Gloria Taylor
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission
Gloria Taylor, a Canadian, has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. Over a period of a few years, her muscles will weaken until she can no longer walk, use her hands, chew, swallow, speak, and ultimately, breathe. Then she will die. Taylor does not want to go through all of that. She wants to die at a time of her own choosing.
Suicide is not a crime in Canada, so, as Taylor put it: “I simply cannot understand why the law holds that the able-bodied who are terminally ill are allowed to shoot themselves when they have had enough because they are able to hold a gun steady, but because my illness affects my ability to move and control my body, I cannot be allowed compassionate help to allow me to commit an equivalent act using lethal medication.”
Taylor sees the law as offering her a cruel choice: either end her life when she still finds it enjoyable, but is capable of killing herself, or give up the right that others have to end their lives when they choose. She went to court, arguing that the provisions of the Criminal Code that prevent her from receiving assistance in dying are inconsistent with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms…
Last month, Justice Lynn Smith issued her judgment. The case, Carter v. Canada, could serve as a textbook on the facts, law, and ethics of assistance in dying.
…She considers, and accepts, an argument advanced by Wayne Sumner, a distinguished Canadian philosopher: if the patient’s circumstances are such that suicide would be ethically permissible were the patient able to do it, then it is also ethically permissible for the physician to provide the means for the patient to do it…
Smith then declared, after considering the applicable law, that the provisions of the Criminal Code preventing physician assistance in dying violate disabled people’s right not only to equality, but also to life, liberty, and security…
I hope that Justice Smith’s verdict on assistance in dying will stand and another door will open to personal liberty, an individual’s right to order their own life.
It’s about time..Everyone should have the “Right” to die.
People do have the right to die.
They exercise the right frequently.
If we make a law that prohibits suicide, how will an offender be prosecuted and punished?
The issue is whether a person is entitled to assistance from a competent professional.
As soon as there is assistance there is no more suicide by very definition. Two Pandora boxes would be opened otherwise: 1) Person even contemplating such way out is certainly under enormous stress and mental pressure. Ideal candidate to be manipulated by someone who may profit from the action while the action is fundamentally irreversible. Yes, person may be coaxed into the real suicide as well but there Natural instincts provide the only fully vetted barrier: one who really wants to do suicide is able to cross such barrier. 2) Slippery slope. As soon as you allow some procedure to be legal it may creep its way out of the group of people who may really want it to a “generic procedure”. Particularly in State Driven Medical Systems (but even in such cases as Obamacare where huge controls are left in hands of unelected bureaucrats interested in savings, not care). Maybe some other future Gloria who wouldn’t want to die despite her condition would be cut off from the ability to get any care as there is this “cheap procedure”. Too hypothetical? – Real life example: my mother have been diagnosed with ALS at 80 yrs in a country with “Free Healthcare For All”. No “assisted suicide” there nor did she want it. However, system bureaucrats simply cut off ANY AND ALL care for her. Not only she couldn’t get treatment for ALS but if she’d say break her leg or needed to buy any medication – she’d wouldn’t be allowed to get it. That is what happens when the State is the sole provider of care. They can essentially condemn you. (In my mother case we were able to bring medications from abroad and fortunately 4 out of 5 cousins and my sister are medical doctors … but anyone in her position otherwise wouldn’t be able even to buy any care even if they have had money). She survived two more years.
Life can voluntarily be taken only by person him/her self with no one else involved.
I had to laugh at “but even in such cases as Obamacare where huge controls are left in hands of unelected bureaucrats interested in savings, not care”
As opposed to our current (unelected) kind, gentle, for-profit health care industry that cares nothing about such things as profits or savings.
LOL
ROTFLMAO
“Smith then declared, after considering the applicable law, that the provisions of the Criminal Code preventing physician assistance in dying violate disabled people’s right not only to equality, but also to life, liberty, and security…”
The right to life is the right to force someone to kill you? How soon until this is mandatory?
