Should assisted suicide be allowed in the UK?

[Bon]

Carried on from the other thread.




In favor

• People should be able to control their own lives.
  
• Some terminally ill patients are allowed to end their lives by refusing medical treatments; in all fairness, those who don't have that option should be allowed to choose death.
  
• Death is a compassionate way to relieve unbearable suffering.
  
• Legal or not, assisted suicides occur, and it would be better if they were brought into the open.

Against

• Taking a life under any circumstances is questionable.
  
• Assisted suicide has great potential for abuse. People without family support or adequate finances, as well as the depressed, could be pressured to choose death.
  
• Physicians can be wrong about estimating how much time a patient has left, causing unnecessary deaths.
  
• The public will lose its confidence in the medical profession if physicians get into the business of helping people kill themselves.

My oppinion?
I agree with the idea of assisted suicide, much like having animals euthanized, why should a person have to suffer while an animal should not? What gives us the right to take the life of an animal in pain without being able to ask it, but we cannot ask a human if they wish the same option?

 

[jagerpirate]

Personally I agree with assisted suicide but it would, naturally, have to be extremely well regulated.

 

[TEKLOFTY]

I am for it, but the government/courts need to try to think of nearly every legal implication possible otherwise it could be akin to a can of worms waiting to explode.

 

[pid]

In favour definitely. As with all these questions, there will always be an abuse of power (Dr Shipman), but the one's who abuse the position of power to decide out weigh the people who are genuinely there to help.
For people who for example have alzheimer's the still have the choice (as we've seen in the news a few months back) because for a time they can still decide. I think the problem comes when someone is in a vegetative state or just not able to communicate. That's when the grey area's appear.
Who decides? the family? who are emotionally attached and have their rationale tainted by selfishness.
Or the Doctors who know more about the situation (illness) and can give an objective stand point?

 

[Bon]

I think that:

1. No single doctor should be in the possition to offer the choice, it should be a board of them, and all must be in agreement that it is a suitable option for the person in question.
   
2. The person must be able to make the choice to do so. someone who is already in a vegetative state could not have the option chosen for them in their mental absence.
   
3. People should only be given the option if they are in extreme or will be in extreme pain. Loss of mental capacity would not warrent the option IMHO, I know many people who can barely remember the last day, yet live happy day to day lifes.

 

[AsylumDave]

I am for it. I got annoyed when Gordon Brown (who is definately against it) commented about how precious life is and therefore euthansia shouldn't be allowed. But why should an individual and also importantly their family and friends have to go through suffering? Surely if we want to show respect for human life we should not restrict an individuals control over it to the extent where they have to live in pain.

 

[NitroBall]

If there was this option 15 years ago, i would have pushed the button for my old man when he asked for it, and believe me, i wouldnt have hesitated seeing how much agony he was in.

watching your father suffer in pain for the last 9 months of his life is not something i could go through again. He himself asked and wanted to end it whilst in such intollerable pain, and tried to take his own life several times within that 9 months.

 

[Lovetone]

yes

 

[outkastmike]

Surely doubt doctors will ever be allowed to take life via assisted suicide.
I think ethically they are only ever allowed to preserve life not take it,regardless of the circumstances

 

[Snowwolf]

In my opinion Euthanasia should be allowed in the UK. It makes me laugh how people bleat on about Human Rights when surely this is one of them?

It’s your given right to be able to end your life when necessary. How the law looks upon this matter is totally ludicrous in my eyes.

Why shouldn’t someone who is in pain, suffering and just begging for death be given that right? Surely it should be looked upon as cruel to be keeping that person alive?

I liken it to animals, obviously just on a very different scale. A friend of mine had a working lab gundog; she developed arthritis at 11 years old. At the beginning she was still mobile and able to carry out effectively 90% of her daily tasks. At the end she became bedbound for want of a better word, miserable due to the pain she was in and fed up of the medication that had to be administered to her on a daily basis.

She was taken to the vets and put to sleep because it was the kindest thing to do. She was physically suffering and there was no chance she would ever get better.

Now I will re iterate at this stage that we are talking on vastly different scales here but the principle is the same.
If the individual is never going to recover, in agony and begging to die then how can we as a nation strictly bound by human rights deprive them of this?

Surely euthanasia is far better than having someone take various attempts at their own life?

I for one wish I never have to encounter such a situation.