[quote=@Odin] NIVEA. Niet invullen voor een ander. That's not what I meant at all. I would've gone into depth about why your analysis (is it yours or did you just copy paste stuff?) on Dutch euthanasia laws was inherently flawed because you don't understand how it actually works but just parrot whatever you read without a second thought or counter-hearing. My late grandfather passed a year ago of Alzheimers. The suffering he went through was not physical - no amount of pain relief medication would've helped him or us. The way he was living was not human-worthy. It sounds morbid but if I had been asked whether we should euthanize him, my answer would've been yes. But that's not how euthanasia works in the Netherlands (contrary to your/popular belief apparently). He himself and only he himself can give the okay to euthanize, and even then it's such a long process that the chance of him being granted the request before his natural death at the hands of this disease would've very slim. [b]I am not bringing this forth as a personal anecdote[/b] - I am using it to show you that pain is not always fixed by pumping more drugs into somebodies body. Something you do not seem to comprehend on a human level also is that when you are in a hospital 24/7, being pumped full of drugs just to perform pain management, you are already in the last stages of your life. Doctors don't move towards pain management at such a level if they haven't already done everything they can for you. But, anyway, getting back to it - you lack the emotional understanding to comprehend what drives people towards these sorts of choices. You sound very ignorant when you say these things without consideration for why these people want to do things like this. You say that people don't even consider 'pain' to be a top priority. Okay, so? So fucking what? If I lost autonomy over my own life I'd probably wanna end it too. I'm sorry, I just don't really feel like sitting in a home for older people for the rest of my life waiting for it all to end. If I lose the ability to do what makes my life enjoyable, I'd probably want my life to end. There is so little to live for at that point. You imposing the idea that pain is the only reason to euthanize is not only ignorant, your attempt to fall back on that same argument isn't really truthful too. If I had a disease that was incurable and made my life into 'stare at a wall simulator 2k17' I'd end it. With or without doctors' help, but preferably with so I can at least die with dignity. And these diseases exist. [/quote] I feel like almost all of that, was saying the exact same thing. But the thing in bold, is what I'll focus on. You may not be trying to just use a personal story to point out sheer lack of evidence on why all the failed suicides is worth the 300 billion dollars in cost and all the negative ramifications of assisted suicide and what it can lead to. All you said, was personal, emotional and nothing factual. I've already pointed out multiple times, I've been suicidal before, so it's just outright disingenuous to say I don't know what it feels like to feel that way. Also the way YOU describe your scenario it sounds like you would push him into suicide with how your talking about it. "The way he was living was not human-worthy" what makes you or anyone decide that? Because that gets into slippery slope argument that leads people to killing people that are disabled. The "thing I parroted" was an argument done by someone who knows what they're talking about and just went through why "dying with dignity" isn't a viable argument. I wasn't imposing that pain was the reason to offing oneself, but you seemed to be. [color=ed1c24]"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?"[/color] The idea that making assisted suicide legal, we somehow only be restricted to "unbearable pain" cases, is naive at best and delusional at worst. You want to make that legal? You're going to have to deal with the oncoming slippery slope that becomes "anyone who pays" maybe even "anyone over 18, because free care." maybe children or teenagers with disabilities. Since I'll never get you to admit, your idea comes from emotion and nothing more. Can I at least grasp what type of suicide is "not bad" to you? You want suicide bombers to have a right to do it? People who jump of bridges and make their deaths public? Just assisted suicide? All suicide should be legalized and judged since all of it should be treated with the same? My point is, you want assisted suicide? You get the transgender communities suicide rate to maybe go up to well over 50%. You get people arguing in favor of killing people with down syndrome, or autism. You get people that die from diseases they were only told they have. Because you're arguing not for defending those that take their own lifes, but that all people should have a right to commit suicide. (and I assume that's what you want, since you're pro-abortion and correctly pointed out this the same, "this is inconvenient for me" so I have the right to eliminate the problem issue.) [hider=The literal physician I'm "parroting"] I am a physician. Part of my job is to help people die in comfort and with dignity. But I do not want to help you, or your daughter, or your uncle commit suicide. You should not want me to. I urge you to oppose physician-assisted