
Death on demand: has euthanasia gone too far? - bennettfeely
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/jan/18/death-on-demand-has-euthanasia-gone-too-far-netherlands-assisted-dying
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renholder
Forewarning: I'm in the "personal autonomy" camp.

The article (novel?) was o.k., until it got towards the end:

>" _But while some applicants for euthanasia are furious with doctors who turn
them down, in practice people are unwilling to take their own lives. Rather
than drink the poison or open the drip, 95% of applicants for active life
termination in the Netherlands ask a doctor to kill them. In a society that
vaunts its rejection of established figures of authority, when it comes to
death, everyone asks for Mummy._ "

The author doesn't even address the byproduct of attempting (and failing)
suicide, nor do they address the success rates of suicide compared to
euthanasia.

Stating that people hide behind the state to perform something that they're
unwilling to do themselves is, to me, a myopic statement. In that statement,
they're not even addressing the fact that it takes two drugs, which someone
couldn't administer themselves (in succession) for it to be successful
(medically induced, that is). They also don't address the "surprise" of
suicide versus the foreknowledge that euthenasia affords and how the trama of
the former is potentially exponentially worse than the latter. Finally, they
don't even address the will of seeking the process, what occurs between the
request and the action, and how long that takes. It's not as if I could call
up a doctor and it happen on the morrow...

