Atheist Ireland Forum

I'm wondering how people here feel about this. I've put it here because religion has a very strong influence over people's view. If it's in the wrong place feel free to move it.

I am appalled at the frankly nonsense statement 'Only God has the right to take a life' which so often pervades a debate on the issue and it clearly influences our current stance on the it, which is just nuts in my mind.

I was wondering where people without the influence of religion stand on the issue.

The forum on the end of like is coming up around now and yesterday's Irish Times editorial covered it without mentioning euthansia! Maybe there's a veiled reference to it at the end where it's possible the speaker mentioned might bring the issue up, otherwise it didn't seem worthy of comment in her editorial, which surprised me. Read it here:

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2009/0914/1224254474633.html

Whereas some weeks ago, Nell McCafferty wrote an excellent piece on it in the Sunday Times, which summed up my opinion quite well. Read it here:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/ireland/article6689290.ece

So where do you stand on the issue?

The CCL is all over this one! The only way is the Vatican way. Who suffers, how long and how much it costs their loved ones, the wishes of those involoved, the drain on resources, whether one or more of the survivors lose jobs, the poverty that might result are all irrelevant and not even considerations.

From Nell McCaffertys article:



Paul Murray of the Irish Hospice Foundation
http://www.eurochaplains.org/enhcc_libr ... 2007-1.pdf


The Irish Catholic http://www.irishcatholic.ie/d5/content/ ... last-rites





http://www.hospice-foundation.ie/index. ... &Itemid=11

I spent the last few months watching someone die. There’s a lot more to it than the person who dies.

I don't think people make these decisions lightly and something I don't think they would be abused or at least a lot. It should definitely be well regulated obviously the scenarios of a teenage kid after having his parents die or a man who just lost a child might be exploring these possibilities. I have empathy for the old British couple (both in their eighties) a few months ago who went over to Switzerland and both took the injection in each others arms on a bed. The wife was terminally ill and the husband just saw only a few years of misery after his wife would die.

I can see why people would perceive wrong here but I simply saw it as his decision. Who does a mans life belong to if not himself?

As far as I'm concerned everyone owns their own life. I've every intention of committing suicide should I think it the optimum option. The older I get the more likely that will be.

It's worth keeping in mind this in mind the state of modern medicine. Thanks to drugs like Warfen and others you can be kept creaking along for years as your physical functions like walking, hearing, mentality, bladder control and eyesight deteriorate to where you can drain family and State for decades. Our politicians in the last few months withdrew free transport to Wharfen clinics for pensioners. They've also ended grants for stair lifts and bathroom renovations.

I'm sorry to hear that. I too watched someone close die slowly in a hopsice and it was horrible. Mind you, it's not nearly a straightforward issue. For example, by the time the person I knew was in a state where they probably would have been better off with an injection, it was too late to ask her her wishes and it have never been discussed prior to her getting ill so it can have grey areas.

Amazingly, I found myself in George Bush's camp in the infamous Maria Schiavo case (although not for the same reasons). I didn't follow it in great detal but late on I read a report which said that the husband initially wanted her to be kept alive. Then some sort of settlement came through and all of a sudden he (who was now re-married or with a new partner) turned around and said, that she had said she wanted to be allowed to die in dignity. It seemed extraordinary that they could just take his word for it. I know there were other reasons, but some of these were disputed by her parents.

Thanks. The whole thing was an eye opener and threw into play things that never seem to be considered when discussing euthanisa. Over the course of months airfares, car hire, petrol driving back and forth to the hospital and hotel rooms near the hospital coming to the end must have topped over €20,000. My brother lost business in New York, my other brothers business may never recover, my nephew was in the middle of applying for his green card and that caused problems for him having to leave the US. My niece and her husband lost a lot of trade in their business they’d built up over a long period (in the US).

And the person who died suffered for the maximum amount of time possible: emaciated, bloated from fluids and eaten by cancer.

Euthanasia is not just about the person who dies, not suffering. Where the choice of euthanasia is there, it also allows them to consider the people around them. In some cases that means they might go a lot happier and with a lot more peace of mind knowing that by choosing to die and shortening the inevitable they make their own death a testament to how much they care for their loved ones.

This article refers to euthanasia statistics from The Netherlands:
http://www.therecord.com/iphone/opinion/article/754856--netherlands-euthanasia-statistics-should-appal-us

I found the article a little brief on facts, only quoting basic figures from one year (1990) and no more. For example, the following comment 'We’re not going to fix the health care system by getting rid of the more difficult cases.' doesn't seem to be fair on the face of what was published as the article doesn't detail anything about the cases involved or statistics around what state the patients were in when euthanised.

I did feel that there was a fairly strong warning message given and I felt that perhaps the intention of the article was to spin some sort of conspiracy and merely serve as a scare-tactic in the argument against euthanasia. However I still found the cold figures a little unnerving. It can be easy to make judgements on case by case basis, as with some instances mentioned in this thread, but I have to admit that I found it slightly harder to digest as pure statistics.

This is a blast from the past!

Like all cases where the religious demand to tread on the rights of others, I expect to see disingenuous and often fallacious arguments from the religious lobby as opposed to honest religious arguments that accurately reflect why they're really in opposition to euthenasia.

This props up from time to time in Australia and the prevailing argument seems to be that the person wanting to avail of voluntary euthenasia might change their mind, given the opportunity to do so (by not being dead). It's a BS argument that fails to consider cases where the person is going to die anyway, but in a lot more pain than would be the case had the option of euthenasia been available.

When it pops up in Ireland, you usually hear from paliative care nurses who insist that euthenasia is not a solution and that we should instead do what we can to make the patient comfortable. The problem is, that for a lot of conditions, that simply isn't possible. You hit a threshold where the required amount of morphine would kill the patient. Not to mention discomforting side effects, such as nausea that come with morphine.

Personally, I don't have any great fear of death. I do however, fear the prospect of spending my final months, weeks or days in agony at the behest of a religious mindset that I don't posess. I very much hope that by the time I find myself in my sick bed, legislation has changed to extend to humans the same level of dignity that we presently extend to animals that are suffering.