The way to get around that problem is to kill yourself.
People do that sort of thing all the time.
orchidcup, I think you did not read the article all through. As you say, yes, people do that sort of thing (i. e. they kill themselves) when they are capable to do it. But Gloria Tayler says: I am capable of killing myself, but this is not yet the time to do it. And when the time will come that I will not enjoy anymore my life, I will not be capable of doing it, and I will need the help of somebody.
I understand the issue to be whether a competent professional should assist a person with their right to die.
Hey Benji==when you gonna take that Evelyn Woods Reading Comprehension Class? To wit: without physician assisted suicide, a person who is physically competent AND ENJOYING THEIR CURRENT LIFE, may be forced to kill themselves (early–ie==no more life) so that they don’t suffer when they can no longer get the job done.
One a more sophisticated but seemingly oxymoronic level, the right “to” life can also be exactly the right to reject life. That makes more linguistic sense when talking about freedom of Religion to also include freedom from Religion as well as the Right to Free Speech including the Right to Remain Silent.
See how that works? Not at all like God being one and three at the same time.
YMMV.
And one day a diagnosis could lead to an automatic killing. Saves money and time. Great for the national healthcare system.
Didn’t take long for a ‘slippery slope loon’ to add the usual hairball projection.
No slippery slop, it just makes sense. There are certain diagnosis that you can’t do anything about. Why waste time and resources?
I agree. If the end result is assured, get it over with and move on to the next plane of existence.
And help the bottom line. The national health care system can finally be setup to treat only those that can be cured and that are worth treating.
Bravo! Then everyone should be killed at birth! After all, the end result is assured….
What I don’t understand is why someone can’t just take a whole bottle of Tylenol when the time comes. No particular difficulty acquiring it and it is universally deadly in relatively short order. There are other drugs and methods that don’t require much physical ability though they do require some advance planning. I use Tylenol in the example because many people will find that they don’t even have to go shopping. It’s right on the shelf in their home already.
Personally, I think I’d like to try an overdose of heroin so that, at least for a few fleeting moments, I get to see what it’s like. That could be acquired well in advance as well, but procurement is a bit trickier.
That’s right, because our current for-profit system cares nothing about saving money (i.e. profits) or time.
You guys are killing me! Too funny!
It will solve a huge problem for health care, spending a lot of time and money on patients that have no hope (or means to pay). Now Doctors will have the option to end someones life instead of having to be bothered with treating them. Its done all the time with abortions on one end, might as well do it at the other end of life as well.
Love the “what-ifs” from religious conservatives.
Stay on your knees. Keep praying for salvation from individual liberties.
Yeah–and while I don’t support any governmental “forcing” of assisted suicide, I do think it is the proper role of government to “encourage” it when medically appropriate. Of course, errors are made whatever the rules are. People are like that. Give them a nice idea, and the make a religion out of it. Give them a Religion, and they make an Inquisition out of it. After the Inquisition, they form a Republican Party.
Ha, Ha.—Silly Hoomans.
A point not made in the story.
The state government in BC has approved it but it’s being challenged in court by the federal govt.
Coincidentally the federal govt is run by a religious nut who is anti-gun control and pro getting involved in any middle east war that comes available
Condemned prisoners on death row get physician assistance in dying.
If the state can do it, why can’t individuals?
Agreed. It is absolute cruelty to see people of clear mind bound in a near lifeless physical body unable to end their life with dignity.
Again credit religious intrusion in society for this Inhumane public policy.
I would think religious people would agree that the person is going to a better place.
In most jurisdictions they don’t. Since it’s generally illegal for doctors to kill people the drugs are normally administered by prison guards – hence the occasional screw up.
In Texas, the lethal drugs are administered by an automated machine. A physician is on hand to verify the results.
That way, nobody can say they had a hand in murdering somebody, so their conscience is clear and they can go home and eat supper.
