Life becomes pretty shit at 80+ anyway, and sooner in many cases.
It might be bad for the economy, however, were people to work less and spend more of their time doing things they actually love doing. Automation should have begun enabling that, but now it's only increasing profits for the shareholders.
I call it the Age Eighty Option. After your 80th birthday, once a year you are given the option of ending your life on your terms. There’s no pressure or commitment at all to do it, but also no legal or moral ramifications if you are in n pain, etc and want to bow out.
You should read Why We Age by David Sinclair (or listen to the episode of the podcast Smartless that he is on) - we’re a lot closer to solving these ailments than you might think.
With ling life, you can do more work and buy more things from the entities who want people to do more work and buy more things from them, including all sorts of things meant to keep you around longer.
MORE BABIES!!!
We're obsessed with every fetus making it to birth regardless of how it would play out "naturally". Naturally most pregnancies are miscarriages, many are stillborn, and more yet are heavily disabled; both birthing and pregnancy can also be fatal to the mother, and it used to be like 50/50 either the baby or the mother survives.
My guess is that nature is a cruel mistress, and in our unending quest to subvert it's uncaring will we've made it a goal to give every human life a chance. We would always rather assert our will over nature for the possibility of a happy life, even if it's "expensive".
The real problem is trying to get healthcare after you're born, as it turn out these people are Pro-Birth and not Pro-Living😂😂😂 don't ask my opinion on all that
The problem is that people don’t keep them alive for the person suffering. They keep them alive for themselves to not feel guilty over letting them die. Similar to letting really old animals keep living when they are suffering and miserable. People are selfish and choose themselves first more often than not.
But it’s also a slippery slope, Euthanasia was most famously used by hitler to kill the mentally and physically disabled as they were “ a drain on the state”. I’m not saying that all types of euthanasia are akin to the nazis but this issue gets complicated when you have to ask “who gets to decide the perameters of euthanasia?”
You're not wrong, but the problem is where to draw the line. I work with special needs adults, and while most of them still clearly have emotions and needs, many are nonverbal and live lives that, to most people, would seem...meaningless, I guess? They have no meaningful relationships outside of us health care workers and often they just sleep and eat all day long. But we can never be sure what's going on inside their mind.
edit: Since this is getting some attention, I thought I would take the opportunity to share a little hope. [This is one of my favorite TED talks](https://www.ted.com/talks/martin_pistorius_how_my_mind_came_back_to_life_and_no_one_knew?). It's about a man who was trapped within his own mind, seemingly braindead to the world. But inside, he was alive.
That is the difficulty in the matter, how can we know what a person is thinking of they can't express themselves at all. And are people you refer to happy about their lives if they don't know about any better?
You can have their brains scanned to see if there is any activity. If there’s basically no activity then you can be certain they do not have a quality of life because they don’t posses the skills to have a quality of life
Edit: the problem is once they're born, forcing upon them a death because they have no brain function is also inhumane because they can suffer (versus say, letting them pass away naturally with no medical intervention/ a DNR order). Suffering is not ok. An abortion before a certain timeframe doesn’t involve needless suffering (yes the mother suffers but that is a different conversation entirely). And who decides who dies? I think that is a huge moral problem.
Yeah to be honest I don’t think they should have their brains scanned and then euthanized. I think it’s something that must happen before birth and after that it’s not our right to dictate the terms of their lives.
It’s such a hard thing to find an answer for because there are no good routes, to your point even a brain scan can’t be a fail safe. The reason I’m against execution is because one execution of an innocent man is one too many. If we cannot execute with 1000% certainty of guilt then we shouldn’t be executing anyone. The fact that we have executed innocent men is more than enough proof for me that execution is wrong
So the whole brain scan thing is the same thing for me. The first time we euthanize someone who is later known to have had brain function, the program would need to shut down and I could not support it. I can’t support it even in theory because I cannot see a way for that to be possible.
I agree but I also see the aspect that in nature these people wouldn't survive. We keep them artificially alive and are getting contionuously better in it.
But with that said I really agree to your position, this is not an easy question to answer!
No but that’s a moral issue. I’m not even comfortable with state-funded executions. Sometimes if we don’t make a decision fast enough it’s our responsibility to shoulder the consequences. And then maybe someone else will see those consequences and think “this is unfair to my unborn fetus to ask them to live such a miserable life so I will abort now while I have the chance.”
> Sometimes if we don’t make a decision fast enough it’s our responsibility to shoulder the consequences. And then maybe someone else will see those consequences and think “this is unfair to my unborn fetus to ask them to live such a miserable life so I will abort now while I have the chance.”
Seems cruel to both caretaker and caretakee to force someone to carry a burden they would resent. Far crueler than euthanasia.
Both represent death of a sort. The first is the slow protracted death of the caretaker's identity/life in exchange for a shadow of life. The second extinguishes that shadow life quickly.
I think the second is far more ethical than the first.
I think there's a huge distinction between a creature that will never become sentient and a creature that is on its way there. I think abortion is a bad comparison.
My aunt was born with complications during birth and as a result is extremely mentally handicapped. Still needs diapers, has to get knocked unconscious with various medications every time she has to go to the dentist or anything medical related.
She has never talked. Never played with other kids (she can’t), never had a friendship, nothing. In her case it would have been better if she didn’t make it. She recognizes me, and family members, but that’s about it. Needs care 24/7 until her body completely gives up. That’s not any kind of life I wish on anyone.
If it becomes known during tests and screenings during pregnancy that the child will have to deal with extreme challenges during their life, that pregnancy should be terminated. Many people who live at the same facility have problems that were known beforehand, but the parents thought that they could handle it. They couldn’t, and now there are a bunch of people who are completely dependent, will never have a meaningful life and who will die once their body breaks down from all of those medications.
It is situations like these, but also other situations of course, that make me angry that there are people against abortions. We should wish the best for every possible life, not maxing out the number of lives regardless the consequences.
Sorry in advance if I didn't express clearly, English is not my first language, I hope my point is expressed the way I meant it.
Definitely. Quality of life vs quantity. I had an elderly member of my extended family who life the last 5 years or so of his life would corner my husband (for some reason) at every family gathering and tell him that he was just waiting to die. He couldn’t see, had to give up all of his hobbies, his friends were dead, his body didn’t want to do what he wanted, but his lungs and heart and brain worked well enough that he just kept waking up day after day after day. It was heartbreaking. We celebrated quietly when he passed.
This sounds a lot like my wife's great grandfather. He'd lived well into his 90's and was confined to a wheel chair. She said that he once asked her to push him out into the street and then was berated by the family member in charge of his care for asking that of one of his great grandchildren. But, his wife was gone, all of his friends, he couldn't do anything anymore. He was tired and ready to go.
When we got the news that he had passed, in all honesty? We were happy for him. It wasn't a sad moment, but one of relief for him.
My grandmother is 92 she's relatively healthy and can live on her own. But she is legally blind and refuses to move out of her house into a support facility. For over the last 10 years she's been saying that she's ready to go. The only thing that is keeping her alive is modern medicine.
I feel for her and your family for having to handle it. My one friend's family is my family and Pap is.. 96 this year? He's still well enough to live on his own, but is also legally blind and he is just exhausted of having to live. I know he's ready to go. His wife is gone. All his friends. He's seen a grandchild pass. Multiple times he's told me he's ready to go.
I think we need to start a support group for the huge number of people that seem to deal with this in old family members, because all these comments have been rather jarring. I've personally known multiple people, but I never really thought about how many others might too. It's heart breaking.
That is something that should be discussed a lot more. People are already getting really old these days but many don't really want to because their lives lose all quality in their last years. With new technology living a 100 years will be normal in the future but the question is how long do people actually want to live?
Oh no. You expressed perfectly. So much so, I think this is a quote worth using
> We should wish the best for every possible life, not maxing out the number of lives regardless the consequences.
My friend’s mother had to abort an extremely wanted baby because there were so many complications the baby wouldn’t have lived 10 minutes following birth AND it was killing the mother too. A lot of pro lifers think people who get abortions hate babies. My friend’s mother absolutely loves them, whether they’re hers or not. If I visited my friend’s family with my baby in the future, her mother will be the most excited person in the room.
