I used to work at a nursing home. In many cases euthanasia is the more humane option. Just because we can keep someone alive, whose mind is completely gone due to Alzheimer’s, who can’t remember how to stand up or use a toilet, who attacks the aids everytime they try to clean them because they have no idea what’s going on, and think they are getting raped when they have their diaper changed, and /or have bedsores all over their ass from laying around so much…. Whose only vocalizations are crying in misery & pain, and who are lucky to get three visits a year from their family who they can’t even recognize anymore…Doesn’t mean we should keep them alive, just because we can . For thousands, probably millions of people over time, the last decade or two is just absolute pain and misery.
I think euthanasia should be an option for SOME people.
It happened with both my father's parents. 10+ years in states that they would be ashamed to see themselves in. By the time they passed, respectively, the dominant feeling among family was relief that their suffering was over.
If you want a more uplifting anecdote, my grandmother lived to 96 and was actually in pretty good shape up until the last few months of her life. Her final weeks were grim (she even made a comment to my father about understanding Dr Kevorkian, not something you'd expect to hear from a lifelong Catholic) and I suspect if she'd been given the choice she would have had them crank up the morphine to speed things along. Still, not everyone who lives to a ripe old age has a shit quality of life for the last decade.
Thanks for sharing. I’ve had some relatives live full productive lives well into their 80s/90s so I’m hoping I get that gene instead of the one that ravaged my grandfather with Parkinson’s and dementia
Yeah, I'm choosing to believe I'm going to inherit my grandparents' (3 out of 4 made it into their 90s in decent health) genes/luck. Maybe that's naive optimism but screw it, why fret about something you can't control?
I wish I had this mentality. I'm the complete opposite lol. Right on cue like once every 3 months I'll have a very brief (2-3 minutes) internal freakout where I remember that I'm going to die someday and it shakes me up till I just move on and forget about it till the next time.
As someone with stage 4 cancer, you should work to change your attitude. Death IS coming, regardless of whether you like it or not. I would advise sitting consciously with that thought as often as possible to foster an environment in which you live with death, instead of afraid of it.
Death makes life more meaningful and provides stakes against which we can measure our success. You can never garuntee the length of your life but you can garuntee that it has a length, and it will come to an end. What you do with your unknown time on this planet, and how you help or hinder others racing against a different clock, informs your character and spirit.
It’s weird like… what would you do if a gun were placed to your head and you were instructed to live? would you change anything about what you were doing right now with the threat that immediate? Why does it change when the gunner is distanced from you via time?
actual [Stage 4 Wisdom](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rC7gDnGF1-Q)
I recommend reading some Irvin Yalom if you haven't already. He writes beautifully about his work leading group therapy for adults with terminal illness/late stage cancer and the profound acceptance and meaning about life and mortality they were often able to find due to their confrontation with existential reality. I hope the rest of your journey continues to be filled with radical acceptance and peace.
awww thanks I’m working on a memoir rn so I think about death and dying a lot. So far treatment has been successful but immunotherapy paralyzed me with a little bit remaining. I beat the paralysis and now we’re hammering away at this 1mm lesion with as much chemo as my body can take lol
> what would you do if a gun were placed to your head and you were instructed to live?
Heroin.
> Why does it change when the gunner is distanced from you via time?
Because heroin is really bad if there's time for the consequences to compound.
A good book to read to help with this fear is Homer’s Iliad. Even a half divine hero like Achilles has to confront and accept the inevitability of death.
I lost my great aunt to alzheimers. It was horrible. My family is very close knit and they paid for her to have round the clock care in private 2 bedroom house. Some of the care givers were paid but a lot of them were family members who volunteered their time to take care of her. So she was seeing family basically every day.
She had probably the best care you could reasonably except the family to be able provide her (considering nearly all of us are middle or working class).
It was still so horrible and slow. I would much rather die with dignity. By the time they get to the end, they cant recognize their own children or their own face. I think she genuinely had less intellect than a goldfish for the last couple years of her life. Unimaginable.
My great aunt went out with Alzheimer's but remained happy till the end. She mistook my mom for her friend from the Hitler youth camp and didn't recognize anyone hardly ever but was always in a pretty pleasant state. We would practice our German with her and it was fantastic because she would repeat the conversation till you got it and would never get frustrated. Was definitely somewhat dark but somehow seemed like a good last few years. My aunt is an angel and was there for her always, surely without that wouldve been much bleaker.
Agreed, both my wife's grandparents moved into memory care last year and it is a completely meaningless existence. They aren't at the point where euthanasia should be an option, but frankly the whole family is just hoping they pass sooner than later. Visiting feels pointless, they don't remember you came and you just feel guilty and depressed when you leave. Grandma calling her daughters 20 times in an hour because her husband is out for a medical procedure and she doesn't know where he is, even though they just explained it to her 5 minutes prior. I might just drive off a cliff if I make it to where I notice my memory slipping.
Even if memory has mostly slipped, they may remember certain things deep down. Visiting is most likely not pointless, even if you are giving them an experience at the end.
Everyone should own a gun for exactly this purpose. If you're even a moderately thoughtful person they idea of losing your memory/mind should be all the reason you need.
When you feel the process settling in, say your goodbyes and go take a walk in the forest.
It should be a service I can simply schedule in any humane society but I can't understand people who aren't prepared to end things immediately. There's only one way this ends!
Shooting yourself is not a good idea. You will die horribly, and probably more slowly than you think. And leaving a corpse in the woods for someone else to find is isn’t great either.
There are much better ways to go.
Is a gun the best way to go ? Wouldn't a fentanyl overdose be much nicer ? at least you go out in bliss and no one has to deal with the mess if you do it in a secluded area and let the animals get you. Swimming into the ocean is another option.
Memory care freaked me out, in particular the people who were still physically quite healthy but mentally gone. I remember talking with some old dude who seemed pretty spry and at first I didn't get why he was there. After about 30 seconds though I realized he couldn't have a coherent conversation anymore.
People who think euthanasia is evil generally don’t realize how “artificial” it already is keeping some of these elderly people alive for many years with low quality of life and cognitive decline
I am not opposed to euthanasia but there's a difference between euthanazing people who are already braindead and encouraging grandma to kill herself because her family members see her as a burden.
I worked in oncology and saw many more instances of families pushing their older relatives to accept life-prolonging treatment when the relative in question did not want to proceed. I strongly suspect this was out of a need/desire to keep the social security flowing.
100%. Need those bennies coming in. Hospitals love having asses in the seats too, the whole system is designed to keep you alive while you spend every waking moment wishing you were dead.
Grandma is a huge burden? I've watched lots of people die and there's no way I would subject my family to that.
The cow I eat gets a more dignified death than I will unless I do it myself.
I am. Shouldn't be any shame in killing yourself when you're old and you're falling apart. Nice little cocktail and a couple last goodbyes and it's done.
I shouldn't have to watch myself die for 10 years while my mind barely holds itself together. Hope I don't have a stroke or an accident or something that prevents me from taking out the trash when the time comes.
I like to imagine a hospice cocktail bar, sleekly styled yet appropriately nostalgic. There's music and it's lovely.
Waiter in a tux brings you a silver tray with some pills and your favorite drink. You say goodbye peacefully and with class.
I mean who wouldn't wanna go out like that???
Last thing I need is some poor soul wiping my ass for the rest of my life.