State sanctioned murder is more humane to all the participants.
… nobody except the guy who turned the automated machine on. 😉
In Texas, the automated machine is always on because it is used frequently.
People should definitely have a right to end their own lives.
As far as the headline goes: I think dignity is an overrated concept.
Whats overrated when comparing your brains splattered on the wall, or maybe a miss, compared to nice quiet pill in a cup of chocolate?
Of course, doc assisted has more dignity than do it yourself. Professionalism counts.
Yes indeed. It is undignified to splatter your brains all over the ceiling and walls.
People that miss end up in an expensive assisted-living facility and usually the taxpayer or insurance company pays out for a long time.
I say if suicide is your sober decision, by all means get it over with quickly with dignity and competent assistance.
It works out better for all of us.
How can you miss? Never heard of such a thing?
“Yeth, I had the gun in my mouth and next thing I knew I wath mithing a toe.”
My ex-wife was severely brain-damaged giving birth. She was placed in a facility that cares for people with brain damage.
A number of the patients there were failed suicide attempts. Their insurance companies were paying out thousands of dollars each month to care for for them until they die naturally.
The legal system won’t allow physicians to finish the job and put these patients out of their misery.
You would be surprised, the human head is quite tough. Toss in not enough gun, hesitation, wrong angle, bullet skittering over the dura matter, or inside the skull.
Check out the book Dead men do tell tales. written by a My personal favorite the doctor who wired himself to an electrical outlet through a timer then took a few sleeping pills.
The fact is, physicians assist people in dying frequently.
I observed my father-in-law going through the process of dying.
The physician prescribed certain drugs that made the process more “comfortable.”
It was physician assisted dying.
Yes, the usual way is respiratory failure due to a morphine overdose.
When the pain level is so high and the cancer is terminal, the patient is often given a way to self medicate.
If you’ve seen a relative die like this, you are likely glad it is over for them. Any thing else is just a minor debate for people who have the luxury to debate the issue.
Or they starve to death. My dad ended that way. A fatal injection would have been preferable. Still haunts me.
But we are a humane society. We value life above all other things.
Except in the case of war and assassinations.
What’s the problem?
All she has to do is put on some black face paint and wheel her chair through a florida home owners association area
If you wish to die quickly, go to a bar in Texas and scream out “I love Barack Obama and Rick Perry can suck my dick!”
Your body will never be found, but it is a quick way to go.
Read this article about how doctors die. They’re the experts in preserving life, and you might be surprised what they do when their own lives are on the line.
zocalopublicsquare.org/thepublicsquare/2011/11/30/how-doctors-die/read/nexus/
Here’s the first paragraph:
Years ago, Charlie, a highly respected orthopedist and a mentor of mine, found a lump in his stomach. He had a surgeon explore the area, and the diagnosis was pancreatic cancer. This surgeon was one of the best in the country. He had even invented a new procedure for this exact cancer that could triple a patient’s five-year-survival odds—from 5 percent to 15 percent—albeit with a poor quality of life. Charlie was uninterested. He went home the next day, closed his practice, and never set foot in a hospital again. He focused on spending time with family and feeling as good as possible. Several months later, he died at home. He got no chemotherapy, radiation, or surgical treatment. Medicare didn’t spend much on him.
And another one from later in the article…
Almost all medical professionals have seen what we call “futile care” being performed on people. That’s when doctors bring the cutting edge of technology to bear on a grievously ill person near the end of life. The patient will get cut open, perforated with tubes, hooked up to machines, and assaulted with drugs. All of this occurs in the Intensive Care Unit at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars a day. What it buys is misery we would not inflict on a terrorist. I cannot count the number of times fellow physicians have told me, in words that vary only slightly, “Promise me if you find me like this that you’ll kill me.” They mean it. Some medical personnel wear medallions stamped “NO CODE” to tell physicians not to perform CPR on them. I have even seen it as a tattoo.