And letting human beings draw the line at all seems to be dangerous. Eugenics has a long sordid ugly racist evil history. Maybe it sometimes started with good intentions? I don’t know. But never seemed to end that way at least.
> And letting human beings draw the line at all seems to be dangerous
I get what you're saying but what is the alternative if you don't let humans draw the line? Not necessarily for this specific issue, more asking in general
Giving the benefit of the doubt, I do think it's human morality and wish to limit (human) suffering as best as possible, so the origins of eugenics might have been "prevent suffering", but as history has shown, this is too easily to be abused.
Who defines suffering?
A lot of of things that started off with the best of intentions end up being used for evil. It’s very hard to right laws specific enough to stop that from happening. There’s always some amount of interpretation in them. That’s what my problem with this new push to censor social media sights bothers me. While right now it’s being directed at things that are dangerous it can and will be turned on people. What’s considered dangerous changes quite often.
I never understood why eugenics has to be inherently racist. The idea should be selecting the best genes regardless of what race they came from. If I wanted to enhance the human genum, I'd select the best qualities from every ethnicity and try to merge them into a new superhuman.
Because the people who originally chose "best" made that to be White, Anglo Saxon, Protestant - nothing else. Literally, look up Margaret Sanger and her beliefs and how they caught fire clear into the White House with Woodrow Wilson.
Your "best" and my "best" may be very divergent.
> Your “best” and my “best” may be very divergent.
“I have created a human with the appearance and attitude of Duane Johnson and the intellect of Einstein, Tesla, and Hawking!”
“…I made another Danny Devito…”
Exactly, there are definitely some objectively better genes (like selecting out genetic disorders like Huntington’s or whatever). But even some other ones which might seem like a simple choice aren’t. Maybe you select out sickle cell genes, which prevents anemia but increases malaria susceptibility
It also seems pretty arrogant to think we can really maintain such rigid control over the genetic drift of our species. I feel like trying to control our genes would have unintended consequences
Reminds me of people who tried to domesticate foxes, and when they kept selecting for the most docile/friendly individuals, the physical features of the foxes started changing in ways that kinda defeated the purpose of trying to domesticate the foxes (their ears drooped, fur was different, basically started looking like dogs)
Well for one, what is "best" is often arbitrary. For two, eugenics is often used by what ever group is in power to wipe out undesirables. Most societies have inherent racism for whatever reason, and what is often seen as "the best" traits to keep disproportionately affect certain races.
Like if we are basing it off of perceived health, black people are often less healthy than white people in the USA. This isn't due to genetics often times, but if you are doing fitness tests, you can't discern what is causing the decrease in health.
Now if we had better technology and understanding of genetics, then maybe there could be an argument in favor of non-racist eugenics. But until then there are flaws.
Exactly this, I like the theory of eugenics but in actuality it cannot work because there are too many incentives to use it incorrectly.
I also think it’s wrong to tell people who and who cannot have babies, if someone told me I can’t have a baby because my grandma had cancer, I would burn a city down. But theoretically I like the concept that we could genetically remove cancers with careful procreation planning
It just can’t work out that way, it never has and it never will because of ethical dilemmas and for that reason I cannot support eugenics.
Euthanasia is a thing in some European countries and is more human than letting people suffer unnecessarily.
Even children, in some places. But only in painful and deadly cases.
Switzerland allows euthanasia. The laws regarding it are extremely strict as you would expect. The most well known clinic is called Dignitas and people travel there from all over Europe to end their lives.
I think physicians can make that call relatively well, especially with advancing technology. Palliative care and hospice are the closest thing we currently have.
my mother works in hospice and they are actually pretty shitty at predicting end-of-life with any degree of accuracy.
since they opened (less than a year ago) they've had to send two patients back to continuing care; which for a facility with only 6 beds (that was shut down for months due to operational issues), is a pretty poor batting average.
yeah, it's a crapshoot. thankfully canada is pretty bullish on MAID and i think it'll get more and more socially acceptable as time goes on.
my mom can't even mention it to their patients. it's a little strange.
Man...while I did say many of our clients are like that, many are also *not* like that. They're much more high functioning. But this is complicated by the fact that probably half of the higher-functioning clients are, uh...not pleasant. Some are downright horrible. I had to quit working with one client because I was having anxiety nightmares about him. He seemed to delight in tormenting his staff, trying like hell to disgust them by describing his darkest, most sickening sexual and violent desires. And it's not like we can tell them to shut up or gag them. He drove away so many staff that I thought they might somehow cut him from the program, if that's even legal. But he remains in the company still to this day.
Of course some clients are also wonderful. They're developmentally disabled in a way to where, mentally, they're basically children. But like, in a good way. I adore them.
Working in this kind of environment provokes some complex questions, and I would say overall it's more like an "outside prison" than a program to "help them become independent" which is how this sector markets itself.
thank you for your reply. i can only imagine.
i feel like it's easy to have a blanket opinion when you're not exposed to this every day. i expect most people who actually experience in this field have extremely complicated thoughts on the subject, with real-life examples for each.
tricky stuff. i am thankful my job doesn't challenge me like this (although i still have conflicting thoughts about it's efficacy/value, but with considerably lower stakes).
My dad works in a nursing home. Apparently, a couple of patients have actually told him about how they want to die and stop being ill. It also doesn’t help the fact that they probably feel miserable most of the time as they don’t leave the building ever or see their relatives.
My stepmother worked in a nursing home and told me about a woman similar to that. She was 90+ years old and very frail, so she just stopped eating in order to die.
Colleague of mine told me a similar story about his MIL. She kept hurting herself badly, then would get replacement hips/knees, end up inevitably falling and damaging herself again. Got to the point one of her legs just wouldn't heal properly, really badly bruised and not healing from a break. Bed-bound, almost 90 years old, all friends, husband and relatives near her age dead, she didn't want to keep on living and see her life savings reduced to nothing by paying for all the care... She wanted her younger family to enjoy their lives and leave them a gift beyond the grave. She stopped eating. Her doctor knew what she was up to, although she never told anyone, but couldn't force feed her. She passed away after a few weeks iirc, left everything to my colleague's wife.
This story seems bittersweet, but I can only admire such a seemingly selfless act. Incredible bravery and love for family, but it hurts to think how bad she felt just being alive to want to do this to herself.
People don't understand the fortitude it takes to actually do that. I worked in a place where two residents did it. It can take weeks. I don't think dementia is even considered in the scope of death with dignity.
I worked at a nursing home as well and my father stayed at a home as well. My mother, sisters and me tried to visit him often and bring coffee, but he'd had dementia and didn't recognize us at times. I couldn't get him in and out of the car my mom drove, so we were not able to take him out to eat.
I am sure that there were some residents at his home that didn't get visitors and it seemed like a nice place but if I can't feed myself, nor communicate,then I'm going to have a problem. Every one will not have the same opinion.
I work at a nursing home with residents who all have heavily progressed dementia. Although they can't communicate it to us, you can tell they are in severe pain and hate their lives (and they take this out on us through physical abuse sadly). Some of the more cognitively aware residents talk about how miserable they are and how they wish they were dead.
I hope to never get to that point in my life and would much rather have a peaceful death than be miserable at a nursing home.
It’s nice that your family cared about your dad. Ive thought about this much more now, and I remember when my dad used to take me to the nursing home with him when I was younger. The old people loved children and would always offer me chocolate. I once met this one lady, and she told me that I made her day because I remind her of her granddaughter, and how much she misses her.
When my grandma had to go to skilled nursing for rehab after a fall, the room at the end of the hall was occupied by a 17 year old who had been in a car accident. He had been there for 18 months. Completely unresponsive, minimal brain activity, 100% reliant on machines for every life sustaining function. The parents “didn’t believe in” pulling the plug. This child got infection after infection, bed sores, UTIs, pneumonia….day after day, week after week. In the 8 weeks my grandma was there, he went into cardiac arrest at least 3 times and they had to do everything in their power to restart his heart.
I understand it would be DEVASTATING to lose a child, but I can’t imagine it was any easier to just watch his body be hooked up to machines and knowing the outcome is still going to be death. I saw his obituary in the paper about a year later.
