Alzheimer's and its equivalents are right up there on my personal all-time nightmare list. I have enormous, enormous sympathy for Terry Pratchett.
The thing is - and this is going to sound more brutal than I want it to sound - if he wants to kill himself, there's no realistic way for anyone to stop him. If he wants to wait a while longer and kill himself when he starts to notice large decrements in his function, there's no realistic way for anyone to stop him from doing that, either.
What I don't think he should be able to have is the right to ask other people to make a determination that his life is no longer worth living, and to then kill him. Especially because in the case of dementia we're talking about someone who would be past the point of being able to consent.
(No, I don't think you should be able to consent in advance. Millions of people would tell you that they would never, ever want to live if they had to be in a wheelchair full-time, but that turns out not to be the case when people who actually suffer severe accidents.)
I think this is a particularly hard problem for geeks because we put so much of our personal value - like, all of it - on our mental capacities. That's where our self-worth comes from, so it seems rational to us to say that life would no longer be living without them.
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Date: 2010-06-24 11:29 am (UTC)The thing is - and this is going to sound more brutal than I want it to sound - if he wants to kill himself, there's no realistic way for anyone to stop him. If he wants to wait a while longer and kill himself when he starts to notice large decrements in his function, there's no realistic way for anyone to stop him from doing that, either.
What I don't think he should be able to have is the right to ask other people to make a determination that his life is no longer worth living, and to then kill him. Especially because in the case of dementia we're talking about someone who would be past the point of being able to consent.
(No, I don't think you should be able to consent in advance. Millions of people would tell you that they would never, ever want to live if they had to be in a wheelchair full-time, but that turns out not to be the case when people who actually suffer severe accidents.)
I think this is a particularly hard problem for geeks because we put so much of our personal value - like, all of it - on our mental capacities. That's where our self-worth comes from, so it seems rational to us to say that life would no longer be living without them.