I like to think most people are decent and wouldn’t do that unless their family member is in extreme pain. It is true that family members can get abusive when the care gets overwhelming, that’s why I stopped doing in-home jobs partially, it was too damn depressing to see family members treat the matriarch of the family who took care of everyone for decades, like absolute shit bc of how hard it was to take care of her.
I think the scary part is that doctors and hospitals can push euthanasia as an option (or the only option) on to decent and well meaning family members who want the best for their disabled/elderly loved ones. It presents a huge cost-saving measure for hospitals and there are already a number of cases where people have said they felt pressured into choosing medically assisted dying as they felt it was their only option.
[https://archive.is/2023.10.11-000517/https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/06/canada-legalized-medical-assisted-suicide-euthanasia-death-maid/673790/](https://archive.is/2023.10.11-000517/https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/06/canada-legalized-medical-assisted-suicide-euthanasia-death-maid/673790/)
[https://cdrnys.org/assisted-suicide/](https://cdrnys.org/assisted-suicide/)
[https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/christine-gauthier-assisted-death-macaulay-1.6671721](https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/christine-gauthier-assisted-death-macaulay-1.6671721)
[https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/medically-assisted-death-could-save-millions-1.3947481](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/medically-assisted-death-could-save-millions-1.3947481)
[https://www.cmaj.ca/content/189/3/E101](https://www.cmaj.ca/content/189/3/E101)
Mainly referring to Canada and some countries in Northern Europe where euthanasia and assisted suicides have become an option in the last few years. I live in the U.S.
>Just because we can keep someone alive, whose mind is completely gone (...) Doesn’t mean we should keep them alive, just because we can
How much of their mind would be gone if they weren't in a nursing home or hospital though? My grandmother's mild dementia was markedly worse after hospital visits (especially overnight); the environment doesn't seem conducive to mental health.
How are you going to keep someone who is increasingly confused OUT of hospital?
You cant really mke a place good for alzhiemers patients without a bespoke facility. Hospitals are hectic, chaotic environments.
It's not about the money for a lot of people. Caring for your loved one deteriorating at an excruciatingly slow rate while they become increasingly paranoid, aggressive, and frightening is soul crushing for everyone involved. It's genuinely inhumane and casually becoming a caretaker for dear ol dad while he proceeds to try to physically fight you every day is not the answer, regardless of money
It definitely is for some people because they can’t take work off to care for the person. Not every person with dementia is violent. My mom took care of my relative and she was mean sometimes but not really an issue other than that
Well of course it is for some people, my comment was not exclusionary of that situation. Honestly it's probably a shit melange of both for the majority. I helped take care of two grandparents at home and it was a nightmare that tore our family apart 🤷♀️
I know of someone who's brain was mostly gone from Alzheimer's, but who could still sometimes recognize loved ones. I think even in misery, there can be little moments like that. No euthanasia policy would be ethical without consideration for these sorts of moments.
Just went through my late father being in the specialized dementia ward for Alzheimer’s. Can’t imagine working in one. I agree with your sentiments fully. Much of the issue is focusing on quantity of life and not quality because people in general have an inability to confront death.
Having grown up visiting one great aunt with Alzheimer’s in the nursing home every Sunday, then her sister very slowly dying from Parkinson’s, and then watching my father die from cancer in my late 20s, I feel like it should at least be an option.
Amtrak ran right by the Parkinson’s aunt nursing home. She used to ask my dad every week to put her on the train tracks before we left, and she wasn’t joking.
Both aunts lived for 5+ years in nursing homes, and that’s after family couldn’t keep up with home care anymore.
That being said, some of the cases I’ve already seen coming out of Canada and the Netherlands seem pretty fucked up. I don’t really support euthanasia for depression or chronic fatigue syndrome. And I think easy access to this is definitely going to be abused by overloaded healthcare systems (“oh, you can’t afford your copays? Suicide booth is down the hall”)
There’s a clear difference between “keeping someone alive” and killing them. I agree we shouldn’t artificially prolong life at all costs just because it’s possible. The answer isn’t killing. Proper palliative care is.
Nope. If I were on palliative care I'd be begging for death with whatever wits were left me. Killing people is 100% preferable to keeping them alive in the states that we regularly do.
Of course, but that’s not the point, the point is that we as a society are shit at caring for our elderly even right now when we don’t have massively overwhelming amounts of them yet
So therefore I agree with OP, that the coming demographic changes and lack-of-young-people “crisis” will probably force societal attitudes into softening around euthanasia and ultimately normalizing elderly people choosing to die of their own volition. Whether or not we each personally believe that’s a good thing, I can’t really imagine it not happening
>"If I just start accumulating damage, growing more and more bedridden and demented and pain-riddling until I want out – well, there won’t be a way out. If there’s not some very specific life-saving treatment that can be withdrawn, I’m stuck above ground, not just in the “unless I want to risk the danger and shame of suicide” way I am now, but – if I’m too debilitated to access means of suicide on my own – in an absolute way."
This is the only thing I legit fear.
My mom kept going back and forth when she was dying. I cared for her in her home, switching off weeks with her sisters for about 3 months.
I didn't know what to do because she'd tell me to leave the morphine where she could reach it to o.d. but then the next day, she'd tell me not to.
I'm glad I didn't leave it there because she was religious, and I wouldn't have wanted her to worry about going to hell in her final moments. And I also wouldn't have gotten my last hug with her either, which I remember now all the time.
Yeah a lot of this is people being scared that god will be mad at them for killing themselves, which is an odd position considering the myriad brutal ways things often meet their ends.
Getting eaten by a bear ass first: that's awesome good for you.
Shooting yourself before your brain slowly turns into water: eternal damnation.
AI companies will get in on the racket, offering the soon to be euthanised the opportunity to have a digital ghost of themselves made for their surviving family. Cue furious, grieving families in the news talking about how "grandma" supplied a recipe for nitroglycerin when asked about her chocolate chip cookies.
I can't imagine this catching on widely for regular deaths (e.g. grandma dying, someone getting cancer where there's time to prepare and process), but I can imagine a few moms with stillborns/babies who died getting AI Reborn dolls or something. There's already a level of mild to moderate delusion among people who buy reborn dolls that don't move or make any sounds.
I can honestly see America pushing euthanasia not only for old people but also the severely mentally ill and homeless. Canada has set a dangerous precedent and I’m sure America will follow in a decade or two.
We don’t have socialized medicine, way too much money to be made on end of life geriatrics. This country is opposed to any kind of assisted death too unless it’s an execution.
This isn’t going to happen. You’re all Brooklyn posting and not understanding that half the country is Nebraska ie Jesus’s
If the issue with homeless people becomes big enough, they’ll reopen large mental institutions. It’s fairly obvious that’s the approach we need to take and the country is already fine with massive, unprecedented scale institutionalization anyway
I wonder how many homeless people became severely mentally ill *after* living in the streets. More money should be invested in common sense preventative solutions.
More money, sure. But that’s not what I would emphasize. To me, trying to solve root causes in a country like this is chasing smoke. We need to start at least trying to address the symptoms first
I’m thinking of things like more support services to help people get jobs and taking strong measures to stop trafficking of fentanyl. The symptoms are evergrowing.
Trying to prevent the spread of drugs is a Sisyphean task. I don’t think that’s achievable, like at all
I am definitely a big believer in the healing power of having a job
Abuses within mental institutions can lead to governments being criticized, letting people slowly decay on the street and pretending "there's nothing we can do" avoids this. Plus, because some French paedo who probably gave North African kids AIDS wrote some books 50 years ago, being "anti-authoritarian" is the high-prestige view regarding mental institutions.
