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Due to something that's happening right now I started thinking about Dr Kevorkian(sp?) isn't he in jail for doctor assisted suicide.
Im wondering what everyone's opinion is on this...how the fuck can it be more humane to take a person off oxygen and starve them to death. Opposed to giving them a shot to first dull the pain then kill them?
I dont think people really realize how terrible it is until you have a whole family waiting for a person to die.
It just seems weird it's illegal.
my view on that is they should let the man out. *shrugs* We call ourselves humane because we will put an animal out of its misery rather than put it on machines to prolong the inevitable. But we will make a human being suffer sometimes for months in pain , more often in agony. I think its .... hell for lack of a better word ... Wrong!! They wanted to hook my gran up to machines and give her all kinds of Chemo therapy to prolong the what they said was Last year of her life. She said no and went home. She lived for another 4 years, quite happy. Her last year of her life they wanted her back in the hospital for treatments wich they said would be painful but may give her another year. SHe once again said no, took her morphine and went to live with my mom. SHe died happy, where she wanted to be.And peacefully I might add.
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If you go parachuting, and your parachute doesn't open, and you friends are all watching you fall, I think a funny gag would be to pretend you were swimming.
I think they should let him out as well. To me, only the person that is going through the pain, knows when they have took all they can take. Only they kow how much the pain hurts of whatever they are going through. I think it is their decision.
I am going to make a comment and hope it doesnt start a huge ass fight or anything. This is just my PERSONAL opinion.
"We say we love our loved ones so much, that we dont want to let them go when we know they are dying. But do we love them so much and dont want them to die so much that we would rather watch them lay there day after day in agony and pain and suffering?
I think if a person who knows theey are dying, and knows there is nothing else doctors can do for them, if they want to ease their pain and suffering and choose to die, that is their decision. Because they are the ones that have to deal with all the pain, the humility of knowing their loved ones are watching them fade away and looking at them like they are helpless.
I dont think the law, courts or anyone else should interfere with a persons decision to die with "assisted suicide". I mean, isnt that going more peacful and dying in peace better than wondering, "how much longer do I have to be in agony and pain, how much longer do I have to have a life of only laying here in this bed knowing I am gonna die." I think it's more peaceful as well. More peaceful than all the pain that might have experienced for so long now.
Thats just me thou. Thats my 2 cents.
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"She Shines Like A Diamond, when she walks into a room. she could Charm the Stars, hypnotize the moon"
I think he should be let go too..It should be that persons choice to live or die..only the person suffering can know how much they can take..and if it means loseing(sp?) a loved one..I would rather them go peacefully knowing it was their choice than to watch them suffer a hideous death..as i did my great gramma..She was a dignifed old soul and to suffer inhumanly as she did..her death held no dignity for her and god knows she deserved to go in peace and to have her wits about her when she did..her son didnt want to let her go he said..I felt for him..but as i have had to do many times for beloved pets..not that i am comparing human life to that of an animal..i would have let her go..for her sake..never for my own personal feelings would i allow anyone..be it man or animal to suffer needlessly ..just because i didnt want to be without them.
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"This above all; to thine own self be true."
-William Shakespeare
my feelings on this might start a heated discussion,but they are my feelings..and not to be forced on anyone else.......
first of all let the man go free......
im so sick of these so called humanitarians who are all about peoples rights yet all they are doing is making choices for us.the only right in that is that they are right and everyone else is wrong.its these same people that want to regulate our elective choices for family planning,even under horrific cercumstances so its only natural that they would oppose euthanasia.its also the same people that oppose medical research that might very well keep us from these painful and incurable conditions in the first place.the questions to be raised are, does qaulity of life undermine sanctity of life...i want qaulity of life,not qauntity of life and suffering.
.....this stuff can get me worked up if i let it....
let them suffer in their miserable and painful so called ethics......
please...put me out of my misery
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A life of reaction is a life of slavery,intellectually and spiritually.
One must fight for a life of action,not reaction.
