bea@alice.UUCP (Bea Chambers) (04/16/85)
I was browsing for the first time thru net.suicide but no one touched on what is bothering me, namely, how to take your life reliably and painlessly if one is hit with an incurable illness. Last year, my mother (in her early 90's) had cancer of the colon. The team of doctors decided on major surgery even though they knew the cancer was well advanced. I asked the surgeon why she couldn't just be kept sedated and left to die with some dignity. I did not get a satisfactory answer but my mother wanted the surgery because she did not realize she had cancer. The pre-op preparations weakened her a lot and the surgery itself put such a strain on her that she had a heart attack. She made it through the surgery but was still weak and in a lot of pain. The post-operative therapy was also very unpleasant and painful for her. After the surgery, my mother begged the doctors to 'let her go' but if course, doctors don't do humane things like that. I felt like that whole experience was something out of a horror movie and when she died, 1 month later, we were all grateful. I found myself wondering if doctors get some sort of sadistic pleasure doing this. Or are the doctors required by laws to do this? Or do they think they are doing the right thing? Now, if you are young or middle aged perhaps I can understand considering major surgery. But at 90+, I think that was awful and unnecessary. If I ever get in such a position,I would like the option of ending it all but frankly, I don't know how. I don't think one can ask your friendly doctor for pills because he/she would get in trouble. Perhaps one can get sleeping pills and save them up but i don't think that is reliable. One can, of course, use a gun or a knife but even then, one may end up alive and mutilated. Any ideas out there? There is a French magazine called Le Figaro which has an article on just this subject. For any French readers, it is 12 Avril-1985 and the article is Le Suicide peut-il etre une therapeutique? ( I don't think any US magazine would dare publish such an article. Thank heavens for netnews)
terry@uw-june (Theresa Farrah) (04/16/85)
I share the same concern about our society's attitude toward our right to take our own lives. In fact, so far in my life I have never seriously considered suicide; my interest in this newsgroup and in the subject of suicide comes from my desire to have an effective method available for taking my own life should I ever want to do so in the future. The terrible thing is that in the situations in which a person might most want to commit suicide (while in a hospital or nursing home), the means with which to do it are most unavailable. I would like to see a discussion of the ethics of taking one's own life AND of forcing another to keep his/her life. I would also like to discuss effective and available means of suicide. Terry Farrah (terry@washington)
jayt@ssc-vax.UUCP (Jay T McCanta) (04/18/85)
> > I found myself wondering if doctors get some sort of sadistic pleasure doing > this. Or are the doctors required by laws to do this? Or do they think they > are doing the right thing? > I was pretty good friends with my doctor back home. We had both seen "Whose life is it anyway" and I had asked him how he felt about it. His reply was not off the cuff, but had been thought out: he had asked himself the question before. He said that all through a medical career, one is impressed with the fact that there purpose is to save lifes (read prolong). After a while, constantly hearing this, it becomes ingrained on one's conscience, and after watching some miracoulous recoveries, a doctor is left to believe that prolonging life may provide a hope. Death certainly hold no hopes and is considered a failure by most of the profession. The decision is not easy for a doctor no matter how callous you feel he may be. At this time, there is still a great confict between quality and quantity of life. -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- I would never drop in uninvited, but... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Jay T. McCanta Boeing Aerospace Kent, Wa. {uw-beaver|adiron|boeing|cesonix|argus|purdue}!ssc-vax!jayt
dragon@lll-crg.ARPA (Monica Cellio) (04/19/85)
There is something you can get called the Living Will which, basically, is a request that "heroic measures" not be used to save your life. That's not quite the same thing, because it requires passive rather than active euthenasia, but for most purposes that's probably what you want anyway. I don't think the document is legally binding, but then I'm not sure if it's actually been tested in court. (Of course, I don't know what effect it would have outside the U.S.) I will try to find an address and post it (unless someone else beats me to it). -Dragon