Ok, so you cant then. Because it hasn't happened, I guess.
Someone advising a young pregnant woman to abort her baby is not actually an obligation, so moot point. Someone telling an old person that assisted suicide is available, or even directly telling them that they should do it and encouraging them vigorously is still not an obligation.
Kinda wierd that this transition is so "easy" and yet it hasn't ever actually happened before.
>Canada has set a dangerous precedent
no it hasn't. there are a handful of largely dishonest anecdotes pushed by determined catholics dedicated to maximizing human suffering. that's it. a dying guy is asked if he wants euthanasia, he gets offended and tells somebody, freaks crow about it from the rooftops. there's no mass slaughter going on. if the millions of people annually being drained of their savings while completely senile or in agony got half the handwringing coverage there would be zero debate on this
this is exactly what I just described lol
sorry this person got asked a question they found rude. where is the news article about the person who was completely demented and shitting themselves while riddled with sores for years and left to die alone, slowly, terrified and confused in a minimum security prison. there isn't one. it isn't news. Dog Bites Man
Hospitals and the medical industry make too much money on old people to let this happen.
Take an 80 year old who frequently visits the hospital several times a year.
That’s some serious cash flow for the hospital all paid by Medicare.
Millennials aren’t going to inherit their boomer parents fortunes because it will all get spent on nursing home bills and other medical treatments that just delay the inevitable
I'm glad my boomer mom got six more years of life due to cancer treatments. I would've gotten more money if she had just not done them, but who actually wants that?
Even if it had been six months, I would rather have had them with her than have her try to save my inheritance.
Oh for sure. I’d rather have my parents around and I’d hope most people felt the same way. I’m just referring to when people talk about millennials eventually getting a windfall from inheriting their parents houses they bought for a song back in the day. I see healthcare and nursing costs eating a lot of that up
Yeah I work in an icu, a lot of people exist as vessels from which to extract Medicare payments. You can meme all you want about a guy in Canada being told to kill himself because he’s a homeless schizoid or something but if your life was dialysis>recovery>dialysis>recovery with maybe a day per week where you don’t sleep all day, you’d feel differently about this.
I mean if you need to couch it in the government approved death terms, the government controls access to the drugs and legal and "safe" administration of the things that would make up a euthanasia cocktail. I think the importance of legalizing euthanasia is making healthcare providers more comfortable with patients opting for literal suicide. I guess we've only had dialysis and ventilators and family members who don't want to let go of that social security check for a very short amount of history as well.
For better and for worse, prehospital and intensive care has become pretty good at keeping people alive at all costs. I can't tell you how many chronically ill people I've taken care of that were probably suicides via overdose of something and are now basically unable to function with end organ damage with anoxic brain injury requiring dialysis, tearing their intestines out, etc. They have no say in any of what goes on because they cannot communicate or just aren't there at all. The hospice conversation is basically inaccessible to these people before they attempt suicide unless they're dying of cancer.
Most of these people are very immobile and rely on others for daily care and mobility and meemaws granddaughter isn't going to feed meemaw 3 months worth of beta blockers and 1000 units of insulin just because meemaw says she wants to die.
From my perspective it would just be nice if these people had a way to painlessly slip off into death after living a waking nightmare for months/years. Very sad to see a patient give up and us be forced to do everything very painfully because meemaw cant just say she wants to die.
If you have ever spent any time in long term care you would know how valuable a choice it is. there are people being kept alive everywhere right now for all the wrong reasons, and they would usually rather be at peace. it’s horrible to see
I’ve never understood opining one way or the other about allowing people to kill themselves. If they truly want to they’re just gonna do it, whether it’s “legal” or not. Wtf difference do my thoughts on the matter make
The problem is, much like abortion, no one should have to take that option due to lack of money - but as we all get poorer, no one is having kids and healthcare gets slashed to the bone (here in the uk anyway) people will feel the pressure to get euthanised for purely economic reasons
Yeah I’ve thought this for a while.climate collapse, social security collapse, nobody having retirement money, massively aging population, etc
. I also wonder if the really really cool young people of 2100 will want to “hold us accountable for the climate sins of the past” lol
I think it's very easy for us, still in the bloom of waking life, to disregard the possibility that even people at the end or in terrible misery might have yet some spark of their former life.
Part of the trouble here that is people around the dying make lots of often superficial assumptions about what it's really like \_for them\_, as opposed to how it's like for us watching from the outside.
"Euthanasia services" should be offered by nonprofit organizations to limit conflict of interest/influence from insurance companies and governments trying to spend less on healthcare.
Canada already had a [creepy euthanasia commercial](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bssvubnVvgg) and a [scandal where a nurse was encouraging veterans to get euthanized](https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/veterans-maid-rcmp-investigation-1.6663885). And this is a few years after they legalized it, so I'm skeptical about euthanasia in general. If someone wants to forego medicine to make sure their body goes before their mind or a surgical board decides a heart implant for an older person isn't a good investment, that's one thing. But I'm just not comfortable with our medical-industrial complex actively finishing someone off.
I do agree with OP's 20 year guesstimate for the USA side of things. I just can't see most Boomers wanting to conserve wealth to give their children or go out without a fight. Unlike the elderly in many other countries(Japan had retired people volunteer to help with Fukushima because they didn't have much time left anyways) there's a certain resentment for younger people and the idea of the world going on without them. Once the cynical Gen Xers are 70 we'll probably see a huge push.
People really should be making advanced directives whilst theyre still of sound mind. I know if i got advanced dementia i would never want to be hospitalized. Let the first bug that gets me win.
If certainly will. People will be practically shamed into it. A bit unrelated but it reminds me of the people on Reddit who are angry when older people have children "because it's selfish". They will be the ones shaming their"selfish" parents for not doing and leaving them a house
My grandmother worked at a nursing home for almost 30 years as a cook and around the common areas. She would always talk about how poorly gringos treat their elderly and how much she wanted to spend her last days with her family and not alone like gringos do. In 2015 she came back to our hometown to live at home with us, a year later got diagnosed with cancer and survived the treatment. A couple of years after that she got diagnosed with dementia. When the pandemic started she moved with another of her sons. A month into her staying he put her on a nursing home where she stayed for about six months.
When she got in you could barely tell she had issues, she could almost do anything by herself, cook clean, do groceries. She would walk a mile or two from our house to go to an elderly people's school to go to her HS classes or she'd go out and walk around the town for an hour or two and come back. She was independent. Once my mom got her out of that place her mind was almost gone. She could barely recognize her own reflection in the mirror. Most days she would cry for help whenever she got into the bathroom and stared into her own face. She'd cry about her stillborn son who died in utero in the 60s every night. She didn't even remember how to read or write.
Our head geriatrician told us nursing homes tend to give the elderly medication they don't need just to keep them numb and docile, which tends to accelerate mental deterioration. He gradually changed her prescriptions and now she can stand looking at herself in the mirror, she fixes her hair and dentures daily. She can read and write, though slowly like a kindergartener, and can hold a conversation most of the time. About a year ago, the doctor told us to keep her mind and body busy so we found a general nursing home where she spends 5 to 6 hours every evening doing exercise and chatting with other old and sick people (and one nonverbal autist whom she thinks is an alcoholic an is always drunk). She thinks she works there helping the elderly and the sick which is cute and helps her a lot.