Wills....wills....wills...wills.
If a person has a fatal desease and chooses not to be placed on life support...a living will should be made up by an ATTORNEY.
*G*
We are all going to have opinions on this subject. Some of our opinions will change in the future because we will be forced to make decisions like this. Sometimes a drawn out death of a loved one is more for the living than anyone else..*shrugs*....everyone can be selfish.....and some can be selfless.
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All my life, i had been taught suicide is wrong. And i had to agree with it until i became involved with the fire company. My opinions changed soooooooooo much after dealing with real life situations. To see someone in so much pain that they wanted to take their own life is hard to deal with. BUT.......as far as the assisted suicide goes...it is so much easier for the families to see the person go peacefully then to walk into a room and see that person with a gun in their hand doing them ownselves away! To some this may be a bit too much...but its so much harder for a family to deal with when they walk into something so horrible, something that will never leave their mind, to see a loved one blowing themself away. I myself had to deal with a suicide in my own family this summer. It was an overdose of medication so thank God i didnt have to deal with seeing blood and gore like i had assisted on some cases with the fire company. Its still hard to deal with but at least Tom did it peacefully and left a note apologizing for us having to see him that way. And with all the world problems going on now, i can honestly say im glad Tom isnt around to deal with it. He was a paranoid schizophrenic who constantly was afraid someone was trying to kill him, and the way things are now, he would have made himself totally mad and probably would have done something worse than an overdose!
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I am who I am and if you dont like the way I am....tough shit.
I dont feel that ANY court, should have the power to decide whether someone lives or dies, in a suicide case. murder is completely different.
Let the man free, he is only trying to be a humanitarian.
Sometimes somepeople love their family so much that they dont want to let go of them, so they hang on, and that only damages both of them in the end. But their love blinds the pain that they cause from them, they dont see the pain that they cause.
In the end, we all must go sometime.
i apologize if this response sint as well thought out as rottens or anybody elses, but right now i dont have the time.
I will see you on the other side.
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I'm a teenage christ...
I've got a date with suicide
i dont know, its all still so confusing to me!!
Mayra's Gran and my Grandma were lucky,.. they had a choice...
It seems that when my grandma got sick she got that pneumonia, had her lungs pumped once, and decided that was all she was gonna let them do...
and thats all they did...she died within a week..
Now my grandpa is the one i dont understand ..... well i do understand ...but its all so confusing...
I've always remembered him bein sharp and witty...
he never said, i was... but we all could tell that i was his favorite grand daughter....*VB http://www.hostboard.com/ubb/smile.gif
He got old and tired, he wasnt sick and he had all his wit with him... he just needed a place to rest ...
but at the time, my dad was having problems with his dad, my other grandpa, but this one loved skid row, and i guess loved sleeping on the streets and drinkin...(and its another story)...
So my Mother put her father in a home close to us and we visited EVERY day....
Then they said they found a tumor on his lung.... they operated...
i dont know!!! but when i found out, i said, but he's too old to operate on...
and of course my mom got upset with me say'n that....
then she said all kinds of stuff to make me feel bad...
But he didnt get better, he got pneumonia and i walked in one day his head was bandaged up and he was in a fetal position, pure white, nothing but skin and bones, and he was crying for his mommy....
I'm standing there not believing thats my grandpa... i just asked what happened to his head.... she said he had a brain tumor...
i slowly backed out of there, i heard my mom say theres always hope!! ... i never went back.. he died a week later my mom say'n he just kept getting worse...and even when he finally died they rush life support to him and tried for 20min to bring him back...
I thank God i wasnt there!!!!
This happened along time ago and i still dont know, but then again how do you say no! dont operate, let him die?
mmmmman!!!
