Time’s up for status quo on assisted dying
It makes no sense to preserve a law that waits for a patient to die before deciding whether they were pressured into it
Continue with the system as it is – many a Granny’s aided over that edge in the final day or three with a bolus of heroin – and everyone who does that is at least potentially chargeable with murder. It’s then up to 12 good and true to decide.
We already have assisted dying. Along with a fairly strict limitation upon it.
“We already have assisted dying. Along with a fairly strict limitation upon it”.
Where did that limitation disappear to during covid Tim?
Speaking as someone who, according to all the doctors, had six months to live after contracting, as Steve succinctly put it, Hitlerpox. I’m not in favour of it. The prognosis was 34 years ago…
The invention of monoclonal antibodies made the difference and I don’t think even the Fink can be that prescient.
The NHS almost certainly killed my mum earlier this year woth opiates. We decided not to make a fuss because she was very old and very ill and it would not have helped anyone.
If someone complains and the medics concerned are caught, then that is their bad luck.
BUT ding it to someone like Grist as above us immoral and wrong.
Assisted dying enshrined in law is simething to which I am 8mplacably opposed.
A prophesy and a question.
I see the first steps towards “Logans Run”
And how does agreeing to assisted suicide affect a Life Insurance policy?
I love the evidence that you can, with an effort, prolong your own life. The spike in deaths in the first two weeks of 2000, or the date of the deaths of Adams and Washington. I’d bet big sterlings that if you raised IHT thresholds from April 2025, there’d be a reduction in death rate in the March, even allowing for fiddling. Maybe Granny isn’t dead yet because she doesn’t want to be dead yet. Current system good. Just abolish pensioner triple lock and bus passes if cost is a concern.
Along with the o/d of morphine the NHS also withdraws fluids. Assisted dying? Accelerated demise? Murder?
Maybe it’s just me. I keep hoping that the papers won’t be promoting Hell on Earth today, but each time I am disappointed. Is that the definition of insanity?
If I were terminally ill I would like the chance to control my own death and ensure it was as dignified and painless as possible. I would both want and need medical assistance to do this. I think this is a perfectly reasonable desire and that the law should not prevent me making such an arrangement
He’s taking about two things, both of which are wrong: suicide, and turning doctors and nurses and the grand machinery of the NHS, with all the frightening apparatus of State compulsion baked in, into a National Suicide Service.
Not wanting to die in pain is a normal human desire. I hope Danny Finkelstein has a long and healthy life and dies peacefully in his sleep aged 120 surrounded by beautiful crying granddaughters.
Giving the power of death to people who, only five minutes ago, were part of the government’s programme of naked menaces and outrageous lies against people who had reservations about the Covid jabs, is not a normal or healthy desire.
DanFink spends much of the rest of his article talking about what happens if greedy relatives want to bump off granny. I’m more concerned about what happens when the NHS decides to kill granny. The British health authorities deliberately put vulnerable pensioners in harm’s way when Covid broke out, and left them to die in care homes.
As a “useless white male” I don’t want to give people who think I’m a “useless white male” the ability to decide that I’ve lived too long and am costing the NHS too much money.
But most importantly of all, your life is the only thing you own. While we have the ability to end it all – a man kills himself in the UK every two hours on average – I’d rather we tried to keep people alive instead. Because life is good and death is not. “Just kill yourself, lol” is the kind of thing demons tell you when you’re standing on a bridge, alone in the night. It’s better when that little girl’s Daddy comes home instead.
We – the good guys – need to
Grist – May the LORD bless you and keep you.
My mother was given less than a year to live by the NHS, cancer. That was over a decade ago. She has several more grandchildren now. I wouldn’t like people like her to be talked into giving up by an NHS death consultant.
You have to carry the fire.
I dont know how to.
Yes you do.
Is it real? The fire?
Yes it is.
Where is it? I dont know where it is.
Yes you do. It’s inside you. It was always there. I can see it.
Just take me with you. Please.
I cant.
Please, Papa.
I cant. I cant hold my son dead in my arms. I thought I could but I cant.
*need to help people and not hurt them.
Y’know, do no harm.
It’s the notion of dying with dignity that gets my goat. There are various human functions that we share with other mammals and indeed wider creation and many of them are pretty undignified which is why generally refrain from performing them in the public eye to hide the indignity.