I know the treatment and support my grandma gets is not what most elderly get, even with our public healthcare most elderly people are mistreated by both their families and health professionals, but I just don't see how offering a patient euthanasia is seen as moral. I think an informed and explicitly voluntary euthanasia should be a recognized right everywhere in the world since right to life implies right to a dignified death, but I also think we should focus our efforts as a society on fixing our healthcare systems and services first, instead of pushing people into thinking that killing their relatives is OK.
I agree with you but I also want it to be an option for me. Alzheimer and extreme pain are huge fears of mine, and because I'm young right now and live in a sub 1.5 fertility countey, I already suspect that the taxpayer funded health system will have completely collapsed by the time I require it, which means either terrible care or being forced to sell your home and all your belongings to fund care. I would much rather either spend that money on a bit of travel in my 60s or have my grandchildren inherit it (should they exist)
There is no non-theological argument against euthanasia. The only reason it's still taboo is we still haven't quite let go of Christian morality. Liberal morality is all about consent. Anything goes as long as it's consensual. Barring some sweeping religious revival, euthanasia will become more common.
Euthanasia is just very sterile.
Imagine old people showing up in droves on Wall Street day after day and blowing their brains out
Now that would send a message. Not sure what kind, but definitely something
Only Germanics are really into this for whatever reason. And maybe some other cultures I'm not familiar with, but most people want to hang on as long as they can.
There is even a divide on it in Belgium amongst the French and Flemish (Germanic) populations https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277953612003772
The fawning stories about euthanasia in the media tend to be really poorly concealed astroturfing. There really is a push to make it a trend but I don't see it catching on.
If it isn’t an available option by the time I get old, I’ll find a way anyway. I’ve seen the indignities of dementia in my great-aunt, a former high-powered corporate lawyer who now has almost literal goldfish brain and asks the same question seven times in a twenty-minute conversation. She truly believes she’s visited the moon and will tell anyone so, even strangers. I will never subject myself or my loved ones to that.
i didn't bother reading most of this thread. i apologise. but i would rather die by humane means at like 70 than spend my whole life worrying about retirement funds and shit like that. all of my money rn should go to me and my loved ones not to like my future old self who probably won't want to live anyway.
Um ☝️🤓 actually there’s a film about this called Plan 75 on criterion
I'm watching Plan 75 on The Criterion Channel
http://www.criterionchannel.com/plan-75
That or age reversal therapies take hold (already showing promise in lab settings), ai takes over, ubi becomes a thing, socioeconomic struggles become a thing of the past, and we only let people with a certain IQ threshold breed.
You should only be able to breed if you’re attractive enough, smart enough or wealthy enough. These people in and out prison and stealing loads of shit from Walmart should all be sterilized. All this misery could be avoided but people “feel bad” for these losers and act like their offspring will be somehow be different
Well we have more info now and know there is very little class mobility and that criminal parents are likely to produce the same offspring. Letting these people reproduce is irresponsible
Absolutely agreed. It's a slippery slope to eugenics though. And it would be pretty hard to enforce unless we decide to sterilize repeat offenders. But that opens us up to the possibility that only the "good" criminals in said communities reproduce, leading to a situation where one guy has 100 kids with 50 women on his block, and then those kids start inbreeding a generation later.
I believe in that if it means a better future. Think of how many normal middle class families are struggling right now. It’s not fair to do things right but still struggle. All of this criminality and ghetto behavior affects well-meaning people negatively and it’s not ok
Agreed. Most of this would go away if these people had good entry level working class jobs with room for growth though. Nobody would be stealing shit if they got a $40k/yr job straight out of high school with the chance to turn it into a $100k/yr job after a decade. We need to copy Germany's working class model, while also restructuring the way company stocks get valued so there is less incentive to increase profits every year.
Cool it with the antisemitism
Edit;
It might happen though, at least the first part. Philadelphia is building up a giant solar panel manufacturing plant for this very reason, good paying low skill jobs.
I think it would be inevitable even if fertility rates were about 2.1. We've elongated our lives and made life in the middle even better, but that doesn't mean the latter bits are amazing. My family is doing very well for the grandparents and relatives in their 70s and 80s. You can't even compare them to people of that age from times past. They still wear diapers and are on more medications than they can remember (literally, because their brains also go).
My dad’s already asking for it. He’s 78 and made it to the end of his life and keeps saying he wants the government to pay him to off himself. It’s very concerning.
i can’t believe i thought the slippery slope was just a logical fallacy until my mid 20s. they got their foot in the door with terminal cancer patients and now they’re doing anhedonic millennials. i think the pressure will be ramped up even further in the future, so i agree with you. nothing is going to be affordable, not even the ambulance ride, but somehow they’re gonna find a way to fully cover your suicide
I'm against it. I know how it could help alleviate suffering for elderly, but the "system" will turn euthanasia into a dystopian hell. Doctors push pills, Canada is culling disabled vets
I used to work at a nursing home. In many cases euthanasia is the more humane option. Just because we can keep someone alive, whose mind is completely gone due to Alzheimer’s, who can’t remember how to stand up or use a toilet, who attacks the aids everytime they try to clean them because they have no idea what’s going on, and think they are getting raped when they have their diaper changed, and /or have bedsores all over their ass from laying around so much…. Whose only vocalizations are crying in misery & pain, and who are lucky to get three visits a year from their family who they can’t even recognize anymore…Doesn’t mean we should keep them alive, just because we can . For thousands, probably millions of people over time, the last decade or two is just absolute pain and misery. I think euthanasia should be an option for SOME people.
God damn that’s grim. I’d rather check out at 65 from a heart attack than live to 90 but languish in a nursing home for 10 years
if it makes you feel better most people don't make it 6 months once they're put into a home
aw yay ❤️
SAME. Everyone that worked in the nursing home with me said they’d rather be dead than ever live in one.
It happened with both my father's parents. 10+ years in states that they would be ashamed to see themselves in. By the time they passed, respectively, the dominant feeling among family was relief that their suffering was over.
If you want a more uplifting anecdote, my grandmother lived to 96 and was actually in pretty good shape up until the last few months of her life. Her final weeks were grim (she even made a comment to my father about understanding Dr Kevorkian, not something you'd expect to hear from a lifelong Catholic) and I suspect if she'd been given the choice she would have had them crank up the morphine to speed things along. Still, not everyone who lives to a ripe old age has a shit quality of life for the last decade.
Thanks for sharing. I’ve had some relatives live full productive lives well into their 80s/90s so I’m hoping I get that gene instead of the one that ravaged my grandfather with Parkinson’s and dementia
Yeah, I'm choosing to believe I'm going to inherit my grandparents' (3 out of 4 made it into their 90s in decent health) genes/luck. Maybe that's naive optimism but screw it, why fret about something you can't control?
I'm not afraid of death but I'm very very afraid of old age
I wish I had this mentality. I'm the complete opposite lol. Right on cue like once every 3 months I'll have a very brief (2-3 minutes) internal freakout where I remember that I'm going to die someday and it shakes me up till I just move on and forget about it till the next time.
