I see several people bringing up the issue of Alzheimer's disease/dementia, and before my father died of Alzheimer's, it was definitely on my list of reasons for assisted suicide. But the more I think about it, the more problems I have with it.
My biggest is that we can't truly know what's going on in the head of someone who isn't mentally competent to tell us. And so I have grave reservations about allowing society to walk down the road of allowing people to actively kill someone who isn't mentally competent to make that decision, even with an advance directive. It might start with the elderly who are going to die soon, but how soon would it extend to the mentally ill who don't respond to treatment, or people who are medically stable, but too brain damaged to have real awareness? What sort of test can we possibly come up with to determine the life quality of someone who can't communicate? When would caregivers exhausted by the demands of taking care of an Alzheimer's patient start choosing to end their loved one's life because they can't afford a good nursing home?
When my father was first diagnosed, I kept fantasizing about his having a sudden fatal heart attack, because all I could see is that he was going to die. And I think that's what happens when we talk about assisted suicide - all we can focus on is the death that is coming. But, and I say this while emphasizing this is just my experience and opinion, while he clearly wasn't very happy in his last six months and it was clear he wasn't going to live out the year, it would have felt like murder to take him to the doctor to end his life prematurely, because of how helpless and dependent he was.
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Date: 2010-06-30 02:41 am (UTC)My biggest is that we can't truly know what's going on in the head of someone who isn't mentally competent to tell us. And so I have grave reservations about allowing society to walk down the road of allowing people to actively kill someone who isn't mentally competent to make that decision, even with an advance directive. It might start with the elderly who are going to die soon, but how soon would it extend to the mentally ill who don't respond to treatment, or people who are medically stable, but too brain damaged to have real awareness? What sort of test can we possibly come up with to determine the life quality of someone who can't communicate? When would caregivers exhausted by the demands of taking care of an Alzheimer's patient start choosing to end their loved one's life because they can't afford a good nursing home?
When my father was first diagnosed, I kept fantasizing about his having a sudden fatal heart attack, because all I could see is that he was going to die. And I think that's what happens when we talk about assisted suicide - all we can focus on is the death that is coming. But, and I say this while emphasizing this is just my experience and opinion, while he clearly wasn't very happy in his last six months and it was clear he wasn't going to live out the year, it would have felt like murder to take him to the doctor to end his life prematurely, because of how helpless and dependent he was.