The infirmities of old age or advanced illness are not dignified nor is the process of putting an end to them.
He’s taking about two things, both of which are wrong: suicide, and turning doctors and nurses and the grand machinery of the NHS, into a National Suicide Service.
OK Steve. Do want to start by explaining why suicide is wrong? Apart from wrong in your opinion or your eff’in deity’s. Do you want to tell us who loses out by someone suiciding? It can’t be the subject. They’re dead.
Or is it as usual all about me, me, me, me,me, me, me, me,me, me, me, me….
You see I see the grannie’s last three days thing horrific. You don’t allow people a choice until they’re incapable of making a choice. Then you do the choosing for them. Utter CVNTS!
Hullo BiS – OK Steve. Do want to start by explaining why suicide is wrong?
Because life is good and death is not. That’s why we have laws against homicide but not against giving birth.
Apart from wrong in your opinion or your eff’in deity’s
I can’t separate God from this because I know God is real for a fact. Realer than me or you. I know that annoys you, but I’d be lying to you if I said otherwise. You might want to get shriven.
I think you’re (inadvertently) making a great point tho. It’s not possible to be good without God. God is what is good. Trying to construct a system of morality divorced from Christianity is a fool’s errand. Without God, we might as well be beasts, who do what they wilt and nothing else.
Do you want to tell us who loses out by someone suiciding?
Yes. I was talking to a little girl recently, her Dad tried to kill himself. He didn’t succeed, thankfully. That little girl still has a Daddy because he didn’t commit suicide. You know how precocious girls are, she understood exactly what was going on, and told me about it. But I don’t think she would ever have understood if her father was dead by his own hand, before she was old enough to go to the big school.
You might think less of me for it, but as soon as I could I went somewhere quiet to cry my eyes out.
Or is it as usual all about me, me, me, me,me, me, me, me,me, me, me, me….
Isn’t that you? I don’t live for me, it would be easier to kill myself. People kill themselves because they want the pain to stop. But life without pain is impossible.
Do you remember how there used to be a lot more people with Down Syndrome? Most of them are aborted these days. If we go down this path, the mentally ill will be the next group to be euthanised. Mental illness can happen to anybody. It’s frightening how many children at secondary school now have mental health problems. Is that what we want?
We think the dying person should choose his hour of death.
We delude ourselves. It’ll be the doctors and the relatives.
But in the end it will be the government.
Fuck that.
https://www.thetimes.com/article/die-with-dignity-no-hope-h2jqq50rwbr
I wrote this over twenty years ago, commissioned by Danny F himself. Obviously, not persuasive enough.
Peter – do you happen to have a link that isn’t paywalled? I would like to read your thoughts.
Steve, your g*od is a figment of your imagination. Don’t impose your imagination on me.
*Figments of imagination don’t rate capital letters.
BiS – I’m really not that imaginative.
The problem with government assisted suicide is that what is now permitted will become mandatory if that is more convenient for the government. There was an example of this in Canada, where a woman with breast cancer was told that her treatment was ‘too expensive’ so she was offered MAID instead. She was able to reject this now, but it is unlikely that future patients will have that choice.
(Anyone remember the walk-in suicide centers in “Soylent Green”?)
– “It’s then up to 12 good and true to decide.”
That’s a problem. In a society with the rule of law, it is essential that people know in advance whether their action is legal or illegal. This is usually framed as a matter of human rights, but it’s just as much a huge advantage to society: if you want people to do something (or refrain from doing something) ther first and most basic step is to make your wishes clear. If they don’t know what you want them to do, how can you expect them to do what you want?
@Steve – “Trying to construct a system of morality divorced from Christianity is a fool’s errand”
Have you so little knowledge of history that you can think that Christianity is moral?
@ZT – “The problem with government assisted suicide is that what is now permitted will become mandatory”
What makes you think it’s not already mandatory? There are very many stories from people who make it quite clear that some relative of theirs was killed by medics in an attempt to provide a merciful relief for the patient through death. All that we need is to change things so that it is the patient themselves who gets to choose and that it is done openly so it can be questioned and supervised.
Steve, sorry I don’t have the full article anywhere. It’s basically a defence of the status quo.