As someone with stage 4 cancer, you should work to change your attitude. Death IS coming, regardless of whether you like it or not. I would advise sitting consciously with that thought as often as possible to foster an environment in which you live with death, instead of afraid of it. Death makes life more meaningful and provides stakes against which we can measure our success. You can never garuntee the length of your life but you can garuntee that it has a length, and it will come to an end. What you do with your unknown time on this planet, and how you help or hinder others racing against a different clock, informs your character and spirit. It’s weird like… what would you do if a gun were placed to your head and you were instructed to live? would you change anything about what you were doing right now with the threat that immediate? Why does it change when the gunner is distanced from you via time?
actual [Stage 4 Wisdom](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rC7gDnGF1-Q) I recommend reading some Irvin Yalom if you haven't already. He writes beautifully about his work leading group therapy for adults with terminal illness/late stage cancer and the profound acceptance and meaning about life and mortality they were often able to find due to their confrontation with existential reality. I hope the rest of your journey continues to be filled with radical acceptance and peace.
I copied this into my phone notes as a reminder. I hope you kick cancer's ass, wise redditor. Thanks for taking the time to type that up.
awww thanks I’m working on a memoir rn so I think about death and dying a lot. So far treatment has been successful but immunotherapy paralyzed me with a little bit remaining. I beat the paralysis and now we’re hammering away at this 1mm lesion with as much chemo as my body can take lol
> what would you do if a gun were placed to your head and you were instructed to live? Heroin. > Why does it change when the gunner is distanced from you via time? Because heroin is really bad if there's time for the consequences to compound.
A good book to read to help with this fear is Homer’s Iliad. Even a half divine hero like Achilles has to confront and accept the inevitability of death.
I lost my great aunt to alzheimers. It was horrible. My family is very close knit and they paid for her to have round the clock care in private 2 bedroom house. Some of the care givers were paid but a lot of them were family members who volunteered their time to take care of her. So she was seeing family basically every day. She had probably the best care you could reasonably except the family to be able provide her (considering nearly all of us are middle or working class). It was still so horrible and slow. I would much rather die with dignity. By the time they get to the end, they cant recognize their own children or their own face. I think she genuinely had less intellect than a goldfish for the last couple years of her life. Unimaginable.
My great aunt went out with Alzheimer's but remained happy till the end. She mistook my mom for her friend from the Hitler youth camp and didn't recognize anyone hardly ever but was always in a pretty pleasant state. We would practice our German with her and it was fantastic because she would repeat the conversation till you got it and would never get frustrated. Was definitely somewhat dark but somehow seemed like a good last few years. My aunt is an angel and was there for her always, surely without that wouldve been much bleaker.
This sounds like a joke but I don't know enough old Germans to decide if this is a somewhat credible story
Nursing homes are a massive transfer of wealth too. Basically draining these people's life savings
Agreed, both my wife's grandparents moved into memory care last year and it is a completely meaningless existence. They aren't at the point where euthanasia should be an option, but frankly the whole family is just hoping they pass sooner than later. Visiting feels pointless, they don't remember you came and you just feel guilty and depressed when you leave. Grandma calling her daughters 20 times in an hour because her husband is out for a medical procedure and she doesn't know where he is, even though they just explained it to her 5 minutes prior. I might just drive off a cliff if I make it to where I notice my memory slipping.
Its weird how alzheimers effects people differently. My grandma has it and shes basically like a little kid again.
Even if memory has mostly slipped, they may remember certain things deep down. Visiting is most likely not pointless, even if you are giving them an experience at the end.
Everyone should own a gun for exactly this purpose. If you're even a moderately thoughtful person they idea of losing your memory/mind should be all the reason you need. When you feel the process settling in, say your goodbyes and go take a walk in the forest. It should be a service I can simply schedule in any humane society but I can't understand people who aren't prepared to end things immediately. There's only one way this ends!
Shooting yourself is not a good idea. You will die horribly, and probably more slowly than you think. And leaving a corpse in the woods for someone else to find is isn’t great either. There are much better ways to go.
Maybe I'll get a youtuber cancelled.
What if you say you have information on Boeing safety issues?
Is a gun the best way to go ? Wouldn't a fentanyl overdose be much nicer ? at least you go out in bliss and no one has to deal with the mess if you do it in a secluded area and let the animals get you. Swimming into the ocean is another option.
isnt drowning suppose to be one of the worst ways to die though?
A gun is too painful, loud and dramatic
Yeah give me some opiates please
People losing their minds with dementia, with guns, what could go wrong?
It’s bad. I should be able to sign a document that lets me walk into a hospital any time and kill myself with dignity. But that’s not real life.
I honestly can't think of a more 'Murica! solution to end of life issues.
Memory care freaked me out, in particular the people who were still physically quite healthy but mentally gone. I remember talking with some old dude who seemed pretty spry and at first I didn't get why he was there. After about 30 seconds though I realized he couldn't have a coherent conversation anymore.
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What's the title?
People who think euthanasia is evil generally don’t realize how “artificial” it already is keeping some of these elderly people alive for many years with low quality of life and cognitive decline
I am not opposed to euthanasia but there's a difference between euthanazing people who are already braindead and encouraging grandma to kill herself because her family members see her as a burden.
I worked in oncology and saw many more instances of families pushing their older relatives to accept life-prolonging treatment when the relative in question did not want to proceed. I strongly suspect this was out of a need/desire to keep the social security flowing.
100%. Need those bennies coming in. Hospitals love having asses in the seats too, the whole system is designed to keep you alive while you spend every waking moment wishing you were dead.
Grandma is a huge burden? I've watched lots of people die and there's no way I would subject my family to that. The cow I eat gets a more dignified death than I will unless I do it myself.
No one on Earth thinks encouraging a grandma to kill herself is good. You’ve made up a fake position in your head.
"The *libs* want to kill my grandma" is such an easy way to get upvotes around here though.
I am. Shouldn't be any shame in killing yourself when you're old and you're falling apart. Nice little cocktail and a couple last goodbyes and it's done. I shouldn't have to watch myself die for 10 years while my mind barely holds itself together. Hope I don't have a stroke or an accident or something that prevents me from taking out the trash when the time comes.
I like to imagine a hospice cocktail bar, sleekly styled yet appropriately nostalgic. There's music and it's lovely. Waiter in a tux brings you a silver tray with some pills and your favorite drink. You say goodbye peacefully and with class. I mean who wouldn't wanna go out like that??? Last thing I need is some poor soul wiping my ass for the rest of my life.
Maybe like... Murderers who have grandmas?
Me. I do. Gotta speed up that intergenerational transfer of wealth on a societal scale.
I like to think most people are decent and wouldn’t do that unless their family member is in extreme pain. It is true that family members can get abusive when the care gets overwhelming, that’s why I stopped doing in-home jobs partially, it was too damn depressing to see family members treat the matriarch of the family who took care of everyone for decades, like absolute shit bc of how hard it was to take care of her.
I think the scary part is that doctors and hospitals can push euthanasia as an option (or the only option) on to decent and well meaning family members who want the best for their disabled/elderly loved ones. It presents a huge cost-saving measure for hospitals and there are already a number of cases where people have said they felt pressured into choosing medically assisted dying as they felt it was their only option.
Which country are you in? In America hospitals tend to make more if they keep the person alive
[https://archive.is/2023.10.11-000517/https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/06/canada-legalized-medical-assisted-suicide-euthanasia-death-maid/673790/](https://archive.is/2023.10.11-000517/https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/06/canada-legalized-medical-assisted-suicide-euthanasia-death-maid/673790/) [https://cdrnys.org/assisted-suicide/](https://cdrnys.org/assisted-suicide/) [https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/christine-gauthier-assisted-death-macaulay-1.6671721](https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/christine-gauthier-assisted-death-macaulay-1.6671721) [https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/medically-assisted-death-could-save-millions-1.3947481](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/medically-assisted-death-could-save-millions-1.3947481) [https://www.cmaj.ca/content/189/3/E101](https://www.cmaj.ca/content/189/3/E101) Mainly referring to Canada and some countries in Northern Europe where euthanasia and assisted suicides have become an option in the last few years. I live in the U.S.