Physicians see death every day. It is not a mystery to them.
The shameful actions of the legal system and religious fanatics results in untold suffering and torture that could be avoided with a lethal drug dose.
Carbon monoxide poisoning is a simple and easy method of ending your life if you cannot find a competent professional to assist.
Except that modern automobiles don’t emit much carbon monoxide, if you have in mind sitting in a running car in a closed garage, for example. There have been several recent cases of suicide attempts by this method that failed because the CO emissions are so low.
And of course, you need a car, a garage, and to be able to get yourself into it.
I still vote for the bottle of Tylenol as a simple, cheap method that most people could use, if they chose to.
The lead guitarist for the rock group Boston locked himself in a bathroom and fired up a hibachi with charcoal and other things.
He was successful.
While simple, it is not always easy. The overdose usually causes liver failure which can take days to kill you in a rather unpleasant way.
This is an interesting issue, assisted suicide. I remember Kevorkian on the Phil Donahue show back in the ’90s. He was so excited about his machine and his ability to kill people, he really creeped me out. After seeing several family members suffer through long agonizing illnesses, and as the memory of that creep Kevorkian fading, I find myself less opposed to it as I used to be. But, I still have concerns of some bureaucrat pulling the plug on a family member because he misinterpreted some vague provision in Obamacare.
Of course, assisted suicide will kind-of blow a major hole in the current argument against lethal injections used in carrying out the death penalty.
If I was you I’d be more concerned with some insurance company pulling the plug on a family member because the care would be too expensive for them to meet their quarterly profit forecast.
Of course, assisted suicide will kind-of blow a major hole in the current argument against lethal injections used in carrying out the death penalty.
Really? You think terminally ill people choosing to end their own lives voluntarily is the same as the government killing convicted criminals? Really looks like the same to you? Wow.
You really need to pay closer attention. I said “bureaucrat”, that could refer to anyone from an Insurance company to a Hospital bean-counter.
“Really? You think terminally ill people choosing to end their own lives voluntarily is the same as the government killing convicted criminals? Really looks like the same to you?”
No, you’re the one making that assumption. You really need to start paying attention.
The Death Penalty is a misnomer. I don’t know why it is called a penalty.
Everybody dies sooner or later. A death sentence ends the life sooner.
I would think a far greater penalty would be life in prison without parole.
I would think a far greater penalty would be life in prison without parole.
Exactly my thought about the whole death penalty debacle.
Obama has said that it is a bad idea to be spending so much money on the last six months of life. Really if you are too old, you have a duty to die, and not burden everyone else with your expenses. They should just pass a mandate.
I have read in many places that half of the money spent on healthcare for a person’s entire life is spent in the last six months of it, on stuff like “futile care” as described in that “How Doctors Die” article I linked to.
So it’s not just Obama. Apparently if we all died six months earlier, our entire national medical bill would be cut by 50%. Pretty strange.
The healthcare industry loves the last 6 months because it is the most profitable.
Remember, they don’t get paid based on health nor well being. They get paid on how many drugs and medical procedures are performed.
Follow the money. This is a huge racket that preys on people’s fear of dying and of course the religious convictions implanted in the sheeple.
Go back to the Florida case where the parents were joined by the state to keep a vegetable alive further after decades of laying there with a dead brain.
If you are six months from death, what difference does it make?
You are going to Heaven. Rejoice and be glad.
You do indeed have a duty to die. We need to make room for the next generation, and if we stick around and our children must contribute to our care, we can bankrupt them because the insurance company will try every trick in the policy to get out of paying.
You’re right; here in America we cling to life… quantity, not quality… we just have a hard time letting go. I wonder why.
And I agree 100%, old and decrepit and weighing on the kids is no way to live.
Nowdays we shuttle off old folks to a rest home (excuse me, an assisted-living facility) so they are out of sight and out of mind and we can rest assured they are being “cared for.”
