winstonjen

What he meant there was that a right to free speech includes the freedom to not speak.

dk

dk: I've read suicide has been linked to depression. Do doctors have a criterion to determine when a person’s to weak to commit suicide, or do they just play it by ear?
winstonjen: Isn't it obvious? When they ask for help, it is clear that they are too weak to do it alone, and only the patient can determine it.
dk: No this is not at all obvious, clear or even coherent. A depressed person lacks the mental capacity to decide, and you haven’t even begun to address the greater issues of senility, dementia, and subjectivity. For example women attempt suicide about 3 times more often than men, but men commit suicide more often than women. I this because women are weaker than men, or for some reason less motivated. Its estimated about 20% of high school kids have seriously contemplated suicide. How does anyone determine whether the problem is pain, depression, or a product of elderly abuse. For example, “Findings from the often cited National Elder Abuse Incidence Study suggest that more than 500,000 Americans aged 60 and over were victims of domestic abuse in 1996.” - National Center for Elder Abuse .

There is nothing obvious about this issue.

dk: I don’t have a clue what you mean by a “compulsory right”. The inalienable (objective) right to life requires government to protect everyone’s life, so the government has the duty.
winstonjen: A compulsory right is what you're advocating - people must live so your conscience can be happy, regardless of how much pain they are in. That, IMO, is sick.
dk: Pain is subjective, and the methods and training given health care providers to manage pain lacking. The rate of elderly abuse poses its own problem. The disparity between women/men suicide attempts indicates women will be suicided at a rate 3 times men.

dk: My comments were directed towards people that campaign to sign away other people’s Right to Life.
winstonjen: No, they campaign to be able to take CONTROL over their own lives. I don't see why you can't understand this.
dk: Who might they be, people that commit domestic abuse against the elderly perhaps?

Dr Rick

False. your failure to command the facts and issues seriously compromises your argument.

Irrelevant posts don't do you much good, either.

Au contrare; it's obvious that you are completely off-topic.

Oh, good; three non-sequitors all in a row...

...make that four.

dk

Older Adults: Depression and Suicide Facts
Depression, one of the most common conditions associated with suicide in older adults,1 is a widely underrecognized and undertreated medical illness. In fact, several studies have found that many older adults who die by suicide—up to 75 percent—have visited a primary care physician within a month of their suicide.2 These findings point to the urgency of improving detection and treatment of depression as a means of reducing suicide risk among older persons.
Older Adults: Depression and Suicide Facts

You need to take a step back and rethink you position, if you have the courage.

Dr Rick

Perhaps you could point us to the part that says, "A depressed person lacks the mental capacity to decide?" Or maybe you want to tell us where this article promotes or even addresses forced-feeding?

You made a series of disconnected aseertions, some of which were wrong, and the rest of which were non sequiturs, and then posted another off-topic response quoting some stuff about depression that has nothing to do with withdrawing life-support.

There's just nothing here to re-think, or for that matter, to think about at all.

winstonjen

And depression can be very painful as well. To go off-topic and respond in kind to you, do you think depression is caused by evil spirits and we should call in the Ghostbusters?

trillian

dk,

I'm wondering why you are now focusing on depression. Let's say that we do not allow people to end their lives for curable mental illnesses. Fine.

Now, can we talk about terminal cancer patients in excruciating pain for which there is no cure who are perfectly able to make a decision about the dignity of their own lives??

Let's say your mother is terminally ill with bone cancer. She has had pain management for 1 year but now they are at the limits of dosage without killing her. She begs daily for an end to the torment. There is nothing that doctors can do except wait weeks or months until the disease ravages her body to death. She tells you that it is the worst pain she has ever endured, much worse than childbearing pains she endured for less than a day when you were born. Except this pain doesn't go away and there is no new life at the end.

The pain is getting worse. She is in hell. Everyone watches as she cries and moans in agony. She does not smile, or share happy thoughts. She has no future, no hope for survival. Just the realization that she will continue to the next day in hell again as the cancer literally eats her alive.

She would like to die before the disease reaches her brain so she can say goodbye to her family and friends in a dignified way.

Please state simply what you think is the "intrinsic" value of keeping her alive through all that.

Lets say that there aren't doctors involved in the decision. It's just you and your family and you hold the legal overdose of morphine in your hand. What would you, as a loving son, do?

Trillian

Loren Pechtel

Note that the various assisted-suicide approaches have all had screening for depression in some form.

winstonjen

That's the interesting thing about the current law - overdoses of morphine are OK, as long as the 'primary' intent is to relieve suffering. But if death is FORSEEN, it must also be INTENDED, and you can't really tell what the true intention is. This current system is pitifully inadequate and open to abuse, and the patient's desires are usually overridden.

Dune

<quote>This current system is pitifully inadequate and open to abuse, and the patient's desires are usually overridden.<quote>
In what way?