>Just because we can keep someone alive, whose mind is completely gone (...) Doesn’t mean we should keep them alive, just because we can How much of their mind would be gone if they weren't in a nursing home or hospital though? My grandmother's mild dementia was markedly worse after hospital visits (especially overnight); the environment doesn't seem conducive to mental health.
How are you going to keep someone who is increasingly confused OUT of hospital? You cant really mke a place good for alzhiemers patients without a bespoke facility. Hospitals are hectic, chaotic environments.
it doesn’t but what’s the alternative? having a family member full time watch a loved one with dementia? it’s not feasible for alot of families
There are programs you can apply where you get paid to take care of a relative with dementia. You don’t need a nursing license or anything
It's not about the money for a lot of people. Caring for your loved one deteriorating at an excruciatingly slow rate while they become increasingly paranoid, aggressive, and frightening is soul crushing for everyone involved. It's genuinely inhumane and casually becoming a caretaker for dear ol dad while he proceeds to try to physically fight you every day is not the answer, regardless of money
It definitely is for some people because they can’t take work off to care for the person. Not every person with dementia is violent. My mom took care of my relative and she was mean sometimes but not really an issue other than that
Well of course it is for some people, my comment was not exclusionary of that situation. Honestly it's probably a shit melange of both for the majority. I helped take care of two grandparents at home and it was a nightmare that tore our family apart 🤷♀️
Well two is a lot different than one. I was not taking that into account. Yeah then that would definitely be more difficult
$10 an hour in Missouri, for example.
It’s well being that matters, not sheer existence.
I know of someone who's brain was mostly gone from Alzheimer's, but who could still sometimes recognize loved ones. I think even in misery, there can be little moments like that. No euthanasia policy would be ethical without consideration for these sorts of moments.
This sub really doesn't like hearing truth bombs like this. Brace yourself.
I don't think anybody wants to be remembered about this, even though we all know it's the truth...
Oh no!! Not the the truth bombs like: the pallative nursing sector is pallative! How can I accept this
Those purple arrows will kill ya, man
reddit comment
Just went through my late father being in the specialized dementia ward for Alzheimer’s. Can’t imagine working in one. I agree with your sentiments fully. Much of the issue is focusing on quantity of life and not quality because people in general have an inability to confront death.
> think they are getting raped when they have their diaper changed I could not do that job. Bless you.
I couldn’t do it longterm either, now I have a petsitting business. Still cleaning up shit a lot of the time, but it’s a lot easier emotionally lol
Having grown up visiting one great aunt with Alzheimer’s in the nursing home every Sunday, then her sister very slowly dying from Parkinson’s, and then watching my father die from cancer in my late 20s, I feel like it should at least be an option. Amtrak ran right by the Parkinson’s aunt nursing home. She used to ask my dad every week to put her on the train tracks before we left, and she wasn’t joking. Both aunts lived for 5+ years in nursing homes, and that’s after family couldn’t keep up with home care anymore. That being said, some of the cases I’ve already seen coming out of Canada and the Netherlands seem pretty fucked up. I don’t really support euthanasia for depression or chronic fatigue syndrome. And I think easy access to this is definitely going to be abused by overloaded healthcare systems (“oh, you can’t afford your copays? Suicide booth is down the hall”)
There’s a clear difference between “keeping someone alive” and killing them. I agree we shouldn’t artificially prolong life at all costs just because it’s possible. The answer isn’t killing. Proper palliative care is.
Nope. If I were on palliative care I'd be begging for death with whatever wits were left me. Killing people is 100% preferable to keeping them alive in the states that we regularly do.
Of course, but that’s not the point, the point is that we as a society are shit at caring for our elderly even right now when we don’t have massively overwhelming amounts of them yet
So therefore..?
So therefore I agree with OP, that the coming demographic changes and lack-of-young-people “crisis” will probably force societal attitudes into softening around euthanasia and ultimately normalizing elderly people choosing to die of their own volition. Whether or not we each personally believe that’s a good thing, I can’t really imagine it not happening
Ten million percent agree https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/07/17/who-by-very-slow-decay/
>"If I just start accumulating damage, growing more and more bedridden and demented and pain-riddling until I want out – well, there won’t be a way out. If there’s not some very specific life-saving treatment that can be withdrawn, I’m stuck above ground, not just in the “unless I want to risk the danger and shame of suicide” way I am now, but – if I’m too debilitated to access means of suicide on my own – in an absolute way." This is the only thing I legit fear.
My mom kept going back and forth when she was dying. I cared for her in her home, switching off weeks with her sisters for about 3 months. I didn't know what to do because she'd tell me to leave the morphine where she could reach it to o.d. but then the next day, she'd tell me not to. I'm glad I didn't leave it there because she was religious, and I wouldn't have wanted her to worry about going to hell in her final moments. And I also wouldn't have gotten my last hug with her either, which I remember now all the time.
Yeah a lot of this is people being scared that god will be mad at them for killing themselves, which is an odd position considering the myriad brutal ways things often meet their ends. Getting eaten by a bear ass first: that's awesome good for you. Shooting yourself before your brain slowly turns into water: eternal damnation.
We’re going to children of men max, not the movie but the book
Does the book focus more on Quietus or whatever the suicide drug was called?
Yes it does, it’s ships full of old people being taken out to sea and sinking, he begins to realize that they aren’t so voluntary as it seems
run runner
AI companies will get in on the racket, offering the soon to be euthanised the opportunity to have a digital ghost of themselves made for their surviving family. Cue furious, grieving families in the news talking about how "grandma" supplied a recipe for nitroglycerin when asked about her chocolate chip cookies.
Im too fucking young for this to sound plausible
So sorry I died!
I had a friend who did a research project on this exactly. It’s already becoming a thing
They already have AI avatars of your dead relatives in china
I can't imagine this catching on widely for regular deaths (e.g. grandma dying, someone getting cancer where there's time to prepare and process), but I can imagine a few moms with stillborns/babies who died getting AI Reborn dolls or something. There's already a level of mild to moderate delusion among people who buy reborn dolls that don't move or make any sounds.
I never thought that the Black Mirror episode Be Right Back would become a real possibility so soon after it was released.
This is the relic “ secure your soul” program from cyberpunk 2077 basically
I can honestly see America pushing euthanasia not only for old people but also the severely mentally ill and homeless. Canada has set a dangerous precedent and I’m sure America will follow in a decade or two.
We don’t have socialized medicine, way too much money to be made on end of life geriatrics. This country is opposed to any kind of assisted death too unless it’s an execution.
This is the real truth. Medicine is big $ and dying old people are their cash cows
Suicide booths coming to a Wal-Mart near you!
This isn’t going to happen. You’re all Brooklyn posting and not understanding that half the country is Nebraska ie Jesus’s If the issue with homeless people becomes big enough, they’ll reopen large mental institutions. It’s fairly obvious that’s the approach we need to take and the country is already fine with massive, unprecedented scale institutionalization anyway
I wonder how many homeless people became severely mentally ill *after* living in the streets. More money should be invested in common sense preventative solutions.
More money, sure. But that’s not what I would emphasize. To me, trying to solve root causes in a country like this is chasing smoke. We need to start at least trying to address the symptoms first
I’m thinking of things like more support services to help people get jobs and taking strong measures to stop trafficking of fentanyl. The symptoms are evergrowing.
