Right to Die, or Duty to Die?

Warrigal

Warrigal

SF VIP
Location
Sydney, Australia
This is an excerpt from a much longer opinion piece with the same title.

... it is understandable why so many bioethicists believe that "a right to die implies a duty to die."

Philosopher John Hardwig, for instance, makes the following remarkable claim:

"The lives of our loved ones can be seriously compromised by caring for us. The burdens of providing care or even just supervision twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week are often-overwhelming. When this kind of caregiving goes on for years, it leaves the caregiver exhausted, with no time for herself or life of her own. Ultimately, even her health is often destroyed. But it can also be emotionally devastating simply to live with a spouse who is increasingly distant, uncommunicative, unresponsive, foreign, and unreachable. Other family members' needs often go unmet as the caring capacity of the family is exceeded. Social life and friendships evaporate, as there is no opportunity to go out to see friends and the home is no longer a place suitable for having friends in.​

"We must also acknowledge that the lives of our loved ones can be devastated just by having to pay for health care for us. One part of the recent SUPPORT study documented the financial aspects of caring for a dying member of a family. Only those who had illnesses severe enough to give them less than a 50% chance to live six more months were included in this study. When these patients survived their initial hospitalization and were discharged, about 1/3 required considerable caregiving from their families, in 20% of cases a family member had to quit work or make some other major lifestyle change, almost 1/3 of these families lost all of their savings, and just under 30% lost a major source of income."
​
For Hardwig, the duty to die becomes greater as we grow older, as our loved ones put more and more resources into our lives, and when "the part of you that is loved will soon be gone or seriously compromised."
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​
How do you feel about euthanasia as an obligation? A duty?

If you think such a thing is unthinkable I suggest you read the full article here: http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2014/09/01/4078456.htm
 

I find this a very dangerous concept.

A right to die, I can just about get my head round; under certain circumstances; but a duty to die is one step too far.
these concepts need discussion within families, which most people don't face until it is too late; like wills.
i feel that no human being has a right to turn to another, saying I have had enough of looking after you, so it is your duty to die; and let me get on with my life.

Some cultures would not tolerate this way of thinking, and I don't think I do either.
 
Everybody has an obligation to check out or be checked out and stop taking up space and oxygen at some point...
 

Everybody inevitably checks out and stops taking up space and oxygen at some point.
No-one gets out of this life alive. What's the hurry?

I'm gunna hang around until the movie is over and all the credits have rolled past.
If you want to leave before the last act, then go ahead. I'm not coming with you.
 
Well, if you are going to be stubborn about it perhaps an intervention will take place at an appropriate time to see that it happens...
 
Who says that we would have to do it? Your government could well be able to determine how to get rid of the surplus population, especially the elderly who take up so much of the health care resources...
 
Have to do it?
I thought you trigger happy guys would love to do it.
For nothing.

Anyway, we only have 23 million in a land mass the size of continental USA.
We can't afford to lose any of them.
 
Certainly some of your jihadists should be dispatched, and probably by hanging as you seem to fancy that method...
 
Maybe it's about needlessly using up valuable resources? But who is to say it's 'needless' or futile. There are no take backs or re-dos at the end of life. The patient should make this decision on their own.
 
I'm all for legal euthanasia for those who choose to end their lives, it is a personal decision, as WhatInThe has said. It should never be done as an obligation for another. We cared for both of my husband's parents in our own home during their last years, and my sister did the same for my mother. We wouldn't have wanted it any other way, although it definitely affected our lifestyles, and can be both physically and emotionally exhausting at times.
 
If everybody did some reading and research into Near Death Experiences, we might collectively not have so much angst about dying. While I am not inclined to hurry it along, I have to say that I'm actually looking forward to my big day with some anticipation.
 
"The burdens of providing care or even just supervision twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week are often-overwhelming. When this kind of caregiving goes on for years, it leaves the caregiver exhausted, with no time for herself or life of her own."



Child rearing is a bitch ain't it.
 
Debby said:
If everybody did some reading and research into Near Death Experiences, we might collectively not have so much angst about dying. While I am not inclined to hurry it along, I have to say that I'm actually looking forward to my big day with some anticipation.
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Let us know how it turns out. Will ya?
 
Hello Dame Warrigal. What you talk about in the first post got me curious. My father died in his seventies of a heart attack. My mother then lived alone till in her late 80's. When she got too sick to take care of herself my sister helped her to find a decent place to live and get full time care and even some of the simpler medical helps. Her doctor would come and visit when possible, maybe on a scheduled visit for checking health. Serious things required a hospital trip till better. She paid nothing as our Social Security system covered the bills for her and she was even given a set number of dollars each week for personal things she wanted or whatever.

This was set up for low income folks so for her to become low income she had to surrender all her money and any bank accounts and properties, if she had any. From then on she was well kept and had no worries for pocket money as the home always gave her some for herself to use or save for a holiday.

