The rights and wrongs of assisted dying
Published:
An article about assisted suicide, from the April 13th 2024 edition of the Economist.
To state my position up front: I am fully for assisted dying, assistsed suicide, however one wants to call it.
I believe that people should have the right to decide that they had had enough and end themselves; I also believe there should be a way to set up a dead man's switch, stating that when one becomes incapable of actually living and merely exists eg, in a vegetative state or with dementia, one wishes to be terminated.
I have worked with charities for disabled people, I have seen people suffering from mental illness, I have seen people with dementia; and I know one thing: if something ever happened to me, I would rather be dead than left severly incapacitated, debilitated, or (in case of dementia) just a broken, empty shell of my former self. As long as I can support myself and extract some happiness out of life I would like to continue living, but when this becomes impossible, and not just temporarily but permanently, I would rather die than pointlessly struggle.
One may say that it never becomes impossible to live your life, and dismiss what I am saying. Technically, yes, as long as your heart pumps blood and your organs mostly work, you will be able to continue living.
However, I think there is a difference between fully living and merely existing.
Decayed body
If my body became so weak as to become a prison for my mind, why would I continue living unable to support myself and do the things I want? Being able to perceive something I need or want, and having no means of getting it (whether it is a goal, an object, a feeling is irrelevant here) is a frustrating experience.
Frustration is an insufficient reason for death, though, and to claim otherwise is beyond ridiculous. It may be frustrating to have no way of overtaking someone driving below the speed limit, but solving to this frustration by stopping the car and killing yourself would be an extreme overreaction.
Frustration can be solved by reducing expectations, reflecting on desires, and rearranging priorities. I think it is healthy to do this very once in a while (I tend to engage in this sort of thing at the end of the year), but there is a limit of what can be achieved with this approach. You do not have to be a glutton to avoid hunger; you can enjoy an ocassional drink without being an alcoholic; recognise your value without being a narcissist; or go swim in a lake without being an athlete. Finding happiness and satisfaction in small things is an incredibly valuable skill!
But what do you do when even the small things become unreachable?
Imagine being hungry. Reducing expectations and deciding to just not eat will not help you here; if you react to hunger by reflecting on your desire for food and rejecting it, you will just die of starvation. This is what I am talking about.
When almost everything becomes impossible, I would rather just end the whole thing.
Decayed mind
On the other hand, what if my body was in a fine shape, but my mind decayed? This is an even easier decision: when there is no mind, there is no person. In a way, I would already be gone; only my former body would continue executing the built-in instructions, the default programming, to keep itself alive. But I would not be there.
This, in my completely non-medical, unprofessional, and purely personal opinion, is the case with dementia, which the article mentions.
Dementia, which already afflicts one in 11 Britons over 65, is also a difficult area. It is possible for someone in the early stages of dementia to make a request in advance for an assisted death, but their wishes when the time comes should prevail. When in doubt, the best rule of thumb is not to proceed.
The Economist reaches the conclusion that even if, when still there, someone made a request to be killed after their dementia got too bad "their wishes when the time comes should prevail". This, I think, is misguided, because the body will fight to stay alive so of course the "wishes when the time comes" will be to not die.
My conclusion is completely different, maybe because I had a great-grandmother who was suffering from dementia. Everyone around her was suffering from that disease too, until the day she finally died. My only memories of her are those of unease, frustration, and anger at having to appease someone for whom I neither cared nor felt obliged to care; I can maybe understand my mother, who cared for her, because she knew her from the time before she succumbed to the illness. From that point in time, I have decided that I categorically do not want to ever live like that.
Forced euthanasia
I have once read a piece by Michel Houellebecq on a similar topic. Surprisingly (or not so, depending on how one interprets his books), Houellebecq also disagrees with me. It is a curious thing, how different life experiences can shape our views, and lead us to conclusions that are sometimes drastically different, even if we otherwise agree on most topics.
Previous: Installing OpenBSD on QEMU