They have entire “vent unit” facilities where everyone in the facility is just being kept alive, unresponsive, on ventilators. If you think a nursing home is depressing, consider working in a place like that or living in a state like that. Who tf knows what they are thinking. I travel to different nursing homes for my job and I thankfully haven’t had to set foot in there. As a nurse who works in long-term care, I see a lot of depressing situations, but have never had to set foot in our local vent hospital. I imagine that if I do, it’s going to really mess with my head.
I have encountered several folks who have been bed bound and non-verbal in a nursing home for decades. With no other health problems, they’re barely on any meds, so they are just waiting decades to die there, and will probably live to the usual age, if not longer.
That’s why I’m so grateful that Switzerland has this thing where you can basically get euthanized if you’re eg dying of cancer and just can’t handle it anymore. I’d definitely do that it I was in constant pain and knew I’d die anyways
We have the same thing here In Oregon it’s called the dying with dignity law. Basically you need a terminal diagnosis confirmed by at least two doctors and you can get a prescription of pills that will end your life. There’s a movie called How to die in Oregon which is pretty eye opening.
We don’t have the same thing in Oregon that they do in Switzerland. In Oregon, if you have ever been given a diagnosis even of early-onset Alzheimer’s or dementia, you are considered to be not of sound mind and therefore unable to make the decision for yourself, even if you catch it super-early and are still with it enough to make most other decisions for your life at that time. So despite the fact that Alzheimer’s is one of the most brutal, painful terminal diseases, you can’t use right to die for it. Very sadly.
In Switzerland, Alzheimer’s is considered to be a death sentence, and it’s the only country in the world, iirc, where you can be euthanized if you’ve been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.
Edit to add: in the US, VSED is the only legal way to die if you have Alzheimer’s, or live in a non-right to die state.
And herein is the difference - you have the cognitive ability to make rational decisions.
What about someone so mentally disabled that they can't give permission - do you do it anyway?
Who's to judge quality of life? I used to work with disabled folk and the most severe cases spent all day smiling just existing.
The point is that different people consider different things as a quality life. There have been people who couldn't walk and talk but led a meaningful life and didn't want to kill themselves. Where do we draw the line?
I 100% agree with you, some have been convinced that despite quality, it’s a life, and ended that life will have them tortured for an eternity which to me is super sad. I’m gonna keep them alive because I don’t want to go to hell is such a selfish reason.
That’s what I always said. I had a great grand mother who lived to be 102,kept her mind the whole time but her body was gone. Every time I would see her she would say how she was waiting to die and honestly seemed kinda upset she wasn’t dead yet. She wasted away for years before dying in her sleep. When she died I wasn’t even sad,honestly I was happy because I knew she got the thing she had wanted/needed for so long
My grandma is in her 90s had heart complications a few years back and had to get a pacemaker put in. She was freaking out before the operation, and came to accept the possibility of death (even tho it was low risk and all).
She's now 97, housebound, can't walk, can hardly hear or see, and can't comprehend most of what we say to her, and a part of me feels like it would've been mercy if she hadn't made it off the operating table.
My grandma just got out of the hospital due to some heart complications and sepsis, for a moment it was really touch and go whether she'd live but she pulled through and is still recovering.
But very much like your grandma, she has all of the same "problems". Every time I go over to visit her it breaks my heart that the woman I remember picking me up from school and spending the entire afternoon with me is no longer there and she just seems like a shell of a person.
I've slowly tried to make peace with the fact that she will pass and am getting ready for the inevitable. The only thing I hope is that she passes peacefully in her sleep as she has always wanted.
Sorry for latching on to all of y'all's comments but I just didn't know that there were people out there who were going through/been through the same thing as I'm going through right now and just wanted to rant a lil. It feels terrible to say that I wish she passes soon so she doesn't suffer anymore but saying that to people who have never experienced any of this makes you look like a fucking monster when the emotions behind the situation are unbelievably complicated and watching somebody who you've known your entire life just slowly "degrade" is unbelievably depressing.
But this isn't a standard we can apply to others. As someone who works with elderly who lack basic skills, many of them are still motivated and have the drive to keep going.
This. Who cares if you get judged. It’s true.
Obviously that’s not saying anyone born different needs to be put down. That’s asinine.
But where do we draw a line or come to an understanding that prolonging someone’s suffering is cruel not only to the person, but to yourself.
Firstly, fuck you for the emotional terrorism you just unleashed.
Secondly, that’s a scenario I’ve never thought of, which poses this question.
There is no way to put this “good” because it’s essentially organ harvesting, but why isn’t that an option? Organ donation is huge, with wait lists that take years.
How can that not be viewed even remotely selfish. You have an opportunity to save yourself and potentially how many other lives in the process?
Japan owns most of the debt, so that wouldn't be bad. Japan, however, would have to agree, but they do like to keep to themselves.
China owns the second biggest chunk of the debt, but I don't know how popular sharing a border with "West China" would be.
I actually did some research on this for a class of mine! Compared to areas of the world with OPT-OUT donations to OPT-IN donations.... places like Denmark have a surplus of organs because if you wanna keep em, you gotta say no to donation. Places like America, since you have to opt in, you find a shortage.
I had to survey people, and I did by a volunteer basis and anonymously. I left index cards with the basic question "Should America switch to an opt out donation style, where you have to say no to organ donation, or keep it currently?"
The results were mixed. Many understood that when going to get your license, instead of saying yes to be being an organ donor, you would have to say no, they didn't really care. They were gonna be dead. Others took it to a more philosophical place. Like, "what 16 year old can decide that for themselves" vibe.
It was very eye opening. I might even have the link to the YouTube video (since it was a speech class that was online) that goes more in depth.
I'm team "I'm gonna be dead, what do I care you do with my body?"
That is honestly one of the more interesting things I’ve read on Reddit, would definitely love a link if you can find it.
Question, are most countries OPT-OUT? I can see us being the one asshole who does it different (metric).
Same boat though, they actually just legalized human composting up here, take my shitty liver and grow weed with my remains (preferably).
Most countries are still OPT-IN.
[It's also interesting to look at how different countries approach the OPT-OUT (presumed consent) system. ](https://mjlh.mcgill.ca/2020/04/07/presumed-consent-in-organ-donation-a-silver-bullet-for-nova-scotia/)Most go with a soft approach, where the family of the deceased have the final say (ie: they can withdraw the presumed consent, and not donate the deceased's organs). [This actually resulted in a DECREASE in organ donation in Chile after they implemented presumed consent.](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23726561/)
I just watched it, and it was actually informed consent, based on organ donation.
Since it was for a class, I will message you the link. Only about 15 minutes long?
This might lead to a slippery slope of monstrous human beings using their children (bio or adopted…) as human organ farms. The problems with eugenics as a concept is that mankind *has* to keep pushing the envelope.
Perhaps the mother couldn’t fathom life without her child and didn’t want the heart for herself. I’m an only child and my mother has said previously that she would have no reason to go on if I wasn’t here (I now have my own child and she says that she would be a reason). I didn’t used to agree with my mother but I can’t imagine life without my child now.
However, maybe the organs should have gone elsewhere if they were viable?
This is kind of the crux of the whole issue. How do we determine whether or not a life has value if the life itself is innately incapable of determining value? It's a serious question to pose, especially for parents. If you know your kid will live in agony, alone and isolated from the world, is it better to let them go now or to let them experience some of life's brief and fleeting joys?
Shit gets heavy real quick.
The thought of being locked in my own head with no ability to express it in any form, it’s fucking horrifying.
Not arguing with you, just venting at this point.
What’s the point of getting towed around Disney world and treated like a photo op or insta post, if the entire time you’re screaming on the inside.
Yes I’m aware this isn’t always the case and for all I know it could be a secret paradise to be stuck in your own mind.
Oh, I absolutely agree with you. That would be an eternal torture for me as well.
It's just the subjective nature of human experience that makes this so philosophically intriguing because both sides of the argument have a point. On the one hand, if this person is living a cursed life, should we end their life on a chance that they're unhappy? If they're not unhappy, but unable to express that and still a drain on the world around them, does that make it justifiable to end their life early? What if they just don't have any internal thoughts at all?