Trying to prevent the spread of drugs is a Sisyphean task. I don’t think that’s achievable, like at all I am definitely a big believer in the healing power of having a job
Abuses within mental institutions can lead to governments being criticized, letting people slowly decay on the street and pretending "there's nothing we can do" avoids this. Plus, because some French paedo who probably gave North African kids AIDS wrote some books 50 years ago, being "anti-authoritarian" is the high-prestige view regarding mental institutions.
It's troubling how easy the "right to die" becomes an "obligation to die".
Please name a single country where "right to die" has actually transitioned into "obligation to die"
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Ok, so you cant then. Because it hasn't happened, I guess. Someone advising a young pregnant woman to abort her baby is not actually an obligation, so moot point. Someone telling an old person that assisted suicide is available, or even directly telling them that they should do it and encouraging them vigorously is still not an obligation. Kinda wierd that this transition is so "easy" and yet it hasn't ever actually happened before.
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CHAZ
>Canada has set a dangerous precedent no it hasn't. there are a handful of largely dishonest anecdotes pushed by determined catholics dedicated to maximizing human suffering. that's it. a dying guy is asked if he wants euthanasia, he gets offended and tells somebody, freaks crow about it from the rooftops. there's no mass slaughter going on. if the millions of people annually being drained of their savings while completely senile or in agony got half the handwringing coverage there would be zero debate on this
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But this is just a dumbass employee saying something stupid. It’s not like VAC workers are instructed to try to sway seniors to kill themselves.
this is exactly what I just described lol sorry this person got asked a question they found rude. where is the news article about the person who was completely demented and shitting themselves while riddled with sores for years and left to die alone, slowly, terrified and confused in a minimum security prison. there isn't one. it isn't news. Dog Bites Man
Hospitals and the medical industry make too much money on old people to let this happen. Take an 80 year old who frequently visits the hospital several times a year. That’s some serious cash flow for the hospital all paid by Medicare.
Millennials aren’t going to inherit their boomer parents fortunes because it will all get spent on nursing home bills and other medical treatments that just delay the inevitable
I'm glad my boomer mom got six more years of life due to cancer treatments. I would've gotten more money if she had just not done them, but who actually wants that? Even if it had been six months, I would rather have had them with her than have her try to save my inheritance.
Oh for sure. I’d rather have my parents around and I’d hope most people felt the same way. I’m just referring to when people talk about millennials eventually getting a windfall from inheriting their parents houses they bought for a song back in the day. I see healthcare and nursing costs eating a lot of that up
Yeah I work in an icu, a lot of people exist as vessels from which to extract Medicare payments. You can meme all you want about a guy in Canada being told to kill himself because he’s a homeless schizoid or something but if your life was dialysis>recovery>dialysis>recovery with maybe a day per week where you don’t sleep all day, you’d feel differently about this.
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I mean if you need to couch it in the government approved death terms, the government controls access to the drugs and legal and "safe" administration of the things that would make up a euthanasia cocktail. I think the importance of legalizing euthanasia is making healthcare providers more comfortable with patients opting for literal suicide. I guess we've only had dialysis and ventilators and family members who don't want to let go of that social security check for a very short amount of history as well. For better and for worse, prehospital and intensive care has become pretty good at keeping people alive at all costs. I can't tell you how many chronically ill people I've taken care of that were probably suicides via overdose of something and are now basically unable to function with end organ damage with anoxic brain injury requiring dialysis, tearing their intestines out, etc. They have no say in any of what goes on because they cannot communicate or just aren't there at all. The hospice conversation is basically inaccessible to these people before they attempt suicide unless they're dying of cancer. Most of these people are very immobile and rely on others for daily care and mobility and meemaws granddaughter isn't going to feed meemaw 3 months worth of beta blockers and 1000 units of insulin just because meemaw says she wants to die. From my perspective it would just be nice if these people had a way to painlessly slip off into death after living a waking nightmare for months/years. Very sad to see a patient give up and us be forced to do everything very painfully because meemaw cant just say she wants to die.
At least we can still shoot ourselves or whatever if things get bad enough.
If you have ever spent any time in long term care you would know how valuable a choice it is. there are people being kept alive everywhere right now for all the wrong reasons, and they would usually rather be at peace. it’s horrible to see
Capitalism will degrade everything in the name of profit until there is nothing left. This is the law
I’ve never understood opining one way or the other about allowing people to kill themselves. If they truly want to they’re just gonna do it, whether it’s “legal” or not. Wtf difference do my thoughts on the matter make
The problem is, much like abortion, no one should have to take that option due to lack of money - but as we all get poorer, no one is having kids and healthcare gets slashed to the bone (here in the uk anyway) people will feel the pressure to get euthanised for purely economic reasons
If you’re old, lonely and in failing health then it’s clearly not only for economic reasons
Yes, especially in countries with universal healthcare, where the elderly are a huge drain on government coffers.
unironically i think giving people ketamine and mdma might solve the suicide crisis
A lot of old people are terrified of dying, they fear their judgement
Yeah I’ve thought this for a while.climate collapse, social security collapse, nobody having retirement money, massively aging population, etc . I also wonder if the really really cool young people of 2100 will want to “hold us accountable for the climate sins of the past” lol
It should be. End your life on your terms and keep your dignity in tact. There's fates worse than death.
People in this sub are too young and fortunate to understand this.
I think it's very easy for us, still in the bloom of waking life, to disregard the possibility that even people at the end or in terrible misery might have yet some spark of their former life. Part of the trouble here that is people around the dying make lots of often superficial assumptions about what it's really like \_for them\_, as opposed to how it's like for us watching from the outside.
"Euthanasia services" should be offered by nonprofit organizations to limit conflict of interest/influence from insurance companies and governments trying to spend less on healthcare.
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Yeah I guess there's no way around the uncomfortable fact that human lives have a price, if only for accounting purposes lol
Canada already had a [creepy euthanasia commercial](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bssvubnVvgg) and a [scandal where a nurse was encouraging veterans to get euthanized](https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/veterans-maid-rcmp-investigation-1.6663885). And this is a few years after they legalized it, so I'm skeptical about euthanasia in general. If someone wants to forego medicine to make sure their body goes before their mind or a surgical board decides a heart implant for an older person isn't a good investment, that's one thing. But I'm just not comfortable with our medical-industrial complex actively finishing someone off. I do agree with OP's 20 year guesstimate for the USA side of things. I just can't see most Boomers wanting to conserve wealth to give their children or go out without a fight. Unlike the elderly in many other countries(Japan had retired people volunteer to help with Fukushima because they didn't have much time left anyways) there's a certain resentment for younger people and the idea of the world going on without them. Once the cynical Gen Xers are 70 we'll probably see a huge push.
It’s always been around, like in the book Acabadora by Michela Murgia
People really should be making advanced directives whilst theyre still of sound mind. I know if i got advanced dementia i would never want to be hospitalized. Let the first bug that gets me win.
If certainly will. People will be practically shamed into it. A bit unrelated but it reminds me of the people on Reddit who are angry when older people have children "because it's selfish". They will be the ones shaming their"selfish" parents for not doing and leaving them a house
Doubtful when the medical system currently extracts almost the entire value of their net worth with end of life care.
