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Positively, absolutely YES. My father died from ALS and it was a terrible thing to see someone you love pass that way. We kept him at home until the end and I know it wasn't his wish to exist like he did for the last six months or so. We wouldn't let our pets suffer, so why would we let our family members?
My father and his brother (and his brother's oldest son) died of a heritable progressive brain atrophy disease - it presents much like Parkinson's but is not actually quite the same thing. The first thing that is lost is motor skills, starting with the ability to walk without stumbling and then it just progresses from there.
My father was raised in a Catholic tradition and although I doubt he'd been in a church in 40 years he felt that suicide, assisted or otherwise, was a sin and that he had no option but live with the increasing debilitation - in 4 years he went from a man who played golf 4x a week to walking with a walker, to being in a wheelchair, to being entirely bedridden and unable to speak clearly enough to be understood before he died of aspiration pneumonia and a MRSA-resistant infection (which he got in a hospital) from a catheter.
I definitely am not interested in going that route, I'd choose something much quicker and at an earlier stage.
Sorry but that reduces people to the lowest common denominator of "evolution".
I know, the truth is not always pretty like a good movie or a bible story. But the reality is we are pretty much just vehicles for DNA to do its thing, which is to evolve. Evolution needs regeneration for it to work.
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I serve purposes beyond the biological...and I've chosen NOT to reproduce so should I just off myself now and stop using resources because I've contributed nothing?
Offing yourself does not follow from the fact that we are simply cogs in the evolutionary machine.
The funny thing is that for those of us who chose to not have kids (I am in that camp), we actually are removing from the gene pool the tendency to reduce the population by resisting the temptation to have kids. It is a self-defeating tendency that can never take hold in the gene pool.
I hate to tell you this, but the purpose of all of us, from amoeba to human is to reproduce. If you have done that and your offspring have left the nest, your purpose is done. Anything beyond that is really some teleological view of things which is a whole other discussion. Once you have fulfilled your evolutionary duty, it is party time - do what pleases you, not what serves some purpose, as there is none at that point.
The biological purpose of any species is to reproduce. But we humans have an intellect that gives us the opportunity and the means to override that purpose if we so choose. We can do what pleases us without ever serving the purpose of a biological duty of producing offspring.
When we spay or neuter our pets at a young age, they lead perfectly happy lives as a cat or dog and think nothing of it. They are still a happy cat or dog fulfilling whatever life they live contrary to their proscribed biological purpose of perpetuating their species. The only difference is they don't know it.
I would be tempted, but I'm undecided as to whether or not this would be "suicide," which is against my religion and which, furthermore, I sincerely believe to be a big spiritual mistake. Not sure if the terminal diagnosis gives you an out. You never know what God has in mind for the remainder of your life, and God alone as the author of life and our creator has the right to end it. Again, that's my belief.
I don't really understand why people can't just be sedated with good old benzodiazepines (sleeping pills) until death occurs. "Go to sleep and not wake up" which is how EVERYONE wants to go. Maybe this IS "assisted suicide" or maybe morphine does the same thing when the time comes in Hospice.
Law or no law, you can always simply voluntarily abstain from eating and drinking; with a diagnosis and living will, no one can force it on you. But, again, this would fall under the heading of "suicide" for me.
That said... I would NOT pursue aggressive treatment against something like cancer (which I frankly believe does more harm than good) and wouldn't consider that "suicide" because it's just letting nature take its course. Instead of becoming sicker, I would have a heck of a good time for as long as I lasted.
I would be tempted, but I'm undecided as to whether or not this would be "suicide," which is against my religion and which, furthermore, I sincerely believe to be a big spiritual mistake. Not sure if the terminal diagnosis gives you an out. You never know what God has in mind for the remainder of your life, and God alone as the author of life and our creator has the right to end it. Again, that's my belief.
I don't really understand why people can't just be sedated with good old benzodiazepines (sleeping pills) until death occurs. "Go to sleep and not wake up" which is how EVERYONE wants to go. Maybe this IS "assisted suicide" or maybe morphine does the same thing when the time comes in Hospice.
Law or no law, you can always simply voluntarily abstain from eating and drinking; with a diagnosis and living will, no one can force it on you. But, again, this would fall under the heading of "suicide" for me.
I understand when people say that God is the author of life as you put it and has the right to end it and so forth but if we use doctors and their knowledge to prolong life by using artificial means such as surgery or medications, aren't we kind of doing the same thing? Maybe He meant for us to die by giving us that heart attack but the doctor revived us with a machine so we live. Have we interfered with God's plan for us to die?
What you described, the person being sedated so they never wake up is assisted suicide. The person is given drugs to take home and decides when to take them. They lose consciousness You can call that going to sleep like they call it when we put our pets "to sleep." End of story.
It's easy for me to sit here while in good health to say that I wouldn't go to extreme medical procedures to stay alive, but that is what I feel now.
With no family to want to stick around for, if I develop pancreatic cancer some day, I feel like there's no point in putting myself through the torture of chemo, radiation, and surgery. In the scheme of things I've had a decent life and can't complain about much.
I may or may not resort to state-sanctioned suicide, but it's good to know that it's one of many options to get off the planet when my body stops functioning properly.
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