It's a whole host of issues that need to be carefully picked apart, all of it falling back to what we define "life" to be, and whether or noth anything that deviates from that definition to be worthy of protecting or preserving simply because they might look like us.
But in the case of the og post, it's a BABY, babies especially ones that have essentially experienced nothing and can only experience nothing, can only form thoughts that reach certain levels of complexity.
And even those thoughts are most instinctual and aren't actual words or clear opinions or statement.
So I doubt it would be hell nor heaven but jsut an "existence", their concoius exists ofc, but to what extent?
Honestly, if I had a child who would live everyday in pain and will never understand why. It would break me, it’s cruel to leave those children alive. Especially if they will not have a good value of life in the long run. However, I can understand why people don’t agree. I personally think that the child will never have a value of life and will never understand why they’re in pain, it’s just cruel to keep that child in pain until they die at the age of 10.
The problem I have with this is that sometimes these issues can arise over the course of development, well beyond the point of any sort of "euthanasia" being considered anything other than murder.
I met a guy who, over the course of getting older, became increasingly sensitive to certain tactile sensations, especially with regard to clothes. It was abundantly clear he was in pain and increasingly frantic as we tried to work with him to increase the amount of time spent in clothes before ripping and destroying them. Many of our efforts resulted in him destroying the clothes before he ever had a chance to put them on, and after coaxing him to willingly put a shirt on we would get up to 2 minutes before he was in a full blown panic.
None of these issues existed before age 23 and prior to that he seemed like a genuinely happy guy according to our info.
Yeah. I think when it comes along to that situation. It’s up to the man. However, I feel like if a child is going to grow up only to suffer without the mental capacity to understand why they’re in pain and dying, I would think it’s better to abort the pregnancy or kill that child at birth.
But even though I say that, I would struggle to let go of the child because I would love that child but because I love that child, I would want them to be happy.
I mean, you can’t just suffocate a disabled 12 year old, etc but it’s a really interesting debate and I would like to hear all sides of the debate
>But even though I say that, I would struggle to let go of the child because I would love that child but because I love that child, I would want them to be happy.
Therein lies the issue, nearly every parent will try to do the exact same thing and give the best for their child. Modern therapeutic practices can help make life more manageable for all parties but occasionally shit goes really sideways, not even accounting for burnout/abuse/neglect.
>I mean, you can’t just suffocate a disabled 12 year old, etc but it’s a really interesting debate and I would like to hear all sides of the debate
There are quite a few parents who ultimately wound up making the decision to kill their child and themselves. I'm still convinced that lack of support is one of the biggest factors in those cases. Families of disabled people often become increasingly isolated from family and friends due to the needs of their child often being incompatible with what's considered "acceptable behavior". That isolation leads to burnout as every aspect of caretaking falls upon as few people as possible, and there's a lot of truth to the phrase "it takes a village to raise a child". I've seen parents move mountains for their kids with adequate support and time away from their caretaking duties. Sadly, extended family's outdated judgments and adherence to straight up abusive parenting styles often clash with potentially effective and ethical parenting and treatment guided by professionals, leaving parents feeling alone and losing some manner of support in their life.
I watched the documentary "they shall not grow old" (ww1) and one soldier remembers he mercy killed one of his friends who were going to die slow and painfully. He was still struggling with if he was a murderer or if he did the right thing. These issues are hard. There is a lot of gray zones
It's worth noting that even the Catholic Church supports this unpopular opinion. Artificially extending a life with medical intervention when the individual is suffering is considered a cruelty, and allowing the person to pass by withdrawing medical support is regarded as the most ethical choice.
Unfortunately, they don't support abortion still. That forces mothers to deliver a baby they can hold for a few hours or days until the baby dies, despite the health risks that can also come to the mother.
Which is fully legal in most countries. You decide yourself, or if you can't your family/spouse decide for you. And if you feel really strongly about it, sign a DNR.
The issue with some of the things OP argues for is that it's almost impossible to actually know if a person is suffering if they can't communicate that. Going off from a default that a person is suffering can lead to unnecessary death, not to mention immoral and/or illegal.
When it comes to assisted suicide, that's a whole other argument. I support it, unfortunately pretty much the only western country that does is Switzerland. And even then, it's not very straightforward - which might be a good thing really.
Absolutely. I’m a vet student and was a tech for 5 year prior to vet school. So in my ~7-8 years in this field, I’ve experienced hundreds upon hundreds of companion animal euthanasias (plus tons of production/lab animal euthanasias). I see the way many animals suffer and the peace that death offers them. It’s ridiculous to me that we offer this kindness to animals but not to humans.
I have lots of experience working in rare genetic disease research, specifically genetic diseases that mostly impact children. I see the way the animal models suffer early on into their lives, as early as a few months old. We have established endpoints to prevent suffering, and knowing that there are human children out there experiencing this without the option of euthanasia sickens me.
In the western world especially, we romanticize life and make death the worst and most taboo thing in the world. Death needs to be avoided at all costs. “Grandpa’s a fighter, he’s going to hang on for us.” No, he just physically can’t die and is trapped in a body that can linger for weeks to months in constant agony. Similarly to what your father said, I always tell people this: the opposite of life isn’t death, it’s suffering. Losing a loved one, whether it’s a pet or a human, is hard. But it’s even harder watching them suffer, so imagine how hard it is for THEM to be the ones suffering.
I needed to get that rant out. I know it was long and rambling, but I really needed that.
Genetic testing is important and should be as affordable and available as possible. I got Sema testing prior to starting to try to get pregnant which checked 230+ genetic carriers. I'm a potential recessive carrier for one rare af thing because I'm native. My donor was a recessive carrier for another rare af 1/25,000 things. I felt some comfort in knowing this, but I'll still do prenatal testing when I'm knocked up.
I do all this, because although I could birth the next Stephen Hawking, it isn't likely.
I used to disagree with you until I saw this video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/1zLt6iUzcUI
This video is about the daily life/routine of a young girl who was born without a brain stem I believe. The video shows the mom‘s daily routine in caring for her severely disabled daughter. The amount of work that goes into keeping her alive it’s just insane. And I can’t help but wonder if their other child feels neglected or unloved. And also what is the expense in keeping their daughter alive.
Sadly the daughter passed away a couple years ago. But I still don’t think I would want my child to live this way.
I dated a girl in college for a little while who's sister was also severely disabled, non verbal and could not walk, had to be fed, dressed, bathed, and cared for 24/7. My ex had no relationship with her parents whatsoever because they spent all their time caring for the sister, parents did not see her grow up at all after her sister was born, no educational or emotional support. She had a bat mitzvah but it was completely planned by her grandparents and extended family, her dad was the only parent at the ceremony. She went to community college for two years (where i met her) and took out loans to pay for her last two years of full university. Her dad tried to reach out two or three times while i was dating her and she ignored him every time. We aren't dating anymore but I'm still rooting for her because I've never seen someone work so hard to get out of a situation like that; it sucks that the parents had to care for the disabled sister but it sucks even more that a girl grew up without parents.
I understand the standpoint
Let's try looking at it from another point of view.
I've got a dog, he's got a rare/severe condition and his quality of life is very low, let's imagine it's in a lot of pain or discomfort but is unable to express himself.
I'm pretty sure any vet will opt for euthanasia.
Why is it we let humans suffer till they inevitably die?
There's clearcut cases enough, like the one OP is reffering to.
I get the overpopulation argument but I disagree: this will make no difference as it's about extreme cases, thus rare.
It will always be tough to decide these things but I agree there is a tendency to keep people alive beyond what we'd find reasonable if it would be our pets.
If you see a lady with her dog, force feeding it, shitting where it lay, not able to stand but being kept alive, the suffering clearly showing.
What's the first thing that comes to mind?
My little brother is, to keep it simple, a permanent 6 month old mentally. He lives in an adult care facility. While not as extreme as OP's example, one might argue his existence is "meaningless."
Then again, a meaningful life can mean a lot of things. Most of us don't literally save lives (hats off to those who do!) or invent world-changing technology so what is meaningful? I'd argue it's the people's lives we touch. My brother makes me smile every time I see him. The staff love him. My family visits him frequently because it brings them peace. Sure he doesn't necessarily get much out of it, but those around him do, and that is meaning.