hollombe@ttidcc.UUCP (The Polymath) (04/20/85)
In article <112@uw-june> terry@uw-june (Theresa Farrah) writes: > The terrible thing >is that in the situations in which a person might most want to >commit suicide (while in a hospital or nursing home), the means >with which to do it are most unavailable. This is a common misconception. Actually, the means to suicide are more available in most hospitals than almost anywhere else (drugs, surgical tools, etc.). Depending on one's condition, simply removing an IV drip could suffice. Of course, if you're completely immobilized for some reason suicide becomes more difficult, but that's true in the outside world as well. > I would >also like to discuss effective and available means of suicide. One of the things I was taught (and used to teach) at the local Suicide Prevention Center is that there is _no guarantee_ that _any_ method of suicide will be successful. As an extreme (and horrible) example, the following is an acutal case: A prisoner in a penetentiary tried to kill himself with a shotgun he had somehow gotten hold of. (I don't recall the precise circumstance). He placed the muzzle of the gun against his throat and fired both barrels. Last I heard (about 5 years ago) he was suing the prison system to force them to rebuild the lower half of his face so he could eat normally. People have survived falls from buildings, drugs, guns, carbon-monoxide, and almost anything else you can think of -- generally somewhat the worse for wear. I know of one woman who, in shooting herself in the head, managed to perform an impromptu lobotomy on herself. She thinks she may actually be the better for it, but I wouldn't recommend it as a general practice. You pays your money and you takes your chance. Maybe it works and maybe it doesn't. It's your life. -- -_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_- The Polymath (aka: Jerry Hollombe) Citicorp TTI 3100 Ocean Park Blvd. Santa Monica, CA 90405 (213) 450-9111, ext. 2483 {philabs,randvax,trwrb,vortex}!ttidca!ttidcc!hollombe
barryg@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Lee Gold) (04/20/85)
We all have an incurable disease: it's called mortality. It'll kill all of us one day. I think Terry's question is really about whether it's ethical for someone with an incurably *painful* disease to kill himerself. I think the answer depends on just how much the pain interferes with one's ability to achieve goals that seem significant/enjoyable. If I thought that all the remaining days of my life would be spent in a state of pain so acute that I only had enough concentration to endure the pain, not enough to spend on doing anything else--yeah, I'd probably think I had a moral right to commit suicide. I had a great-aunt by marriage who had lung cancer. Several times the doctors chemotherapied it into remission, but it came back. The last time it returned, she asked them how much hope they had of another remission. They told her there was none. She'd be in extreme pain, partially controlled by morphine, for the rest of her life. She told them that in that case her instructions were that she be kept unconscious until she died. And if they weren't prepared to follow those instructions, she'd check out of the hospital and find a place that would do that for her. She died about a week later, having been kept virtually unconscious the whole time. I think she made a good choice. BUT...if I had a few months yet to live and enough energy/concentration to still take on a project, I'd look around for something to do, a last chance to make my mark on a world I'd soon be leaving. One of my favorite prayers asks God to "establish the work of our hands." I'd look for something to do that would make people glad I'd been alive and done it. I had a cousin who got cancer of the pancreas, a condition that normally kills you in a few acutely painful weeks. He decided he wanted to put together a museum showing. And then, since he was still alive, he took on another project. And another. He ended up dying about a year after his doctor gave him the diagnosis. And his last year was a benefit to his family and to the community as a whole. And to himself too. Eric Berne (_Games_People_Play-) claimed that every psychiatrist shouldc explain to a patient that no one had the right to commit suicide 1. While hiser parents were still alive 2. While hiser children were not yet adult I think I'd go along with that for those not undergoing extreme and incurable pain--and end one more proviso: 3. Tell your friends, lovers, spouses (and ex-spouses) and children goodbye. Don't let them find it out the hard way. And if you can't face telling them you'e going to kill yourself, don't make them face the reality of your having done so. --Lee Gold