suicide: it represents bad ethical reasoning, bad medicine, and bad policy. I am going to concentrate on the first of these lines of argument. Ilora will take up the latter two. We strongly support the right of patients to refuse treatments and believe physicians have a duty to treat pain and other symptoms, even at the risk of hastening death. But empowering physicians to assist patients with suicide is quite another matter—striking at the heart not just of medical ethics, but at the core of ethics itself. That is because the very idea of interpersonal ethics depends upon our mutual recognition of each other's equal independent worth, the value we have simply because we are human. Some would have you believe that morality depends upon equal interests (usually defined by our preferences) and advance utilitarian arguments based on that assumption.4 [color=ed1c24]But which is morally more important, people or their interests? As Aristotle observed, small errors at the beginning of an argument lead to large errors at the end.5 If interests take precedence over people, then assisting the suicide of a patient who has lost interest in living certainly is morally praiseworthy. But it also follows that active euthanasia ought to be permitted. It also follows that the severely demented can be euthanized once they no longer have interests. They can also freely be experimented upon as excellent human “models” for research. It also follows that infanticide ought to be permitted for infants with congenital illness. Many would see these conclusions as frightful, but this is not just a slippery slope. They all follow logically from arguing for assisted suicide on the basis of maximizing personal interests. So if you do not believe in euthanasia for severely disabled children or the demented, you might want to re-think your support for assisted suicide. At least if you want to be consistent.[/color] People often argue that they need assisted suicide to preserve their dignity, but that word has at least two senses. Proponents use the word in an attributed sense to denote the value others confer on them or the value they confer on themselves. But there is a deeper, intrinsic sense of dignity. Human dignity ultimately rests not on a person's interests, but on the value of the person whose interests they are; and the value of the person is infinite. I do not need to ask you what your preferences are to know that you have incalculable worth, simply because you are human. Martin Luther King said that he learned this from his grandmother who told him, “Martin, don't let anybody ever tell you you're not a Somebody” (Baker-Fletcher 1993, 23). This some-bodiness, this intrinsic worth or dignity, was at the heart of the civil rights movement. It does not matter what a person looks like, how productive the person might be, how others view that person, or even how that person may have come to view herself. What matters is that everybody, black or white, healthy or sick, is a somebody. Assisted suicide and euthanasia require us to accept that it is morally permissible to act with the specific intention-in-acting of making a somebody into a nobody, i.e., to make them dead. Intentions, not just outcomes, matter in ethics. Intending that a somebody be turned into a nobody violates the fundamental basis of all of interpersonal ethics—the intrinsic dignity of the human. Our society worships independence, youth, and beauty. Yet we know that illness and aging often bring dependence and disfigurement. The terminally ill, especially, need to be reminded of their value, their intrinsic dignity, at a time of fierce doubt. They need to know that their ultimate value does not depend upon their appearance, productivity, or independence. You see, physician-assisted suicide flips the default switch. The question the terminally ill hear, even if never spoken, is, “You've become a burden to yourself and the rest of us. Why haven't you gotten rid of yourself yet?” A good utilitarian would think this a proper question—even a moral duty. As a physician who cares for dying patients, however, I am more fearful of the burden this question imposes on the many who might otherwise choose to live, than the modest restriction imposed on a few, when physician-assisted suicide is illegal. Assisted suicide should not be necessary. Pain and other symptoms can almost always be alleviated. As evidence, consider that pain or other symptoms rarely come up as reasons for assisted suicide. The top reasons are: fear of being a burden and wanting to be in control (Oregon Public Health Division 2015, 5). You may ask, “Why shouldn't I have this option?” And yet we all realize that society puts many restrictions on individual liberty, and for a variety of reasons: to protect other parties, to promote the common good, and to safeguard the bases of law and morality. For example, we do not permit persons to drive when drunk, or to freely sell themselves into slavery. Paradoxically, in physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia, patients turn the control over to physicians, who assess their eligibility and provide the means. Further, death obliterates all liberty. Therefore, saying that respect for liberty justifies the obliteration of liberty actually undermines the value we place on human freedom. [/hider]