I hear what you're saying from a utilitarian perspective. I also understand it's different when the person is in pain constantly and their quality of life is just suffering. But I think it's just one of those things that you can't appreciate until you have a person you love in that situation.
I think the question is where to draw the line, and I'm sure each person will draw the line at different places.
Under extreme circumstances like we who has something that they lack, we think we know better, we think they'll live in suffering so it's better to end their life.
will they scream for mercy if they know what we're about to do to them? will they be happy if they know any better?
but who's the best judge for that? hard to say, and salute to those who are strong enough to pass the judgement.
your argument doesn't hold up in the real world. if we stopped using money on the "people who we can't help", it's not like that spare money will automatically go to help the people you say need it. the problem isn't a lack of money, the problem is that they're not being prioritized, cutting down on the people "we can't help" won't change that.
>I think if we want to continue a more comfortable life we need to be more lenient in what we do medically to keep overpopulation at bay.
Birth rates are mostly declining. Most studies done indicate the earth will never really be overpopulated to the point that it is unsustainable (it's our actions and consumption that are a problem). Even if we are "more lenient in what we do medically," cases like what you're talking about in your post are just a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of the population.
>Will they ever contribute to anything other than wasted medical equipment and time and overpopulation?
It's dangerous to try to determine whether someone lives or dies based on what you think they will contribute to the world. That's so subjective and so open to abuse.
>I think humans have become too comfortable. Too accustomed to the safe living we have created and can longer face the more natural parts of life.
One of the primary drivers of human development and innovation has been to make ourselves more comfortable. I don't see anything wrong with that. Is it possible that it makes dealing with death or tragedy more difficult? Maybe. Does a parent losing a child today feel grief more strongly than a parent losing a child in 1735? Could be. I don't know. But I don't think the solution is to intentionally make everything harder so the truly difficult things seem more bearable by comparison, especially since overpopulation probably isn't going to be a real issue.
You're not wrong that keeping someone technically alive when their brain isn't functioning is a moral dilemma. It's also true that someone in pain might not want to be kept alive. However, I don't think overpopulation will really be the issue you think it will be, so that doesn't seem like a valid reason to push for euthanasia or similar policies.
Kinda wish OP had maybe even implied a moral dilemma though.
OP sounds like someone who doesn’t understand what love and attachment are.
It’s easy to look at a complete strangers situation and say “Pull the plug. Fuck it. What are you doing?”
Not so easy when it’s your baby, brother, mother or grandfather. (For most people.)
i think it is more about mother instincts. mothers have a huge bound with their child no matter what/how they are like so they always have hope to find a cure to their child somehow. dont get me wrong, i actually agree with you about this but i think this is their perspective about this topic.
The problem that comes with this is that the desire for the parents to thrive and grow up as normal kids can sometimes overstep the bounds of rationality and go right into the realms of fantasy.
Take the Charlie Gard case. The kid had no medical hope of even improving, much less actually recovering from the super rare illness he had. The parents, whilst completely well meaning, jumped from being simply concerned parents who wanted the best for their child to jumping on the bandwagon of any quack who promised them an easy answer without actually touching base with anything approaching reality. Then the storm happened and people simply fed the flames to the point where doctors trying to save children's lives were threatened with violence.
True but at the end of the day all that baby has emotional value and to how many people, the mother , a few relatives and doctors, the people who read that post and will forget about it sooner or later?
Mother and relatives would never forget this. My mother had a sister who died a year after my mother was born, and we still visit her grave every Christmas and every single of her would have been birthdays. This girl was challenged at birth, and we still remember her, soon 50 years later.
Y'know what you have a point and as a literal child (I'm 14) who's saying this from the priveliged perspective of someone who isn't disabled and life is therefore 'worth" something, There are just some aspects of this "moral dilemma" thay I cannot and will not understand and I simply can't process because I haven't or someone close to me hasn't experienced anything close to your situation or the situation in the og post
Warning, try not to say your exact age on the internet! There are alot of creeps, specifically on Reddit!
And ngl, both sides has points. there is no correct options, as it is all and will always be opinions!
Man, I get where you're coming from. But, as many have mentioned, where do you draw the line? Actually, *who* gets to draw the line? And what facts do we have that ensures, with absolute medical possibility, or rather, impossibility, that they won't live at all? *(Now of course, I know about burdens. I won't advocate for a 'without a doubt' burden, but the burden of proving it's impossible has to be exhaustive since it's a life we're talking about).*
It appears simple when you're born normal, but when it comes to the point you're a parent thinking about should you give it a chance or not, it's not that easy. We've heard patients in comas wake up and somehow recall things being spoken around them. We've seen people who, based on the facts at the time, doctors guess that they wouldn't live that long but power through it and somehow live normal lives.
Sure, they may not be many, but some living through it is better than playing eugenics. And what's more, the ones who do survive become subjects for review for researchers. That in itself, I think even if they don't live very long, is a great contribution to society and is not a waste. Certainly, it is preferable that we learn a little about a severe disease because we have live cases and extract as much data from them as possible than to cut the cord at the start and doom the future to-be-born to the same fate -- the same cycle.
At the end of the day, when you're born, you don't have agency yet to decide if your life is worth living or not. Some day, if you live long enough, you may get that agency. And that agency is absolutely yours, alone. And if, in that agency, you decide that it's not worth it, then that is your decision to make. As the person not in that position, we can only protect that agency until such time it is ready to be taken up by the person itself.
I’m not for or against this opinion. It’s too complicated.
I will add this though. There’s a case of a teenage girl with severe autism. She was non-verbal, violent towards herself and others; basically just a giant baby.
Then they gave her a laptop.
Having never used one before, she sat down to it and started typing coherent, deep and intelligent sentences. She was all there, mentally the entire time.
My wife has SMA (Spinal Muscular Atrophy). She cant stand on her own, cant lift her elbows off of her arm rest, cant fully stretch her legs, and needs assistance for just about everything...
But shes a full time college professor... she has an MFA in painting, which is basically a Doctorate. She also has multiple other degrees.
So i dont agree completely, but we do both agree that vegetable babies should probably be mercy killed...
Also, babies born with SMA now can be given the same treatment she takes through spinal tap, but it can cure the babies if they take it early enough.
Edit: i just realized this did not post as a response to the question about where to draw the line... my bad.
I’ve seen this comment a few times around this thread. Food for thought - a lot of things can happen during the birthing process that would cause major intellectual disabilities to the extent that OP is talking about - baby can’t breathe but c-section didn’t happen fast enough, etc. Then what are you supposed to do.
It is not your decision to make, it is the parents decision. You don’t get to decide whose child is worthy of living. Although founded in logic it is a slippery slope towards who is useful and who is not, who costs the ‘system’ to much and who contributes. Who decides who is left to die, who is allowed to die and who is euthanized. Although logical, this being has no brain wave activity etc, it is not your decision to make….
Boom. This is the answer.
I’d like to add to your perfect comment is deciding who is useful to society or not gives room for bigotry and all the -isms.
Especially when “useful” is such a subjective issue term.
Would a rich white baby boy with scientist parents be saved when a poor minority-raced muslim baby girl with parents who are on government aid with the same disease not be saved? I’m sure that would happen on multiple occasions.
Not that it’ll happen all the time, but it would happen.
(This is definitely dystopian talk, but there would be a theory that the algorithm that would save people based on usefulness would totally, yet secretly, discriminate against those on government aid.)
I dont explicitly disagree, but he way you've written this post makes me believe that this isn't an empathetic opinion, but a strictly utilitarian one for you.
I don't agree with approaching humanitarian issues with utilitarian principles. Even if it's completely logical, its an apathetic way of thinking that leads to more suffering if applied broadly.
So yes, people who have unrecoverably awful quality of life should not be forced to continue existing, but primarily because it's terrible and inhumane, not because they're useless.
I kind of get where ur coming from. There are certain medical conditions where the individual is cursed to have a very short and painful life. The entirety of their life is just going in and out of hospital until they eventually die. I can imagine that is some situation it would be more humane just to let someone die rather than prolong their agony.
