I’d say regulations for that should require like 30 days for you to think about what you are about to do…

Gender reassignments? Sure, but… At what age are we going to allow that? I’ve seen way too many people saying it’s okay for any kid at 5 years old. I’ve seen some kids where at 5, it’s pretty clear that yeah, this kid is different. I’ve also personally seen 10 year olds where it was clear that the parents were pushing it on the child and then the school and everything around the child jumped on the bandwagon and kept supporting the parents decision z not the child’s decision.

Persona drug use, sure. There are more than enough drugs, however that WILL destroy your life. There is no good outcome for someone using meth, for example l, outside a medical treatment, perhaps. So you do outright forbid that. Same for opioids, or are you going to tell me that free availability of opioids is a good idea?

Vaccines, anyone? Thanks to anti scientific and illiterate conspiracy idiots, measles are back and brace yourself for polio. Those fuckers that spread this bullshit should be locked up for murder, IMHO. There is no personal choice with vaccines, you fucking take them, or you will cause the suffering of others around you so shut up and take them.

Hell, even things like seatbelts can, should, and must be forced by government because if you don’t, you get the idiots believing that seatbelts are dangerous because “insert stupid story here” so I let my 5 year old in the front seat right next to me, both without seat belt going 120kmh down the freeway. People like that should have their kids taken away, honestly, because they can’t be responsible for a cat, let alone a child.

Bodily autonomy is not as easy as it seems, a lot of idiots need to be protected from themselves, and the rest of us must be protected from those idiots too. By law.

antlion Apr 16, 2024

Drugs can be regulated by availability, not by illegality of ingestion. It can be illegal to sell.

If circumcision is legal, gender reassignment should be as well. Both are voluntary genital surgeries that are medically unnecessary. I don’t agree with it, but it’s none of my business. That’s a decision for kids and their parents and doctors to make.

Seatbelts can be a condition of using public roads, same as the minimum drinking age of 21 is actually a condition for federal highway funding. Same for vaccines, you don’t have to but you can’t go to public school, get into stadiums, or fly in airplanes. And they should expect quarantine procedures in hospitals and higher health insurance, Do I think people should be vaccinated, absolutely, but if they don’t want to they should just face whatever repercussions are reasonable - but it doesn’t need to be illegal to be unvaccinated.

Like I said, you can make it more complicated, but I don’t think it is. Just because it’s legal, doesn’t mean it’s unregulated. The government can impose regs to make us safer and slow us down from trying to hurt ourselves, but they have no business imposing laws that limit a basic and fundamental human right, to decide what to do to their own body.

For suicide I would imagine a compassionate therapy rehab-like system. You get checked in and go through a few weeks, they try psychedelics or whatever might help you, and if you still want to when it’s through you get a permit and a lethal injection. Better than having people leap off bridges because they’re out of options. Or overdose on painkillers and burden the healthcare system. Or traumatize their family. By the way the government spends a lot of money on suicide barrier rails on bridges that could be better spent on treatment facilities like the one I’m describing.

hikaru755 Apr 17, 2024

Drugs can be regulated by availability, not by illegality of ingestion

I generally don’t disagree with you, but just want to point out that killing legal ways to get drugs usually doesn’t stop people from getting them, instead it just makes the black market flourish and makes it harder to make sure you’re getting clean stuff. When it comes to drugs, efforts need to be on education, prevention and rehabilitation, rather than criminalizing any part of the process

antlion Apr 17, 2024

Agreed. I was thinking about prescriptions, not illegal drugs. But it’s clear with fentanyl and other prescription drugs that even that is not working. I think the government should be focused on purity, safety, and non-religious rehab. I don’t think the education part is really helping, except for websites like erowid.

But bodily autonomy only really covers ingesting. Perhaps that could make drug tests unconstitutional.

hikaru755 Apr 17, 2024

Perhaps that could make drug tests unconstitutional. Heavily depends on the context, I’d say? Being drunk while driving should absolutely stay illegal, and having drug tests for that would be a necessity I guess

antlion Apr 17, 2024

That’s like seatbelts, a condition for a privilege. We also condition that drivers have good enough vision, but that doesn’t violate any rights. I was thinking of drug tests for employment.

hikaru755 Apr 17, 2024

Ah, yeah, for employment that’s different, sure. That doesn’t really seem to be a thing here in Germany (might even be illegal?), so didn’t think of that

Phoenixz Apr 18, 2024

Circumcision is definitely not comparable with gender reassignments. Having said that, circumcisions should be illegal (unless for medical requirements) under 18. Let’s see how many people want to circumcise after 18 for their religion, won’t be many I can assure you

Seatbelts are required because of physics and sometimes we simply don’t allow people to be THAT stupid. Also, if you ever want to have a normal medical system, you can’t have people play Russian roulette because a Facebook post told them to.