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Lifes a bitch, and then you get old!
first of all dom im talking about doctor assisted suicide not asking your mom to put a gun to your head.
what they do instead is take you off life support and you literally starve to death.. and i think until you're in an unbearable amount of pain it's very smug and arrogant to say "dont be so selfish" to a person who feels pain 24/7. as for saying you'll learn something from your pain that's your choice...but it's very easy to say that shit when you feel fine.
anyhow that's not even what im talking about im talking about when they know the person isnt' gonna live and the DOCTORS take them off oxygen and let them starve..that way it's natural...starvation. so the family sits there and watches them die for 4 days.
sorry if it sounds like im slamming your views but don't ever say someone who is in incredible pain is selfish for this or that unless you're in that situation.
mel i just read your post and that's really sad and what im afraid of...i told my whole family as well as my g/f that if i ever get to the point where im sitting there staring at a wall and can possibly live that way for a few years months or weeks find some way to kill me....course my choice would be meds..*G
funny enough my mom told me the same my dad however thinks living is better than dying no matter what so that one im not sure about.
it's about dying with dignity can you imagine everyone that knew what an intelligent, capable person you were only remembering your last years when you couldn't use the restroom on your own...couldn't make a coherent sentence etc.
a friend of mine also just lost a parent...(btw johnny aka monitor if you read this last night you said "I wonder if he even misses his dad" to trixi implying my dad is dead and some how wanting to rub that in *L) it wasn't my dad....but this persons mom died anyhow and was in so much pain she was always angry....my friend told me at least i have peace when my grandpa died we all said goodbye.....when her mom died she was angry that no one could help her. she died knowing her mom was in terrible pain, mad and no one could do a thing about it.
that's about all i have to say about this topic but i think it's a very serious one.
A friend of mine did a term paper about 6 months ago on assisted suicide. After much research, even going so far as to mail out his survey on the internet to get a broader opinion base, he STILL came to the conclusion that such an act NEEDS controls on it. What would start out as a humanitarian deed, would escalate into horrific consequences. People stretching the idea from it's intended purpose into other, morally reprehensible, avenues. He started out with the opinion that it was a good thing..that people should have the right to choose,etc, but after reading article after article(considering the sources, of course)he did a 180 in his thinking. Now, he is an open-minded individual who isn't swayed by any particular religious belief or credo just to set the record straight. In my humble opinion, I would NEVER ask my loved ones, or anyone for that matter, to assist in my death as much as they think they might be helping. Can you imagine the psychological effects on them? What if they had reservations later on concerning the right or wrong of what they did? I could never in good conscious position their soul in such a moral dilemma. I, too, was a supporter of the right to end life in dignity, but after a lot of contemplation I came to the conclusion that I wouldn't choose it for myself per se. If my path in life was to die a slow and painful death, so be it..I was to learn something from it whatever that may be.
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Oops*S* sorry..one more comment before I shut up about it. In a nutshell, I would feel like I was being selfish in wallowing in MY pain.....only worrying about MY suffering and the ending of it. I just would concentrate on something else.
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in all the cases or well let's say the case he was convicted on...he had video tape of the sick person to show they were lucid and able to make their own decisions. It was their request i dont believe in even one case the person was in a coma and the family decided. suicide is illigal and that was the dilema. That the doctor was helping them commit an illegal act. But the real reason it is illegal is so police can step in and stop people who are about to commit suicide..that are depressed or reasons like that...you know a guy loses his job and is gonna jump from a building...etc. If it wasn't illegal they couldn't step in. Also of course our laws are almost all based on moral ideas we accept as a society and traditionally in religion suicide is a sin..
anyway back to the point.....the case(s) he was convicted on, the state prosecuted him (the DA)....the family of all the people who chose to die were on the side of the defense.
I went back on my statement that was the last i was gonna say. Oh and sorry DOM i prob just misinterpreted what you were saying.
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mollusk angst
I wasn't implying that EVERYONE should live with their pain, Rot, nor was I talking about putting a gun to one's head. I WAS talking about doctor assisted suicide. I was just saying that I!! wouldn't choose that path. I have a guilty conscious, therefore, I would feel bad. Who are you to assume that I'm ok and feeling fine? I wasn't being arrogant at all. I was merely stating my opinion, and didn't mean to touch a raw nerve with you.
