
On Mother's Day, My Mom Asked Me to Help End Her Life - pmcpinto
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a44491/assisted-suicide-mothers-day/
======
tremon
_The Netherlands has the most liberal requirements—depression alone is
considered a sufficient justification_

To offer additional explanation here: the Dutch euthanasia legislation doesn't
explicitly enumerate allowed conditions for termination, it merely requires
the patient to be experiencing irremediable suffering.

While that may qualify as "most liberal" for the patient, I'm not convinced
our legislation is really that progressive: the legislation merely shields a
practitioner from homicide charges _iff proper procedure is observed_. But
"proper procedure" cannot be vetted or signed-off before the act; a criminal
investigation will always be opened (as it is required for all non-natural
deaths), but will be dropped if a medical ethics board agrees (post facto!)
with the practitioner's decision.

From the NVVE site (Dutch Society for Voluntary Termination) [1], a
practitioner must:

    
    
      - be convinced the patient's decision is voluntary and well-informed
      - be convinced the patient is experiencing irremediable suffering
        (literally "indefinite and unbearable suffering")
      - inform the patient about their situation and prognosis
      - agree with the patient that no acceptable alternatives exist
      - collect at least one second opinion (from a non-treating phycisian)
        that agrees with all the above
      - perform the procedure according to medical standards
    
    

[1] [https://www.nvve.nl/wat-euthanasie/zorgvuldige-
uitvoering](https://www.nvve.nl/wat-euthanasie/zorgvuldige-uitvoering)

~~~
rev_bird
This is kind of baffling to me -- the "approval" process is only performed
_after the patient is dead_?

~~~
wjnc
Approval really is the wrong word. The (legal) action towards the doctor for
assisting in an unnatural death are shelved, if and only if the requirements
are met. Clearing someone of wrongdoing is not the same as approving ones
actions.

It is an interesting subject, really close to ones personal belief system. A
recent documentary, which showed several cases of euthanasia in NL based on
'indefinite and unbearable suffering' of the mind (f.e. one lady was tired of
her life at 90+ years), probably confirms opinions on both sides of the debate
the same way.

For me, having witnessed two deaths by euthanasia (AIDS) and one without
(cancer), I would grant any human the chance to plan their moment of death,
even if the suffering is mental.

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staticelf
I don't understand why helping people who want to die is illegal in most
countries. It's unfathomable why some people are against that. If I become
deeply sick when I am of age I will probably also want to decide when I want
to die and not die slowly and painfully.

People who are against letting people choose their own death is having a
selfish and evil stance, there is no way to excuse that.

~~~
MichaelBurge
Because then your kids could forge a signature on a fake letter to get your
inheritance money.

Because then companies that happen to profit from your death have an incentive
to convince you that you should die, using manipulative advertising and
marketing.

Because then people who are highly depressed might kill themselves with
assistance from a doctor, when an alternate route could cure them.

Because then the doctor might forge evidence showing that you wanted to be
killed and it could be hard for the police to track down. Maybe they only use
the attack against certain high-reward targets.

Because then somebody who is impulsive might agree to be killed when he
would've regretted it later if he were still alive.

I tend to be in favor of this for people who legitimately want to die, but
there's something to be said for the simplicity of "The autopsy showed poison,
so we have a murder case." I could be convinced to make it illegal if somebody
found some really plausible attacks that could be used against me; and could
be convinced to make it legal if we found and required a scientific test with
a legally-enforcable chain-of-custody that proved I was in my right mind when
I asked to be killed.

~~~
CaptainZapp
Those are all valid points. But oddly enough none of them seems to be a
problem in Switzerland, where assisted suicide is legal since the 40s (as
mentioned in the article).

On a sidenote: You can write a "Patientenverfügung" (loosely transelated: a
patient's will), in which you stipulate that you don't want to be kept alive
artificially in case of grave illnes.

This is respected by hospitals and doctors. Case in point was my mother, who
had terminal cancer. The doctors gave her morphine to ease the pain and
otherwise didn't do anything to prolong her suffering.

She died in a dignified manner.

~~~
ikeboy
>Because then somebody who is impulsive might agree to be killed when he
would've regretted it later if he were still alive.

We wouldn't always know in such cases, and there's often no way to know what a
dead person would have thought years later if they would have lived.

~~~
lisper
That's not quite true. There are people who attempt suicide and survive. Many
(though by no means all) express regret afterwards.

~~~
ikeboy
That's an excellent point. Obviously we do know sometimes.

But GP's point was that we don't observe bad consequences from the laws in
Switzerland, all I'm saying is that it wouldn't show up when someone commits
suicide.

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notlisted
Beautiful story. I have several friends in the Netherlands whose parents
(terminally ill, i.e. MLS, cancer) opted for euthanasia. They were all happy
with the process and the outcome.

Unless advances in immunotherapy significantly change the outlook, I'd rather
move back to my home country for a dignified death on my own terms.

I've seen too many cases where several rounds of chemo extended life by just a
few months under dismal circumstances for the patient and their family. Lives
revolved around hospital visits while -- depending on the type/stage/location
of cancer -- chances of recovery are slim to none. False hope and misery.
Bankruptcy. Why bother?

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nxzero
While I personally, regardless my health would never end my life...

...anyone that believes they would be able to deal level of suffering,
mindlessness, toll on friends & family, etc. - should try experiencing it for
themselves to see if they would be able to deal with it and provide aid to
those they've forced to live on.

Everyone should have the right to die, to believe otherwise is inhuman.

------
akanet
Some days, I wonder if I'll get lucky and manage to go the next day without
thinking about the enormity of death. Yesterday, I was wrong.