Vaccines are not about your they are about your community. We either all vaccinate and live with less suffering or we allow “freedom” and invite more suffering because again some idiots read Facebook posts that told them… Vaccines should be mandatory.

We live in the 21st century, we live in a rather awesome world thanks to science and technology. You can’t pick and choose “oh but this science I don’t like so we’re not doing it”. If you don’t like science and technology, that’s fine, go back to a cave in the forrest and when you’re dead within the year, the problem has been resolved. So yes, you take your vaccine so others won’t have to suffer and no, you don’t get to learn “intelligent design” because it’s stone age bullcrap that will turn you into an idiot that will fight against scientific progress.

antlion Apr 18, 2024

I wear seatbelts and I’m vaccinated but I believe in freedom for others. I wish I hadn’t been circumcised, and I think it should be illegal too. It was a violation of my bodily autonomy because I was incapable of consent. An overarching constitutional amendment is what is needed to clarify why circumcision has a different legal standing than other forms of genital mutilation of minors. But I think it shouldn’t be thought of as different. I don’t think 18 is a magical age of bodily autonomy. Abortion, or other bodily choices can be made independently at younger ages.

We don’t need these endless fights over corner-cases of freedom. You spend the time all at once to determine what bodily autonomy means, and what the government’s responsibility is in protecting that fundamental human right, and under what rare circumstances one’s autonomy can be limited. You can make conditions for privileges (seatbelts for roads, vaccines for travel/crowds), but you cannot force vaccinations or brain chips, or RFID implant tags, or anything on people.

Ultragigagigantic Apr 16, 2024

“temporary issue”

your entire life is temporary.

Phoenixz Apr 17, 2024

Yeah and I think you perfectly understand what I meant by that.

TopRamenBinLaden Apr 16, 2024

Gender reassignments? Sure, but… At what age are we going to allow that? I’ve seen way too many people saying it’s okay for any kid at 5 years old.

Doctors and medical professionals should decide whether they want to perform gender reassignments, not the government. The medical professionals all seems to agree that they won’t perform a full gender reassignment until the patient is at least in their later teens. Anybody too young for gender reassignment is just being prescribed puberty blockers to give them more time to decide.

I don’t see any problem with just leaving it in the hands of medical professionals. Yea people may say it’s okay for 5 year olds to get a full gender reassignment, but those people aren’t doctors.

BURN Apr 17, 2024

The problem is there’s always some crackpot doctor who will make a poor, non-medically influenced decision and without regulation there’s no way to prevent it.

The “vaccines cause autism” guy was a licensed doctor, and I think we all agree he wasn’t making medically sound decisions.

Phoenixz Apr 17, 2024

Yeah, and that also got reversed and if you google the guy it shows “British disgraced former surgeon and medical research falsifier and antivaxxers”

You can’t always stop cheaters before they cause damaged, that is life, but you can punish him, learn, and move on.

andz Apr 16, 2024

I’ve been on opiates for the past decade and a half due to two failed surgeries. I’m not saying my life is perfect by any means, but I can guarantee that I’d be a worse parent and a lot less social without said opiates.

I do take tolerance breaks and I’m (usually) somewhat strict with my dosage, but still, it doesn’t necessarily “ruin your life” even if you don’t do all that.

Not arguing that it can’t be addictive, however. It absolutely can, but it is also possible to live with it.

It would also be a lot easier if it wasn’t completely bound to the current doctor you have to go through. Since my second surgery I’ve had ~12 different doctors, all with their own ideas about how things should be treated, and almost none of them have paid any attention to the fact that changing medication or dosages arbitrarily messes up my daily life every goddamn time. If I could just take care of it myself it’d be way less of a hassle.

Punishing people because they try to avoid pain is such a bad idea in the first place, as we’ll do almost anything if it’s bad enough.

antlion Apr 17, 2024

I wonder if you could grow your own papaver somniferum? It’s the same species as poppy seeds for bagels or baking. It’s grown ornamentally so I think it only “becomes” illegal when you milk the pods. Maybe it’s too fun, I don’t know I have no experience with opiates.

andz Apr 17, 2024

If I lived somewhere suitable I’d probably (eventually) try as I have some knowledge of growing …stuff.

With that said though, due to the climate and amount of poppies you’d need even for a limited personal supply it’d be very suboptimal at best.

It’s also a lot harder to properly dose and keep your tolerance low with poppies unless you really know what you’re doing.

Phoenixz Apr 17, 2024

I have no problem with people taking opioids as medication with the support of a doctor. Opioids have been used extremely irresponsible by doctors due to lack oversight and laws in the US, cussing a shit show, but there we get into legal and regulatory territories.

As long as it’s done responsible, any drug might be useful. Ive read great stuff about LSD in mental health treatment, and would love to see more.