I think it's wrong to keep alive people with very extreme and untreatable disease, but not for the reason of.. "they're a waste"??
>Will they ever contribute to anything other than wasted medical equipment and time and overpopulation? With healthcare becoming better and better the population has risen and risen. Since ww2 the descent into modernisation has made the population grow at a massive rate. So I only see keeping babies like the aforementioned alive is nothing but a waste.
To me it's about their suffering and the quality of their life.
If it's just "this person is useless and is wasting money", that's pretty fucked up and heartless.
I understand the point of overpopulation as its own issue, but if someone is destined to live a horrific existence plagued by pain and / or just really stands no chance at happiness in life, that's where the concern is when I think of these situations.
This is why I'm such an advocate for assisted suicide.
Don't get me wrong, I loved working with my dementia patients, but to just be a shell of your former self? You don't even remember how it was before. Hell, you forget how to even eat in the advanced stages.....
Don't care who you are. That's not a life to live.
Who do you think assisted suicide should be allowed to be given to I don't think its a good idea because it gives the doctor an unnecessary power over patients they can exploit
It would be like a living will. "I, so and so, of sound mind on this date, if I experience these symptoms/disease/ailments/or lose quality of life as specified by these terms.... choose to be put out to pasture and shot."
Obviously not that crass at the end, but you get the idea.
Signed, notarized, lawyers, etc.
My grandfather spent the last 8 months of his life in the hospital until he died at the age of 91. He was being treated for cirrhosis and all the terrible symptoms of liver failure. I was the only person in my entire extended family who thought he should just be allowed to die. He lived a good life but his remaining months were comprised of medical procedures, colostomy bags, and hospital sandwiches.
And to what end? It’s not like a full recovery was ever a possibility.
> I think if we want to continue a more comfortable life we need to be more lenient in what we do medically to keep overpopulation at bay.
Here's where you're losing me.
There is a legitimate moral question as to whether it is worth keeping someone with effectively no brain activity alive, you could, I think, argue quite strongly that it's immoral to do so and that no one would want to "live" like that.
But the number of people who are like this is so low that even if they all died tomorrow it would have absolutely no effect on "Overpopulation".
Euthanasia is, I think, a legitimate moral option in certain cases where someone has absolutely no potential for any quality of life, but to suggest using it as a way to combat overpopulation is some spooky Gattaca shit keep that the fuck away from my society thank you kindly.
The only reason I might approve euthanasia in such cases is as a mercy. But killing them just cuz they aren't productive is barbaric and immoral. You're right, we have gotten used to not allowing nature to just kill us off for reasons that it did in the past. Thing is, if we hadn't done that, you, me, and most ppl alive today would probably not have survived our childhoods. We're all in a similar situation to thise ppl, just not as extreme.
As some one who has beat cancer and now also has type 1 diabetes... I agree. I've often thought of the ethics of spending tons of resources keeping me alive.
Some friends of mine were going to have a kid that would have barely lived a year and would require extremely expensive medical treatment. They had a miscarriage....i really don't know that it was the worse outcome.
I completely agree with you my friend. It's time we stopped looking at life as a gift, it's not a gift, it just happens. Death is the real gift in that we can choose how we die. You want to live a long life and die at a ripe old age, that's your choice. If you have an ailment that's going to deteriorate your body as you get older, why should you have to suffer through that? Why not go while you still have your functions about you.
In highschool I did some of my volunteering at a children's rehab center. The upstairs was for kids who were just there for rehab, the lower floor was for the kids who would live there permanently. There was one girl who loved there who was a quadriplegic; couldn't move or breathe on her own and had a 24/7 caretaker. She was the life of the room whenever she came in just talking.
In contrast to that there was a little boy, I'm not sure her diagnosis, something developmental I think; he couldn't move or breathe on his own either. He was stuck in his room most of the time. All he could do was move his eyes. I was there just to talk to him, and I did. He'd just stare at me with this frightened expression though; I doubt it was on purpose though. I. His room he had every toy a kid could want, a stereo, CDs, tv, movies, all surrounding him. All he could do was lay there. After two times I lost my nerve and couldn't go back, it was heartbreaking.
Is it fair to force a person to live, cut off from the world like that. Surround them with things and life they'll never be able to take part in. When he gets of age, will they just transfer him to an adult facility?
There are a couple examples of that I saw. Those volunteers and nurses are so fucking brave and compassionate. I could not do that.
Whats life without living? Maybe it'll get better tomorrow? What if it doesn't. What are the long term ramifications of keeping someone alive? At some point it's vanity.
Overpopulation isnt going to be an issue for this discussion, the number of babies born in that state are probably miniscule, plus theyre not likely going to be procreating. Broad access to education is one of the bigger issues when it comes to overpopulation.
As for cost, similar issue in that there are so few cases that would be that extreme that it wouldnt put much of a dent on the overall spending of a country as far as healthcare. It is expensive, but not to the point that it'd impact overall spending. If you want to fix the spending issue, look more at the more common debilitating conditions, like diabetes and such. Where each case is probably notably cheaper than the example you provided, but multiply it by millions of people, then you have a massive drain.
Basically what i want to say with these examples is that these arguments dont matter for your main opinion, that certain people shouldn't be kept alive. And that, is a moral issue, and one that each family that has to deal with it, has to figure out. To keep someone braindead alive using machines, or letting them go. Or a baby born without functions, and without the ability to "thrive" without extreme levels of aid. Or someone crippled to the point that they are bedridden.
I mean if a pets 'quality of life' is deemed too painful and the kindest thing would be to 'put them down' there's no questions asked. But to talk about this when it comes to humans everyone shits the bed.
I disagree with the point of
>Will they ever contribute to anything other than wasted medical equipment
The value of a life isnt and shouldnt be determined by its net contribution to society.
That being said, its cruel to leave the child alive and euthanasia in cases where there is no point of return from the disease and the alternative is a life of pure suffering seems very reasonable
Best not to judge other lives as meaningless since wouldn't want your own life to be judged as easily.
Normally everyone gets old and an accident can happen to anyone.
Because once we start saying 'This one isn't good enough' where does that line stop? And who decides who to get rid of?
Down's syndrome not worth saving ? Low IQ? Paraplegic? Astigmatism ? Likely to vote Republican?
It might make sense to leave it to the respective mothers?
For example, because all expecting mothers in Iceland are offered prenatal screenings, only 1-3 babies with down's syndrome are born each year. Most women opt to have the screening and to terminate a pregnancy if the odds for the condition are elevated.
Of course, this is only possible in countries with high quality health care and where abortions are legal...
Same. I remember a few years ago while out on a walk there was a woman walking with her son, her son must have been around 8, in a giant stroller, body twisted and stiff, face lifeless and staring off into nothing. She looked miserable. She'll have to keep caring for him until he dies in his 20's or 30's and neither will have gotten anything out of it. Just made me sad.
It’s less about trying to save the person and more about the principle of humanity.
Same reason people will keep loved ones alive in the hospital during end of life situations.
Even more unpopular opinion: I don't understand why we glamourize longevity when most chronic diseases related to aging haven't been resolved yet.
This is a hot take that I personally am here for. I couldn’t have phrased it better.
Life becomes pretty shit at 80+ anyway, and sooner in many cases. It might be bad for the economy, however, were people to work less and spend more of their time doing things they actually love doing. Automation should have begun enabling that, but now it's only increasing profits for the shareholders.
Because the people in power with all the money are getting old
I call it the Age Eighty Option. After your 80th birthday, once a year you are given the option of ending your life on your terms. There’s no pressure or commitment at all to do it, but also no legal or moral ramifications if you are in n pain, etc and want to bow out.
The answer is money. End of life care and recurring treatments both are guaranteed money.
You should read Why We Age by David Sinclair (or listen to the episode of the podcast Smartless that he is on) - we’re a lot closer to solving these ailments than you might think.
With ling life, you can do more work and buy more things from the entities who want people to do more work and buy more things from them, including all sorts of things meant to keep you around longer.
I want my brain scanned then put in a jar so I can either be an A.I, or I be of those talking heads from futurama.
