Many would say one shouldn’t because no matter how bad things look currently, we don’t known what’s around the corner and in many situations if one adopts a “this too shall pass attitude, things have a funny way of working themselves out. However, that thinking applies when the person ill health is not a factor.
In reality, many people want to die because they are only alive because their health care providers are doing all they can to prolong their lives. They are not being given the opportunity to die a sometimes desired natural death because they are on ventilators, being fed by feeding tubes, and other life support mechanisms and machines, but the question is should you have the right to end your own life?
Should you have the right to die if you please? Some are lucky enough to express their wishes before a situation where they would need it occurs through a living will or discussion with their loved ones, but many times, such situations occur suddenly and if they don’t have the ability to speak anymore their loved ones have to make the decision for them and live with the positive or negative feelings. However, as with some terminally ill people, they can’t enjoy any quality of life, have lost their dignity, and are pretty much kept alive and waiting to die. So the question again is , Should they be kept alive?
On the Dr. Oz show today, Montel Williams said his Multiple Sclerosis induced pain made him consider suicide. He jumped in front of a moving cab to end it all. The car stopped in time and an Indian cab driver saying, “You are Montel Jordan. Are you crazy?” brought him back to his senses and he said to himself, “You just have to suck it up. Let’s figure it out. How can I do this to all the people that look to me?” However, the ever passionate Montel feels he needs to help people in more desperate situations to have the right to die. In a survey, 54% of people say people should not have the right to die, while 37% say people should have the right to die. Either way, the main thing is to talk death with your loved ones before it happens.
On the show, a disabled man who had thought his life was over spoke about his life’s journey. He had wanted to die because of his illness, he was forced to retire and his wife took his children and left him. He is now a disability rights activist and a strong opponent of physician assisted suicide. He found love with a great woman and is now doing ok. He invited another person, a African American lady, whose life is being prolonged, but says living or dying is her choice to make to come and be with them in the disabled community and find what he found.
If people are alive, have exhausted all treatments, staring death in the face, with no ability to continue a life and have lost all control and dignity, why shouldn’t they be given the right to die? However, if people are given the right to die, where do they draw the line? Some say life in any capacity can be used for the good of humanity. I say God gives and should take life but then what all these life prolonging machines do to prolong life, are they from God?
Alleviating suffering which doctors are sworn to do, due to the Hippocratic oath which states, “Do no harm” they take, is very different from eliminating the person, which is what doctors in doctor assisted suicides do. Do you think they are right? I guess that’s debatable. It’s only a fraction of people that have this situation to face, but death is not done well in America because people don’t talk enough about this but this is what you should know and do. The Terri Schiavo case, available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terri_Schiavo_case occurred because of this.
1. Speak to your physician and get a health care proxy form from the Dr. Oz website.
2. Appoint the health care proxy to speak up for you if you lose the capacity.
3. Think of what’s important for you and what dignity means to you and discuss this with the person who you put in the capacity to speak for you. Tell them if you want the machines, your life prolonged and under what circumstances do you want your life prolonged. Express your wishes to them and write it down and sign it for them.
4. It’s difficult for your loved ones especially if they don’t know what you want. So, fill out a living will and designate the person you want to take charge if you aren’t able to dictate it.
It’s because these things don’t happen that there are underground practices of assisted suicide like the late Dr. Jack Kevorkian used to practice. We should be eager to live, but if chemotherapy, radiation, surgery, hasn’t helped some people and they face the reality that medicines don’t do more than prolong dying instead of providing a meaningful life that people desire then maybe they should have a choice, but the question, “Are you better of dead or alive?” is a good one that one can balance with the rationality of competent, voluntary, informed decision, and the understanding of one’s prognosis, versus the morality of the question, which doesn’t hold water because prolonged suffering isn’t a moral duty.
However, again the Hippocratic Oath’s do no harm tenet contradicts doctor assisted suicides, which is a prescription in bad medicine. In many countries, if you attempt suicide you are put in jail because your life belongs to the state not to you personally, so the question still remains, “Do you own the right to end your own life?”
For more information, visit the following websites:
www.notdeadyet.org or notdeadyetnewscommentary.blogspot.com
www.compassionandchoices.org.
www.deathwithdignity.org
What do you think? Feel free to comment on this topic.
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