
“I Helped 8 People Die” - kitbrennan
http://torontolife.com/city/life/john-hofsess-assisted-suicide
======
gkya
As medicine developed, we got a chance to live, to the point that we sort of
lost our chance to die. I'm too young to really worry about prolonged terminal
illnesses, but I sometimes think about this nowadays, as my father passed away
very recently, from lung cancer, discovered very very late, at terminal stage.
He was a strong, dynamic man in his fifties, and in two months he passed away.
I recall my grandfather's terminal stage which dured some five, six years,
until 2010. He had many illnesses, and he was too weak to walk in his last
two-three years. Comparing the two, I do not really know what to think, but in
this context, after lightly reading the article linked too, I guess everybody
should have the right to renounce their lives, with assistance from someone
who'll guarantee a peaceful and certain death: an ignorant, solo attempt might
result in getting into a state where suicide is physically impossible and pain
is greater. And I sometimes think the state is way too much intertwined into
people's lifes, but that's another topic.

------
whack
It is insane that we make people huddle into dark alleys and underground
societies, simply to have agency over their own lives.

I know and understand the main arguments against assisted suicide. The idea
that it would pressure people into taking their own lives, in order to please
others. With respect, such arguments are nonsensical. People feel external
pressures every day to do things that they may not want to do. Pursue careers
they may not enjoy. Get married when they may not want to. Have kids even if
they don't want to. Should the government step in every time and ban the
activity entirely, simply to ensure that no one ever gives in to peer
pressure? Of course not.

We recognize that freedom, liberty and individual agency, trumps any concerns
about peer pressure. We recognize that our life decisions should be in our own
hands, and not in the hands of big brother. It's time we allowed people full
control to end their lives on their own terms, and not on the terms forced
upon them.

~~~
JackFr
And yet we have suicide prevention hotlines. Go figure.

~~~
superuser2
The very act of calling a suicide prevention hotline is solid evidence that
the caller does not truly want to die.

The point isn't that people should die, it's that they should choose.
Compelling someone else's continued consciousness is absurd and, depending on
the subjective experiencing of being inside that person's head, can be among
the cruelest forms of torture. Just as it would be to fail to help someone who
wants to stay alive.

~~~
DanBC
> The very act of calling a suicide prevention hotline is solid evidence that
> the caller does not truly want to die.

This sentence is proof that you do not understand suicide and have not read
modern information about suicide.

Since your misinformation is dangerous I urge you to do some reading before
talking about something that you clearly know little about.

Suicidality is complex, but "calling a hotline is solid evidence someone
doesn't want to truly die" falls into several of the myths people spread about
suicide:

[http://www.samaritans.org/how-we-can-help-you/myths-about-
su...](http://www.samaritans.org/how-we-can-help-you/myths-about-suicide)

Myth: People who talk about suicide aren’t serious and won’t go through with
it.

Myth: People who threaten suicide are just attention seeking and shouldn’t be
taken seriously.

Myth: People who are suicidal want to die.

Myth: If a person is serious about killing themselves then there is nothing
you can do.

~~~
superuser2
Taking steps to avoid death is trivially a signal that in some way a person
wishes to avoid death; whether that side of their internal conflict will
prevail is another matter and, of course, not at all certain. But it is 100%
within the bounds of respecting their agency (and, I'd argue, a duty) to help
someone who is fighting to stay alive do so. The argument is that suicide
hotlines don't imply a paternalistic "all citizens must keep breathing at all
costs" ideology because they require the voluntary step of asking for help,
and someone who asks for help can be meaningfully said to want it.

>Myth: People who are suicidal want to die.

I agree that this is not true in general, but to say that it is _never_ true
is more of a philosophical position (the topic of this thread) than the
measurable science fact you're making it out to be.

> something that you clearly know little about.

I can find many responses to this, but none of them civil.

------
Keverw
It's interesting how they can do assisted suicide, yet many states have
trouble carrying out executions. Strange, is the stuff doctors use any better
or are they're botched assisted suicides also? Do they get to use somthing
better than the prisons have?

~~~
chillydawg
The suppliers take a moral view that execution is wrong and decline to do
business with the executioners. Executioners thus have to find alternative
suppliers of the various drugs they need, which gets harder and harder in well
regulated places like the US.

------
Kenji
If you've seen a family member suffer from terminal cancer for years, rotting
away while still being alive and suffering from such horrible pain that no
amount of medication can reduce it, there is just no way you are against
assisted suicide, trust me on that. We treat our dogs better than that. We
kill them to spare them from such a fate.

------
tim333
I sometimes thing you could combine avoiding suffering through euthanasia with
the desire to preserve life by doing cryonics.