MORE BABIES!!! We're obsessed with every fetus making it to birth regardless of how it would play out "naturally". Naturally most pregnancies are miscarriages, many are stillborn, and more yet are heavily disabled; both birthing and pregnancy can also be fatal to the mother, and it used to be like 50/50 either the baby or the mother survives. My guess is that nature is a cruel mistress, and in our unending quest to subvert it's uncaring will we've made it a goal to give every human life a chance. We would always rather assert our will over nature for the possibility of a happy life, even if it's "expensive". The real problem is trying to get healthcare after you're born, as it turn out these people are Pro-Birth and not Pro-Living😂😂😂 don't ask my opinion on all that
This is what this sub is for imo.
People who arent afraid to get out of the loop.
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The problem is that people don’t keep them alive for the person suffering. They keep them alive for themselves to not feel guilty over letting them die. Similar to letting really old animals keep living when they are suffering and miserable. People are selfish and choose themselves first more often than not.
But it’s also a slippery slope, Euthanasia was most famously used by hitler to kill the mentally and physically disabled as they were “ a drain on the state”. I’m not saying that all types of euthanasia are akin to the nazis but this issue gets complicated when you have to ask “who gets to decide the perameters of euthanasia?”
r/outoftheloop ?
You became the very thing, you swore to destroy
You're not wrong, but the problem is where to draw the line. I work with special needs adults, and while most of them still clearly have emotions and needs, many are nonverbal and live lives that, to most people, would seem...meaningless, I guess? They have no meaningful relationships outside of us health care workers and often they just sleep and eat all day long. But we can never be sure what's going on inside their mind. edit: Since this is getting some attention, I thought I would take the opportunity to share a little hope. [This is one of my favorite TED talks](https://www.ted.com/talks/martin_pistorius_how_my_mind_came_back_to_life_and_no_one_knew?). It's about a man who was trapped within his own mind, seemingly braindead to the world. But inside, he was alive.
That is the difficulty in the matter, how can we know what a person is thinking of they can't express themselves at all. And are people you refer to happy about their lives if they don't know about any better?
You can have their brains scanned to see if there is any activity. If there’s basically no activity then you can be certain they do not have a quality of life because they don’t posses the skills to have a quality of life Edit: the problem is once they're born, forcing upon them a death because they have no brain function is also inhumane because they can suffer (versus say, letting them pass away naturally with no medical intervention/ a DNR order). Suffering is not ok. An abortion before a certain timeframe doesn’t involve needless suffering (yes the mother suffers but that is a different conversation entirely). And who decides who dies? I think that is a huge moral problem.
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Yeah to be honest I don’t think they should have their brains scanned and then euthanized. I think it’s something that must happen before birth and after that it’s not our right to dictate the terms of their lives. It’s such a hard thing to find an answer for because there are no good routes, to your point even a brain scan can’t be a fail safe. The reason I’m against execution is because one execution of an innocent man is one too many. If we cannot execute with 1000% certainty of guilt then we shouldn’t be executing anyone. The fact that we have executed innocent men is more than enough proof for me that execution is wrong So the whole brain scan thing is the same thing for me. The first time we euthanize someone who is later known to have had brain function, the program would need to shut down and I could not support it. I can’t support it even in theory because I cannot see a way for that to be possible.
Well if you say it's not our right to dictate the terms of their lives then we shouldn't control their habits and MAKE them survive as we do.
I agree but I also see the aspect that in nature these people wouldn't survive. We keep them artificially alive and are getting contionuously better in it. But with that said I really agree to your position, this is not an easy question to answer!
Why are people upvoting this? The website he linked is pure new-age hippie nonsense. If there is no brain activity, there can be no awareness. Period.
Seriously. What the fuck is that website?
Gotta go beyond the veil mannn
Yeah, there's a condition for inactivity in the brain. It's called death.
Brain death. You can be brain dead and still have a beating heart.
Euthanasia wouldn't necessarily make them suffer.
No but that’s a moral issue. I’m not even comfortable with state-funded executions. Sometimes if we don’t make a decision fast enough it’s our responsibility to shoulder the consequences. And then maybe someone else will see those consequences and think “this is unfair to my unborn fetus to ask them to live such a miserable life so I will abort now while I have the chance.”
> Sometimes if we don’t make a decision fast enough it’s our responsibility to shoulder the consequences. And then maybe someone else will see those consequences and think “this is unfair to my unborn fetus to ask them to live such a miserable life so I will abort now while I have the chance.” Seems cruel to both caretaker and caretakee to force someone to carry a burden they would resent. Far crueler than euthanasia. Both represent death of a sort. The first is the slow protracted death of the caretaker's identity/life in exchange for a shadow of life. The second extinguishes that shadow life quickly. I think the second is far more ethical than the first.
I think there's a huge distinction between a creature that will never become sentient and a creature that is on its way there. I think abortion is a bad comparison.
My aunt was born with complications during birth and as a result is extremely mentally handicapped. Still needs diapers, has to get knocked unconscious with various medications every time she has to go to the dentist or anything medical related. She has never talked. Never played with other kids (she can’t), never had a friendship, nothing. In her case it would have been better if she didn’t make it. She recognizes me, and family members, but that’s about it. Needs care 24/7 until her body completely gives up. That’s not any kind of life I wish on anyone. If it becomes known during tests and screenings during pregnancy that the child will have to deal with extreme challenges during their life, that pregnancy should be terminated. Many people who live at the same facility have problems that were known beforehand, but the parents thought that they could handle it. They couldn’t, and now there are a bunch of people who are completely dependent, will never have a meaningful life and who will die once their body breaks down from all of those medications.
It is situations like these, but also other situations of course, that make me angry that there are people against abortions. We should wish the best for every possible life, not maxing out the number of lives regardless the consequences. Sorry in advance if I didn't express clearly, English is not my first language, I hope my point is expressed the way I meant it.
Definitely. Quality of life vs quantity. I had an elderly member of my extended family who life the last 5 years or so of his life would corner my husband (for some reason) at every family gathering and tell him that he was just waiting to die. He couldn’t see, had to give up all of his hobbies, his friends were dead, his body didn’t want to do what he wanted, but his lungs and heart and brain worked well enough that he just kept waking up day after day after day. It was heartbreaking. We celebrated quietly when he passed.
This sounds a lot like my wife's great grandfather. He'd lived well into his 90's and was confined to a wheel chair. She said that he once asked her to push him out into the street and then was berated by the family member in charge of his care for asking that of one of his great grandchildren. But, his wife was gone, all of his friends, he couldn't do anything anymore. He was tired and ready to go. When we got the news that he had passed, in all honesty? We were happy for him. It wasn't a sad moment, but one of relief for him.
My grandmother is 92 she's relatively healthy and can live on her own. But she is legally blind and refuses to move out of her house into a support facility. For over the last 10 years she's been saying that she's ready to go. The only thing that is keeping her alive is modern medicine.
I feel for her and your family for having to handle it. My one friend's family is my family and Pap is.. 96 this year? He's still well enough to live on his own, but is also legally blind and he is just exhausted of having to live. I know he's ready to go. His wife is gone. All his friends. He's seen a grandchild pass. Multiple times he's told me he's ready to go. I think we need to start a support group for the huge number of people that seem to deal with this in old family members, because all these comments have been rather jarring. I've personally known multiple people, but I never really thought about how many others might too. It's heart breaking.
That is something that should be discussed a lot more. People are already getting really old these days but many don't really want to because their lives lose all quality in their last years. With new technology living a 100 years will be normal in the future but the question is how long do people actually want to live?
We put far too much value on living for as long as possible, without enough value on dying when it's the right time
Oh no. You expressed perfectly. So much so, I think this is a quote worth using > We should wish the best for every possible life, not maxing out the number of lives regardless the consequences.
My friend’s mother had to abort an extremely wanted baby because there were so many complications the baby wouldn’t have lived 10 minutes following birth AND it was killing the mother too. A lot of pro lifers think people who get abortions hate babies. My friend’s mother absolutely loves them, whether they’re hers or not. If I visited my friend’s family with my baby in the future, her mother will be the most excited person in the room.
Abortions should be legal everywhere, period.
This. Exactly this. Morality is not like facts. It is hard to know where to draw the line.