Then one day we get a phone call so we shuffle off to the funeral home where somebody else has taken care of the body so we don’t need to deal with it. Then we drive to the cemetery and some guy says a few kind words and we plunk them into the ground and go on about our business until it is our turn.
There was a time when most people died at home with the family in attendance, and the family took care of the burial in a family plot.
Most people today don’t see or experience the death of a loved one. Death happens in a hospital or hospice or rest home, and the funeral home takes care of the unpleasant business for us.
We should experience death as a natural progression of life, but we don’t want to deal with it even when it is our turn to go.
So true… death has been sanitized. 🙁
Welcome to the Bayview Retirement Community, where, if you have enough money, you can be comfortably ignored while Waiting For God.
If you don’t have enough money, shove off…
Agreed. Walk into any assisted living or nursing home and watch the agony of people strapped to machines with no family around. Out of sight , out of mind.
In the mean time, medicare pays out $2800/mo for the warehousing of the patient – not including medical expenses.
A total racket.
“You are going to Heaven. Rejoice and be glad.”
Or your going hell for eternal torment.
Or none of the above, your just dead.
Personally I plan on dying in my sleep like my uncle, not screaming and crying like the folks on the bus he was driving.
Dragon can invoke a macro with an utterance, right? A “script,” as it were. Some savant could set it up so that when she says the magic words, something like “Time for me to go,” the mechanism that drives the pumps & valves is set into motion. The deadly (& merciful) chemicals are injected & she dies. No doctor need feel guilty over having inflicted a “harm” & nobody else need feel like a killer because she did it to herself. A win all around.
Good thinking.
A doc whose name I can’t remember wrote his autobiography back in the ’70s & said this:
A dying man needs to die like a tired man needs to sleep.
My father-in-law expressed something similar.
He said something to the effect of “I am so tired and I think I am ready to go.”
I hope those that are against letting someone die on their own terms has to experience not being able to themselves. The same rights that let me smoke 12 packs of cigarettes a day should give people the right to die when and how they want.
You have the right to die when and how you want.
The legal system becomes concerned when you dare to have an accomplice.
I’m totally fine with this so long as there is an absolute unbending restriction that it can only be enacted by the person themselves (either directly or through pre-established, direct consent in an advanced directive) and never by a PoA, bureaucrat or even physician.
An automated suicide machine that administers a lethal dose of suicide cocktail after verification of identity via retinal scan and other biometric security measures is next on my list of inventions.
I can see it now.
The Apple iSuicide Device.
Portable, simple design, operates with finger gestures, and also features a music player, internet browser, and cell phone to notify your relatives of your demise.
There should be a viable worldwide market for this device.
We could have had something better. Kevorkian started a national debate on this topic.
The religo mofos together with the medical industrial complex nipped that conversation at the bud.
I donated to this blog so unlike you, I don’t leach off of resources funded by donations and advertisement.
BigBoyBC honestly recounting his growth as a thinking person says:
7/17/2012 at 11:51 am
This is an interesting issue, assisted suicide. I remember Kevorkian on the Phil Donahue show back in the ’90s. He was so excited about his machine and his ability to kill people, he really creeped me out. After seeing several family members suffer through long agonizing illnesses, and as the memory of that creep Kevorkian fading, I find myself less opposed to it as I used to be. But, I still have concerns of some bureaucrat pulling the plug on a family member because he misinterpreted some vague provision in Obamacare. /// BBBC–recognize you are CONFLATING two separate issues: the topic of people freely choosing for THEMSELVES to avoid the vagaries of a slow lingering death with the only loosely tangential issue of someone ELSE interfering with what you might choose for yourself. One does not imply the other. You got some loose thinking going on here.
Keep on thinking: one should be legal, the other illegal.
Telling shit from shinola on a daily basis.
assisted suicide is a daily occurence.. they up the pain meds (usually morphine) until the pain is gone
Assisted suicide just needs better PR. And a better name. How about “Happy Sleep”?