~~~
driverdan
Except cryonics doesn't preserve life. It doesn't work. It's more or less a
scam.

~~~
tangled_zans
No cryonics company has yet claimed that it "works".

They're quite up front about the fact that they have no idea how to bring
anyone back. People choose to get cryo-preserved despite that because, as far
as some people see it, it beats being buried underground or burned to ash.

Marvin Minsky who passed away recently was on the board of Alcor (one of the
main cryonics companies in the US). Does he seem like a scammer to you?

Please research your claims before accusing people of "scams" left and right.

------
known
Die with dignity; [http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/rest-of-
world/Agein...](http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/rest-of-world/Ageing-
indebted-Japan-debates-right-to-die-with-dignity/articleshow/51276408.cms)

------
moistgorilla
When I was 20 I wanted to kill myself. Thank whomever that assisted suicide
isn't a socially acceptable practice because I could have easily gone into
some clinic and had someone kill me without my family knowing.

~~~
el_benhameen
That's just patently untrue. There's an enormous gap between the situations in
which the author advocates for (and laws in various states and countries
permit) assisted suicide and a society that allows you to walk into a clinic
and kill yourself for any reason. The laws in California [0], Washington,
Oregon, and Vermont [1], for example, require that the patient is mentally
competent and is terminally ill with less than six months to live as certified
by two doctors. A suicidal person won't meet the first requirement, much less
the second.

[0] [http://www.npr.org/sections/health-
shots/2015/10/05/44610780...](http://www.npr.org/sections/health-
shots/2015/10/05/446107800/california-governor-signs-landmark-right-to-die-
law) [1]
[https://www.deathwithdignity.org/learn/access/](https://www.deathwithdignity.org/learn/access/)

------
mjh2539
This is vile, putrid shit.

All lives are worth living.

~~~
junto
I believe that you were facing the reality of living the 6 months of an
agonising slow death in a cancer hospice, you might change your narrow minded
opinion.

~~~
htns
Or he might demand better painkillers from the doctors.

~~~
klibertp
Which he would be denied, of course, because the best painkillers are
"narcotics" and so tightly regulated that it's hard to get them even if you
really, really need them.

That's a whole another story, to be sure, but relevant in practice.

~~~
DanBC
I believe it happens, but do you have any sourcing for how often it happens
that cancer patients in hospices are denied opiates?

In England opiates used to be under-prescribed for this kind of end of life
care. National guidelines were changed to make it easier for doctors to
prescribe strong pain relief.
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-18169840](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-18169840)

(But note: "The NICE guidance is not specifically about end-of-life care but
rather patients living day-to-day with chronic pain" generally trying other
things before opiates is a good idea for people with long term pain. Exercise
and diet and pain clinics are useful.)

And, in this situation: Shouldn't the main focus be on changing hospice care
to provide adequate pain relief, rather than changing the law to allow people
in pain to be killed by doctors?

(Again, I'm in favour of changing the law to allow assisted death)

------
daodedickinson
I consider myself very lucky that no one tried to kill me when I was suicidal.
It's going to get a lot more dangerous now that able-bodied young people are
getting social and medical "support" that kills them for their possibly
temporary depression or nihilism.

Suffering can always be made meaningful and abolition of pain is not a goal
for society but a enervation unto death.

Just now in Canada, doctors and nurses are being forced to choose between
their professions and holding to a religion that forbids murder. These are
their options:

"They can keep their heads down and pray they are never asked to kill a
patient. They can surrender and become part of the death machine—at the risk
of the eternal consequences that their faith beliefs portend. They can give up
their careers and hand the keys of what are now religious medical institutions
to secular ownership (or, move to the United States where, at least for now,
doctors and nurses enjoy conscience protections). Finally, the difficult but
most righteous course would be to engage in a policy of total non-cooperation
with the culture of death, forcing the national and provincial governments and
medical colleges either to turn a blind eye or to inflict unjust punishments
on doctors for refusing to kill. Perhaps such draconian measures would bring
the country to its senses."

[https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2016/03/canada-
de...](https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2016/03/canada-declares-war-
on-christian-doctors-and-nurses)

~~~
yuzi
Every legit news source is reporting doctors will have the right to NOT
participate.

Everything else is opinionated propaganda. Right now the community is debating
if they should require that doctors provide information on where/whom they can
go to in order to get the assistance/advice patients need; In the end even
that is unlikely.

"It's expected that no doctors will be forced to help a patient die."

[http://www.ctvnews.ca/health/canadian-doctors-express-
mixed-...](http://www.ctvnews.ca/health/canadian-doctors-express-mixed-
opinions-on-assisted-dying-1.2715008)