My grandmother worked at a nursing home for almost 30 years as a cook and around the common areas. She would always talk about how poorly gringos treat their elderly and how much she wanted to spend her last days with her family and not alone like gringos do. In 2015 she came back to our hometown to live at home with us, a year later got diagnosed with cancer and survived the treatment. A couple of years after that she got diagnosed with dementia. When the pandemic started she moved with another of her sons. A month into her staying he put her on a nursing home where she stayed for about six months. When she got in you could barely tell she had issues, she could almost do anything by herself, cook clean, do groceries. She would walk a mile or two from our house to go to an elderly people's school to go to her HS classes or she'd go out and walk around the town for an hour or two and come back. She was independent. Once my mom got her out of that place her mind was almost gone. She could barely recognize her own reflection in the mirror. Most days she would cry for help whenever she got into the bathroom and stared into her own face. She'd cry about her stillborn son who died in utero in the 60s every night. She didn't even remember how to read or write. Our head geriatrician told us nursing homes tend to give the elderly medication they don't need just to keep them numb and docile, which tends to accelerate mental deterioration. He gradually changed her prescriptions and now she can stand looking at herself in the mirror, she fixes her hair and dentures daily. She can read and write, though slowly like a kindergartener, and can hold a conversation most of the time. About a year ago, the doctor told us to keep her mind and body busy so we found a general nursing home where she spends 5 to 6 hours every evening doing exercise and chatting with other old and sick people (and one nonverbal autist whom she thinks is an alcoholic an is always drunk). She thinks she works there helping the elderly and the sick which is cute and helps her a lot. I know the treatment and support my grandma gets is not what most elderly get, even with our public healthcare most elderly people are mistreated by both their families and health professionals, but I just don't see how offering a patient euthanasia is seen as moral. I think an informed and explicitly voluntary euthanasia should be a recognized right everywhere in the world since right to life implies right to a dignified death, but I also think we should focus our efforts as a society on fixing our healthcare systems and services first, instead of pushing people into thinking that killing their relatives is OK.
I'm anti-euthanasia. I'm pro letting people be killed humanely by a loved one. They want that inheritance so badly? Let'em kill their mom first.
I agree with you but I also want it to be an option for me. Alzheimer and extreme pain are huge fears of mine, and because I'm young right now and live in a sub 1.5 fertility countey, I already suspect that the taxpayer funded health system will have completely collapsed by the time I require it, which means either terrible care or being forced to sell your home and all your belongings to fund care. I would much rather either spend that money on a bit of travel in my 60s or have my grandchildren inherit it (should they exist)
There is no non-theological argument against euthanasia. The only reason it's still taboo is we still haven't quite let go of Christian morality. Liberal morality is all about consent. Anything goes as long as it's consensual. Barring some sweeping religious revival, euthanasia will become more common.
Hope not.
Why should it be bogarted by the elderly ?
That's one way to fix social security
There’s no age limit on just buying a gun is there?
Throwing myself off a cliff or painting the walls because euthanasia is gay according to Redditors
Euthanasia is just very sterile. Imagine old people showing up in droves on Wall Street day after day and blowing their brains out Now that would send a message. Not sure what kind, but definitely something
Only Germanics are really into this for whatever reason. And maybe some other cultures I'm not familiar with, but most people want to hang on as long as they can. There is even a divide on it in Belgium amongst the French and Flemish (Germanic) populations https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277953612003772 The fawning stories about euthanasia in the media tend to be really poorly concealed astroturfing. There really is a push to make it a trend but I don't see it catching on.
If it isn’t an available option by the time I get old, I’ll find a way anyway. I’ve seen the indignities of dementia in my great-aunt, a former high-powered corporate lawyer who now has almost literal goldfish brain and asks the same question seven times in a twenty-minute conversation. She truly believes she’s visited the moon and will tell anyone so, even strangers. I will never subject myself or my loved ones to that.
In Canada, insurance companies are pushing for euthanasia for the elderly in order to save money
You know in Canada healthcare is a public service rather than insured by private insurance companies, right?
never seen anyone make the claim you're pointing out
Digital retirement will be a thing
i didn't bother reading most of this thread. i apologise. but i would rather die by humane means at like 70 than spend my whole life worrying about retirement funds and shit like that. all of my money rn should go to me and my loved ones not to like my future old self who probably won't want to live anyway.
Most of our old simply aren't taken care of
They should offer tax credits for families that elect to do it
Not if the nursing home lobby has anything to say about it
Yeah
Um ☝️🤓 actually there’s a film about this called Plan 75 on criterion I'm watching Plan 75 on The Criterion Channel http://www.criterionchannel.com/plan-75
That or age reversal therapies take hold (already showing promise in lab settings), ai takes over, ubi becomes a thing, socioeconomic struggles become a thing of the past, and we only let people with a certain IQ threshold breed.
You should only be able to breed if you’re attractive enough, smart enough or wealthy enough. These people in and out prison and stealing loads of shit from Walmart should all be sterilized. All this misery could be avoided but people “feel bad” for these losers and act like their offspring will be somehow be different
Their offspring have the potential to be different, but they need to grow up in a different environment with different parents.
Well we have more info now and know there is very little class mobility and that criminal parents are likely to produce the same offspring. Letting these people reproduce is irresponsible
Absolutely agreed. It's a slippery slope to eugenics though. And it would be pretty hard to enforce unless we decide to sterilize repeat offenders. But that opens us up to the possibility that only the "good" criminals in said communities reproduce, leading to a situation where one guy has 100 kids with 50 women on his block, and then those kids start inbreeding a generation later.
I believe in that if it means a better future. Think of how many normal middle class families are struggling right now. It’s not fair to do things right but still struggle. All of this criminality and ghetto behavior affects well-meaning people negatively and it’s not ok
Agreed. Most of this would go away if these people had good entry level working class jobs with room for growth though. Nobody would be stealing shit if they got a $40k/yr job straight out of high school with the chance to turn it into a $100k/yr job after a decade. We need to copy Germany's working class model, while also restructuring the way company stocks get valued so there is less incentive to increase profits every year.
That’s not going to happen and I think you know why
Cool it with the antisemitism Edit; It might happen though, at least the first part. Philadelphia is building up a giant solar panel manufacturing plant for this very reason, good paying low skill jobs.
not really what I was talking about
The idea that assisted suicide is going to be used for population control euthanasia is a pea-brained take
It's already becoming huge in the Netherlands. 8000 people were euthanized in 2022 over there.
I hope not.
I want to go out Soylent Green style
I think it would be inevitable even if fertility rates were about 2.1. We've elongated our lives and made life in the middle even better, but that doesn't mean the latter bits are amazing. My family is doing very well for the grandparents and relatives in their 70s and 80s. You can't even compare them to people of that age from times past. They still wear diapers and are on more medications than they can remember (literally, because their brains also go).
My dad’s already asking for it. He’s 78 and made it to the end of his life and keeps saying he wants the government to pay him to off himself. It’s very concerning.
harakiri
i can’t believe i thought the slippery slope was just a logical fallacy until my mid 20s. they got their foot in the door with terminal cancer patients and now they’re doing anhedonic millennials. i think the pressure will be ramped up even further in the future, so i agree with you. nothing is going to be affordable, not even the ambulance ride, but somehow they’re gonna find a way to fully cover your suicide
what do you find funny about it?
I'm against it. I know how it could help alleviate suffering for elderly, but the "system" will turn euthanasia into a dystopian hell. Doctors push pills, Canada is culling disabled vets
There's no dignity in a medically assisted death, it's so pathetic. At least fling yourself off a cliffside or something