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it really is a tough decision tho...
i'mean what gives us, as humans, the right to say just let them die.....
Instead of operating on an old person....
I dont think that Doctor should be in jail at all...
cus didnt the people that he helped, beg him to help them????in some cases??
Or was it, that in other cases he made the decision on his own???
i didnt know about it that much...
Thanks for the info...k
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="times new roman">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by rotten:
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>and traditionally in religion suicide is a sin..
Nuff said...For me anyway.. http://www.hostboard.com/ubb/smile.gif
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BITCH!..Its not only an insult...Its a way of life.
Our Place
*L the bible or a religion saying something is wrong is enough for you.
well living together and premarital sex is wrong according to the catholic religion.
using any form of birth control is wrong.
is all that enough for you too?
I like to make my own decisions actually and not go by a bible or any religion.
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mollusk angst
Um getting back to the question at hand, and I guess it kind of works with heidi's statement about suicide and what not.
When I was 16 three of my closest friends got into a drinking and driving accident, my best friend was hurt the worst. Basically all of her internal organs were cut in half and as they were driving her to the hospital her parents had to make a decision that would effect them for the rest of their lives. Knowing that she probably wouldn't make it they decided to take her off of life support.
It goes along with what heidi was saying because this family is the strongest bunch of Christians I've ever met, I mean they literally forgave the guy that killed their daughter and told us to do the same. Before this happened they would have said they were against something like doctor assisted suicide, but once having been in the situation, the question of morality changes, at least it did for them. They went against their ethics because they could not bear to see the suffering and pain in Sarah's eyes. And they made the right choice, with the damage that was done they were told she would not have made it even if the accident happened right outside Vancouver General Hospital.
I don't know if I would ask someone to pull the plug on me if I was dying, I can't say whether I would or not, because I'm not in that situation. However, I'm not going to judge people who have chosen that route or wish to.
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Love wounds. There is no love that does not pierce the hands and feet. Love's exquisite happiness is also love's exquisite pain. I do not seek pain but there is pain. I do not seek suffering but there is suffering. It is better not to flinch, not to try and avoid those things in love's direction. It is not easy, this love, but only the impossible is worth the effort.
Crazy Kerala's Place
i'm not a christian...Far from it..but I have beliefs about certain things like everyone I guess....Situations are different with different people..I dont judge others for the hard choices they make in life..I only have to live with the choices I make...
Nothing made that more clear to me than the recent events...Live and let Live...as hard as that is sometimes..
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BITCH!..Its not only an insult...Its a way of life.
Our Place
heidi catholicism is a division of christianity..
oh and you know you're a jesus freak **G
*LOL*....You are so old church..*G*...birth control is acceptable and so is living together in the churches eyes now...Everyone knows how I feel about having children and that I live with someone..havent been kicked out of church yet.. http://www.hostboard.com/ubb/biggrin.gif
I think only God can decide when your time is up...Its my opinion and I'm entitled to it..
There's the problem Rotten..You think we all need to see thing your way...You should start a cult... http://www.hostboard.com/ubb/smile.gif
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BITCH!..Its not only an insult...Its a way of life.
Our Place
rotten...sorry for taking so long to get back to this...
Looking back on my last post...that came acroos as completely insensitive and I'm sorry.
I meant that selfishness can be on both sides....if a family can't let go and let nature take it's course...that can be considered selfish....if a person chooses not to be put on life support or anything other kind of support....the living family might feel that is selfish.In my opinion, it would take a very selfless person to go against what felt right to them personally and to grant what a dying family member wished for. No matter how much it hurt...that would take a very very strong person. I'm sorry if I upset you...*s
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[This message has been edited by Macydamn (edited November 24, 2001).]
you didn't offend me at all macy i knew exactly what you meant..
thanks for bein considerate tho *smoooch
how are you anyway?
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mollusk angst
I'm good, thank ya sir. *S
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