Being you are Australian I don't think you folks have been given that type of shelter for old age. For my mother she had to surrender her property and accounts. For others I saw when I went to visit her I saw some that were in the local poor group of folks that seldom worked, live in a shanty down by the city dump, were always known to be beggars. So in our system the well to do, so so wealthy, or dirt poor could end up in the same, well fed, clean, and medically tended till they did die. Mother died at about 97, I think. All this done by private money, no government involved except with the SS stuff.
 
I don't see the problem. If a person wishes to leave this world, there are many comfortable ways of accomplishing it, and without pain. But I don't think we owe it to anyone. Children are not obligated to care for their parent, and many don't. I don't think the government has any right to make this kind of decisions for us. They'll just have to find another way to pay off the national debt.
 
BobF said:
Hello Dame Warrigal. What you talk about in the first post got me curious. My father died in his seventies of a heart attack. My mother then lived alone till in her late 80's. When she got too sick to take care of herself my sister helped her to find a decent place to live and get full time care and even some of the simpler medical helps. Her doctor would come and visit when possible, maybe on a scheduled visit for checking health. Serious things required a hospital trip till better. She paid nothing as our Social Security system covered the bills for her and she was even given a set number of dollars each week for personal things she wanted or whatever.

This was set up for low income folks so for her to become low income she had to surrender all her money and any bank accounts and properties, if she had any. From then on she was well kept and had no worries for pocket money as the home always gave her some for herself to use or save for a holiday.

Being you are Australian I don't think you folks have been given that type of shelter for old age. For my mother she had to surrender her property and accounts. For others I saw when I went to visit her I saw some that were in the local poor group of folks that seldom worked, live in a shanty down by the city dump, were always known to be beggars. So in our system the well to do, so so wealthy, or dirt poor could end up in the same, well fed, clean, and medically tended till they did die. Mother died at about 97, I think. All this done by private money, no government involved except with the SS stuff.
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It is the same over here, Bobf. Aged care is very good now and well funded. The better off pay out of their means and the people without assets are funded out of their pensions with enough left over for pocket money. There is a lot of subsidised in-home assistance available too. I have an aunt, now 94, who is living in an aged care facility in Wellington NSW and it is a not for profit home run by the Returned Services League. She is comfortably well off and very happy there. My cousin, her niece, looks after her finances and lives in her home at Bathurst. Apart from an accommodation bond she is not obliged to turn over all of her income and assets to the home.

Nationally, aged care is very well regulated.
 
The smart ones here will sell their property first, then apportion as much as they can, before committing to these private shelter places for care. My mother had sold the house after dad died and lived in a retire home for those with mobility. When she became unable to get herself around she went to this other place and got accepted. So all they got from her were the check book account and her slim savings. I don't know how much that was but it was less than a bunch. Our family was not rich, but they always paid the bills on time and made sure the home was paid for before dad retired. Kind of the way I have been living too. After I was laid off into an early retirement situation I found several ways to get short term jobs and pretty much put all I earned into paying down the home. After the kids went to college or military we did sell the home and moved south to southern Colorado. Now we live in Arizona to avoid the high altitude in much of Colorado. Hopefully I am planning on doing something similar so if I do something like live too long and become handicapped I will be able to go into a care home with only what I have as my portion of the wife and I fortune, sounds good doesn't it, and the rest goes from any Social Security moneys due to me. Then the wife will be able to do the same with her life too.

And good to hear that your system is working well too.
 
Hey, we've already made it easy to throw away babies that mess up our cushy lives, lets throw away all the old people too, how bout the mentally disabled, let's trash them too, oh yeah, and those with too big a nose, we can't have that, oh yeah, too fat of people, they eat too much take up way too much space, and the skinny people oh yeah, they are just too sickly to look at. Hey crap, think of the dough we could all have if we didn't spend it on cancer patients, discard the "imperfect". Geesh, that ought to leave about zero people on Earth, just as it should be if they are going to think this way. How freakin sad, wish I hadn't even got on here today.
 
Denise, read the link in my OP to hear the reasons why even having right to die might soon become a duty to die. It's a counter argument to the current debate about assisted suicide. I found the illustration of pre WW II German public opinion very interesting.
 
Sid said:
Let us know how it turns out. Will ya?
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You'll get the opportunity to find out Sid without any help at all.

On the other hand, if you're the sort of person I am, curious, curious, curious, all it takes is for someone to mention the 'right thing', and you start off on a bit of a research tangent. That's how I came to understand a little more of the logistics of 'after death life' and I have to say, it's been a wonderful release from that age-old human fear of death. No end, just a change.
 
I personally feel very strongly that no one has the right (or ability, for that matter) to judge whether another person has the right to continue living or not. Sounds very Nazi-like to me, to decide that anyone or any group, whether defined by age, race, religion or anything else, has no right to continue living . . . . and I think it is very dangerous thinking.
 
Not much to add to this thread, think you guys have got it all covered.................but did'nt I read somewhere that ancient Indians used to put old folk out in the cold of winter to die when they were of no more use............or was that a movie?. Think we have moved on a bit?
 

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