[quote=@Odin] Claiming all suicide is bad is just willfully ignorant. [/quote] There's some [b]good[/b] suicide? How exactly does one define that? It's literally dying from lack of any hope. <.< Spin that into a positive. Because everything you said, didn't make that case. I already made things debunking those ideas presented. So I won't repeat myself. [hider=“Pain Can Be Alleviated” Argument] In medicine, we talk much these days about a “good death,” not necessarily one that is completely free of suffering, but a dying process in which we are attendant to pain and symptom management, optimize clear decision making, and affirm the whole person in as dignified a manner as possible. Importantly, this can often be effectively accomplished through incorporation of palliative care services. Palliative care is a healing act adjusted to the good possible even in the face of the realities of an incurable illness. Cure may be futile but care is never futile (Pellegrino 2001). With appropriate utilization of palliative care, far fewer patients would be driven by fear to request that physicians actively end their lives via PAS/E. Proponents of assisted suicide and euthanasia posit the scenario of uncontrollable pain as a straw man for advancing their cause. Such proponents apparently view death as the ultimate analgesic. In fact, in medical practice today, pain relief is almost always possible given modern therapeutics in analgesia and the medical specialty of pain management. Since pain can be alleviated, there is no basis to assert a need for PAS because of intractable pain. This may explain in part why many requests for PAS are no longer related to or initiated because of intolerable pain, but because of fear of such intolerable pain. Further, closely related to a patient's fear of intolerable pain, and sometimes associated with a patient's fear of being abandoned (Coyle 2004), is a patient's request for PAS because of not wanting to burden others. This too poses a curious contradiction, for on the one hand there is not wanting to be a burden on a loved one, and on the other hand a fear of being alone and abandoned. Such a contradiction, once considered and coupled with the fact that pain can be addressed successfully through optimal palliative care implementation, enhances the power of this argument against PAS/E. The Oregon law was enacted on the basis of intolerable pain — no one should be forced to endure pain that is uncontrollable and unendurable. Most of us can sympathize with that, but the law is not restricted to pain, and it is not pain that is the top reason people choose physician-assisted suicide in Oregon. The state's “Death with Dignity Act Annual Report” for 2014 shows that the top reason is “losing autonomy” (Oregon Public Health Division 2015, 5). Concern about pain was not even the second or third reason: “Less able to engage in activities making life enjoyable” and “Loss of dignity.” It was ranked sixth out of seven, above only financial concerns, and included not only “inadequate pain control,” but also “concern about it.” These patients were not necessarily in uncontrollable pain themselves, however they were concerned about it (as are we all). But even that concern did not rank high on their list of reasons that they wanted to commit suicide. Even if the line drawn is unbearable pain, how can that be restricted to only physical pain? Who can judge that mental anguish is not unbearable pain? Or that economic distress (or anything else that causes anguish) is not unbearable pain? [/hider] I feel like you attempted to put in a contrary opinion, but failed to make a comprehensible case. What you MEANT was, "claiming all suicide isn't viable (meaning something that wouldn't necessarily be a pleasant or good choice, but something that solves a problem.) insert thing here" That's still wrong, as I pointed out. Unless like Penny, you love the idea of rising suicide rates among demographics.