Please don't be offended by this question!
Why is one illegal and the other legal?
I have nothing but respect for most hospice nurses & personnel. I've worked in healthcare for 30 years & have seen unbearable suffering.
Once a person is in the end stage of the dying process or unable to tolerate their suffering, I think it would be kinder to offer them a quicker option than the sedation. This way it is clear: you are going to die very soon. Not we are keeping you comfortable & let's see how long this can go on. No food, no water, we will sponge your lips & you go back to sleep. How do we know the patient isn't suffering through this? That their pain is alleviated? That they're not scared or riddled with anxiety?
Why is hospice considered to be superior to assisted suicide?
Any opinion is welcome!
Thanks in advance.
The line gets blurred by giving high dose opioids and sedatives around the clock, which probably is going to accumulate in someone ill and/or elderly and poorly metabolizing, which is the default for some hospice protocols. I think you have to pick a hospice that lets you stay in charge. I did not let them do that to my mom, but I was glad there was morphine available at the very end when she was having a really bad angina attack and was really in distress...
I also am on the side of NotDeadYet.org and others who fear, rightfully, that legal euthanasia would become a recommendation for people that healthcare economists if not doctors and nurses find bothersome or burdensome, or just think have a poor QOL evenb though the person themself might rate their QOL as pretty good - lets face it, funerals are way cheaper than critical care stays or cancer care and there will be pressure on people to just get it over with. There was a horrible case in Oregon not too many years ago where a young woman was denied an "experimental' cancer drug (it wasn't - good literature indicated it had a strong chance of working) but received a note in the mail that assisted suicide would be covered due to the new law.
i dont mean to sound bitter but ive worked for the public for 25 years and i will turn and run from most professing christians . everything that comes out of their lips has some kind of self serving spin to it .
I think it shifts the focus from what is happening with the patient to what, exactly, the people caring for the patient are doing. Are they, or are they not, killing the person? To be guilty of murder, you have to act with intent, knowing that your action will kill. If you do so to relieve suffering, the intent may have a merciful motivation but it is still intent to kill, therefore still murder.
Where it gets really interesting is the question of whether sedation, by suppressing respiration and other functions, hastens the death of the patient. If you relieve somebody's symptoms using a technique which you know will shorten your patient's life, how do you justify that?
We justify these things on pragmatic grounds, on grounds of expediency, on grounds of what we expect suffering human beings to tolerate. So do I! - so would I! - I'm not accusing anyone of anything.
At the moment in the UK we've got growing momentum behind legislation to protect people from prosecution in cases of assisted suicide. It hasn't happened yet, I don't suppose it will any time soon. For what it's worth, I'm against changing the law. I feel that if people act under duress, and out of humane pity, to help another to end his life, then let them tell a jury so, and let a jury acquit them; but they must still be held to account by the criminal law. Once the law permits assisted suicide, people will stop examining what exactly has gone on and euthanasia will slowly cease to be voluntary.
There is a case for that too, of course; only far fewer people are willing to make it!
For instance, my mom takes insulin along with a pill for diabetes, a cholesterol drug, a BP drug, and anti psychotics, along with stuff to make her sleep. She's also on a strict diet, no potassium, no fat, no carbohydrates, etc., etc. All that keeps her body alive. However, her brain is not functioning.
I've been told by the psychiatrists that I should start thinking about quality of life versus quantity, which to me, sounds a lot like assisting in her death. But the reality is it means just allowing her to die as she normally would without the drugs.
At least, that's what it means to me. Am I withholding drugs?
No. I don't feel it's my place to do so.
That's just me. She's not in pain either physically or mentally (at least she says absolutely nothing about it, although I see she can't see, hear, or get into bed by herself). I'm starting to allow the sweets she wants because I'm beginning to think that at her age, 91, she should be able to have something half way decent to eat that would make her happy.
Am I happy?
Nope. But it's the trade-off for taking her into my home.
Also, explain Hospice very nicely.
http://hospicefoundation.org/End-of-Life-Support-and-Resources/Coping-with-Terminal-Illness/Hospice-Services
I was wrong in some of my answers in my post. Sorry :(
They have to respect scientific knowledge and share it
They are obliged to treat the sick not over treat them or stop treating them.
They must recognise that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh surgery or drugs.
They must recognise their limits and refer where necessary
They must keep a patients information private
They have to take special care in matters of life and death.
To quote: If it is given me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humility and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God.
They must treat the person not the data about the person
They must act to precent disease
and a couple of others
So theoretically they do have the right knowingly to give medication which will result in a speedier death BUT only if they deem it necessary or appropriate for that individual person and as long as it conforms to the knowledge they have about that person.... I THINK
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