Euthanasia and Living Wills

• ernest_t_bass

  

  Well, the abortion thread got me thinking. I've seen how some people feel about the beginning of life, but what about the end of life? How do you feel about euthanasia and living wills? Do you feel that it is OK, even if there is medicine out there that can help one sustain life, to enact on a living will that asks to DNR, or to go through with euthanasia for those who do not have living wills?
• CenterBHSFan

  

  I'm all for living wills and against euthanasia. In fact, I already have a living will/DNR. Got them right after I chose a new life insurance policy.
  
  And before anybody asks: No, I don't think that euthanasia and the death penalty are the same.
• Footwedge

  Center, I don't knowhow one can be pro living will and anti euthanasia. Whereby the end of life situations are in fact complex, the purpose of the living will is to allow the physicain to euthanize you, provided certain health criteria are met.
  
  Now one can argue that some living wills state that they do in fact want artificial means keeping them alive, but this is the default setting if one does not have a living will. Not only is this costly, but puts an extremely heavy burden on the immediate kin.
  
  We are mortal beings. All of us. We don't want to exist as vegetables. When our time has come, our time has come.
  
  Call me a grandpa and grandma killer if you want, but the cost of keeping dicrepid, comoose, and mentally feeble people alive....ia astronomical. When they can no longer function as a human being, they should, in sound mind should have the right to terminate their own life....again, only after several criteria has been met.
• CenterBHSFan

  

  There's a difference in my mind between taking somebody off of life support when they have a living will and putting somebody down when they don't have a living will.
  
  I was never a fan of Dr.K.
• Con_Alma

  Footwedge;503483 wrote:Center, I don't knowhow one can be pro living will and anti euthanasia. ....

  Big difference.
• Fly4Fun

  

  Footwedge;503483 wrote:Center, I don't knowhow one can be pro living will and anti euthanasia. Whereby the end of life situations are in fact complex, the purpose of the living will is to allow the physicain to euthanize you, provided certain health criteria are met.
  
  Now one can argue that some living wills state that they do in fact want artificial means keeping them alive, but this is the default setting if one does not have a living will. Not only is this costly, but puts an extremely heavy burden on the immediate kin.
  
  We are mortal beings. All of us. We don't want to exist as vegetables. When our time has come, our time has come.
  
  Call me a grandpa and grandma killer if you want, but the cost of keeping dicrepid, comoose, and mentally feeble people alive....ia astronomical. When they can no longer function as a human being, they should, in sound mind should have the right to terminate their own life....again, only after several criteria has been met.

  
  Euthanasia and living wills saying DNR are very different.
  
  Euthanasia implies that you have to do something to the individual to actually kill them.
  
  With living wills people tend to get confused about what the machines are doing. Typically in the situation where you take a person off of life support people think of it as actively doing something to kill the person. The proper way to think about it though is refusing to give "heroic" measures to keep the person alive. Instead of a machine to keep the blood flowing, another for breathing, and tubes for feeding that are automatically done think about it in context if those situations didn't exist. Imagine someone performing CPR and people trying to force food down a person's through who is a vegetable. Turning off the machines is actually just stopping the heroic measures to keep someone alive... and this isn't done until after it is certain the person is brain dead and no chance at recovery.
• Footwedge

  Fly4Fun;503524 wrote:Euthanasia and living wills saying DNR are very different.
  
  Euthanasia implies that you have to do something to the individual to actually kill them.
  
  With living wills people tend to get confused about what the machines are doing. Typically in the situation where you take a person off of life support people think of it as actively doing something to kill the person. The proper way to think about it though is refusing to give "heroic" measures to keep the person alive. Instead of a machine to keep the blood flowing, another for breathing, and tubes for feeding that are automatically done think about it in context if those situations didn't exist. Imagine someone performing CPR and people trying to force food down a person's through who is a vegetable. Turning off the machines is actually just stopping the heroic measures to keep someone alive... and this isn't done until after it is certain the person is brain dead and no chance at recovery.

  
  In my opinion....you take the feeding tube out...you are definitely euthanizing.
  
  To Center....I have no problem at all with Dr. K. Almost all...if not all of his patients were dying of Lou Gherig's disease. Nobody should be forced to live a horrible and painful death like that....if they choose not to.
• Manhattan Buckeye

  ^^^
  
  That may be the current definition of "euthanizing", but it isn't the historical definition, as the Greeks likely didn't even dream of feeding tubes or extraordinary surgery or other medical techniques.
  
  At any rate, it is splitting hairs, just turn the debate into active euthanasia (lethal injection) vs. passive euthanasia (terminal cancer patient refusing chemo). DNR's defintely don't address the former.
• I Wear Pants

  CenterBHSFan;503471 wrote:I'm all for living wills and against euthanasia. In fact, I already have a living will/DNR. Got them right after I chose a new life insurance policy.
  
  And before anybody asks: No, I don't think that euthanasia and the death penalty are the same.

  Pretty much this.