~~~
amelius
Here's a way of thinking about it that might make it a little lighter. First,
you have to understand that the version of you at this moment is different
from the version of you yesterday. You don't feel what you felt yesterday. All
that is left are memories, which are somehow engraved in your brain. The part
of you that survives is purely physical. So in a sense, dying and living are
the same thing: you die at every femtosecond of living. Dying is not special.
You (as anyone else) have been doing it for many years now.

If this doesn't work for you, then consider the following. We are all living
beings, and sometimes some of us die, and sometimes new beings are born. But
who says that those living beings aren't just one big living being? Our brains
tell us so. But this view is only an artifact of the brain. If our brains were
all interconnected more strongly, then I bet our brains would view us as one
living being. So what you can take from this is that dying is just like losing
a few brain cells. This is also something that you have been doing for years
(in fact billions of years). So in this view, you never die until, of course,
the universe ends.

~~~
akanet
> you die at every femtosecond of living

This is an interesting theory that has its roots in solipsism: the belief the
world vanishes the moment you close your eyes. The fact of the matter is that
it (and solipsism) just don't seem to be _true_ , not even to solipsists. If
you truly believed you were dying at every second, you'd act in all sorts of
ways against your long term survival, but here you are posting on the
internet.

Even if we take the position as true, it seems entirely reasonable to perceive
the end of the "chain" of "yous" to be a tragic event.

> But who says that those living beings aren't just one big living being? Our
> brains tell us so.

Well, our brains, as well as the general evidence we see in the world around
us. _If_ we were one giant interconnected entity, dying would probably be very
different. However, there's very little reason to assume that as a given - I
can't talk to my dead relatives through any of my living ones.

I think this argument is perhaps more simply stated as "you were never a large
part of the human race, so your death will not matter in a large way either"
which is quite true, in fact. My counterpoint would be that the death of the
individual rightly remains terrifying to that individual. If I were the human
race, I would correctly not concern myself with the death of a few of my brain
cells (and I do not, regarding my own real brain cells), but I would regard
the death of the human race (myself) as truly important.

If anyone's interested, I've written about some of these kinds of arguments
I've heard before: [http://vincentwoo.com/2011/04/30/arguing-for-
immortality/](http://vincentwoo.com/2011/04/30/arguing-for-immortality/)

------
endymi0n
The doctor's response to the question if he'd recommend her mother to go
through cancer treatment reminded me a lot of
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3313570](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3313570)
[How Doctors Die]... why is the standard answer still to make people suffer
for extending their life just a few months or years?

~~~
masklinn
> The doctor's response to the question if he'd recommend her mother to go
> through cancer treatment reminded me a lot of
> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3313570](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3313570)
> [How Doctors Die]...

Of Atul Gawande's "Being Mortal" as well.

------
loonattic
Though I can't think of anything strongly against Switzerland at the moment,
this is another reason for me to despise governments and law... where one
can't even aid someone in ending their unnecessary, completely pointless
suffering without getting their life ruined? Yet states often reserve the
hypocritical "right" to execute the death penalty. A sad read, worth it.

~~~
rtkwe
That contradiction doesn't exist in Europe, only Belarus has the death
penalty.

------
sickbeard
Lets flip the coin for a moment. Supposing you had a 30 year old family member
who wanted to die. The choice she gives you is, i'll hang myself or jump in
front of a moving car.. or you can let me die with my family surrounding me
peacefully. Would you do it?

Note there is no mention of why she wants to die. If there is a cure or it can
be fixed will you go along with it?

~~~
Thiez
That seems like a rather unlikely scenario. People don't just decide they want
to die on a whim. And it's not like in countries with legalized euthanasia you
can just go to a doctor tomorrow morning, declare you're not feeling so well,
and you'll be scheduled for termination later that afternoon.

I for one would not assist in any suicide without knowing why someone wants to
die, and given that my country has a process that allows for legal euthanasia,
I'm not sure why your hypothetical family member would ask me to commit this
crime rather than going through official channels, especially since we are
apparently so estranged that I was completely unaware of her struggles and
death wish until this request. The best I can do in your scenario is warn the
authorities of the suicide risk, and recommend that she does not throw herself
in front of a car or train, because it's so extremely inconsiderate towards
the driver and/or passengers, and is that really the way you wish to go / be
remembered?

Oh, and perhaps recommend that if for whatever reason she does find the
opportunity to kill herself, don't try to poison yourself unless you really
know what you're doing. Killing yourself with an overdose of painkillers
sounds like a really good idea at first, but it's likely that hanging yourself
or cutting your wrists doesn't seem like such a bad way to go in hindsight,
when you're dying of liver failure over the next few days.

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krijt
beautifully written.. I cried a little bit.

------
agumonkey
Saddens me that we still cannot find solutions to bring them back to healthy.
Instead of spending too much time on how law can understand it, we should find
way to remove hurdles for medicine to progress.

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kregasaurusrex
This was a really well written piece. Always enjoy reading these on HN.

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maaku
Somebody should talk to the OP's mother about cryonics.

~~~
bkmartin
Why? They haven't even proven human revival is possible. Until they do it is
nothing more than vaporware. More of a scam. And this statement... "We believe
that the damage caused by current cryopreservation is limited and can someday
be repaired in the future." I don't really care what you believe when selling
a scientific solution. What is proven? Why do you believe that? Good
marketing? Actual data that shows it is limited?

But hey, by the time they fail to prove it correct you'll be dead and have no
recourse or care. Thanks for the money.

~~~
maaku
If you're waiting for revival to be shown then your missing the point. The
whole idea is to halt decay while there are problems that can't be solved yet.
It's an ambulance ride to the future.

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tubelite
If you don't have the right to opt-out, then you are not a customer, or
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