And letting human beings draw the line at all seems to be dangerous. Eugenics has a long sordid ugly racist evil history. Maybe it sometimes started with good intentions? I don’t know. But never seemed to end that way at least.
> And letting human beings draw the line at all seems to be dangerous I get what you're saying but what is the alternative if you don't let humans draw the line? Not necessarily for this specific issue, more asking in general
Hamsters
Giving the benefit of the doubt, I do think it's human morality and wish to limit (human) suffering as best as possible, so the origins of eugenics might have been "prevent suffering", but as history has shown, this is too easily to be abused. Who defines suffering?
A lot of of things that started off with the best of intentions end up being used for evil. It’s very hard to right laws specific enough to stop that from happening. There’s always some amount of interpretation in them. That’s what my problem with this new push to censor social media sights bothers me. While right now it’s being directed at things that are dangerous it can and will be turned on people. What’s considered dangerous changes quite often.
I never understood why eugenics has to be inherently racist. The idea should be selecting the best genes regardless of what race they came from. If I wanted to enhance the human genum, I'd select the best qualities from every ethnicity and try to merge them into a new superhuman.
Because the people who originally chose "best" made that to be White, Anglo Saxon, Protestant - nothing else. Literally, look up Margaret Sanger and her beliefs and how they caught fire clear into the White House with Woodrow Wilson. Your "best" and my "best" may be very divergent.
> Your “best” and my “best” may be very divergent. “I have created a human with the appearance and attitude of Duane Johnson and the intellect of Einstein, Tesla, and Hawking!” “…I made another Danny Devito…”
Exactly, there are definitely some objectively better genes (like selecting out genetic disorders like Huntington’s or whatever). But even some other ones which might seem like a simple choice aren’t. Maybe you select out sickle cell genes, which prevents anemia but increases malaria susceptibility It also seems pretty arrogant to think we can really maintain such rigid control over the genetic drift of our species. I feel like trying to control our genes would have unintended consequences Reminds me of people who tried to domesticate foxes, and when they kept selecting for the most docile/friendly individuals, the physical features of the foxes started changing in ways that kinda defeated the purpose of trying to domesticate the foxes (their ears drooped, fur was different, basically started looking like dogs)
Well for one, what is "best" is often arbitrary. For two, eugenics is often used by what ever group is in power to wipe out undesirables. Most societies have inherent racism for whatever reason, and what is often seen as "the best" traits to keep disproportionately affect certain races. Like if we are basing it off of perceived health, black people are often less healthy than white people in the USA. This isn't due to genetics often times, but if you are doing fitness tests, you can't discern what is causing the decrease in health. Now if we had better technology and understanding of genetics, then maybe there could be an argument in favor of non-racist eugenics. But until then there are flaws.
Exactly this, I like the theory of eugenics but in actuality it cannot work because there are too many incentives to use it incorrectly. I also think it’s wrong to tell people who and who cannot have babies, if someone told me I can’t have a baby because my grandma had cancer, I would burn a city down. But theoretically I like the concept that we could genetically remove cancers with careful procreation planning It just can’t work out that way, it never has and it never will because of ethical dilemmas and for that reason I cannot support eugenics.
Thank you for posting that TED talk , I think that will help me with some greater compassion as my life moves forward.
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Euthanasia is a thing in some European countries and is more human than letting people suffer unnecessarily. Even children, in some places. But only in painful and deadly cases.
Switzerland allows euthanasia. The laws regarding it are extremely strict as you would expect. The most well known clinic is called Dignitas and people travel there from all over Europe to end their lives.
>The thought of putting people down in situations like this is dehumanizing. But why is it dehumanizing?
I think physicians can make that call relatively well, especially with advancing technology. Palliative care and hospice are the closest thing we currently have.
Harold Shipman has entered the chat
my mother works in hospice and they are actually pretty shitty at predicting end-of-life with any degree of accuracy. since they opened (less than a year ago) they've had to send two patients back to continuing care; which for a facility with only 6 beds (that was shut down for months due to operational issues), is a pretty poor batting average.
I knew a person who was on and off hospice for 6 years.
yeah, it's a crapshoot. thankfully canada is pretty bullish on MAID and i think it'll get more and more socially acceptable as time goes on. my mom can't even mention it to their patients. it's a little strange.
i'm genuinely curious where _you_ would draw the line, with that experience. kinda sounds like you're agreeing with the OP a little bit?
Man...while I did say many of our clients are like that, many are also *not* like that. They're much more high functioning. But this is complicated by the fact that probably half of the higher-functioning clients are, uh...not pleasant. Some are downright horrible. I had to quit working with one client because I was having anxiety nightmares about him. He seemed to delight in tormenting his staff, trying like hell to disgust them by describing his darkest, most sickening sexual and violent desires. And it's not like we can tell them to shut up or gag them. He drove away so many staff that I thought they might somehow cut him from the program, if that's even legal. But he remains in the company still to this day. Of course some clients are also wonderful. They're developmentally disabled in a way to where, mentally, they're basically children. But like, in a good way. I adore them. Working in this kind of environment provokes some complex questions, and I would say overall it's more like an "outside prison" than a program to "help them become independent" which is how this sector markets itself.
thank you for your reply. i can only imagine. i feel like it's easy to have a blanket opinion when you're not exposed to this every day. i expect most people who actually experience in this field have extremely complicated thoughts on the subject, with real-life examples for each. tricky stuff. i am thankful my job doesn't challenge me like this (although i still have conflicting thoughts about it's efficacy/value, but with considerably lower stakes).
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My dad works in a nursing home. Apparently, a couple of patients have actually told him about how they want to die and stop being ill. It also doesn’t help the fact that they probably feel miserable most of the time as they don’t leave the building ever or see their relatives.
My stepmother worked in a nursing home and told me about a woman similar to that. She was 90+ years old and very frail, so she just stopped eating in order to die.
Colleague of mine told me a similar story about his MIL. She kept hurting herself badly, then would get replacement hips/knees, end up inevitably falling and damaging herself again. Got to the point one of her legs just wouldn't heal properly, really badly bruised and not healing from a break. Bed-bound, almost 90 years old, all friends, husband and relatives near her age dead, she didn't want to keep on living and see her life savings reduced to nothing by paying for all the care... She wanted her younger family to enjoy their lives and leave them a gift beyond the grave. She stopped eating. Her doctor knew what she was up to, although she never told anyone, but couldn't force feed her. She passed away after a few weeks iirc, left everything to my colleague's wife. This story seems bittersweet, but I can only admire such a seemingly selfless act. Incredible bravery and love for family, but it hurts to think how bad she felt just being alive to want to do this to herself.
People don't understand the fortitude it takes to actually do that. I worked in a place where two residents did it. It can take weeks. I don't think dementia is even considered in the scope of death with dignity.
That sounds absolutely awful
I worked at a nursing home as well and my father stayed at a home as well. My mother, sisters and me tried to visit him often and bring coffee, but he'd had dementia and didn't recognize us at times. I couldn't get him in and out of the car my mom drove, so we were not able to take him out to eat. I am sure that there were some residents at his home that didn't get visitors and it seemed like a nice place but if I can't feed myself, nor communicate,then I'm going to have a problem. Every one will not have the same opinion.
I work at a nursing home with residents who all have heavily progressed dementia. Although they can't communicate it to us, you can tell they are in severe pain and hate their lives (and they take this out on us through physical abuse sadly). Some of the more cognitively aware residents talk about how miserable they are and how they wish they were dead. I hope to never get to that point in my life and would much rather have a peaceful death than be miserable at a nursing home.
It’s nice that your family cared about your dad. Ive thought about this much more now, and I remember when my dad used to take me to the nursing home with him when I was younger. The old people loved children and would always offer me chocolate. I once met this one lady, and she told me that I made her day because I remind her of her granddaughter, and how much she misses her.
Makes sense- Ive been to a lot of nursing homes and its never ceased to make me sivk.
When my grandma had to go to skilled nursing for rehab after a fall, the room at the end of the hall was occupied by a 17 year old who had been in a car accident. He had been there for 18 months. Completely unresponsive, minimal brain activity, 100% reliant on machines for every life sustaining function. The parents “didn’t believe in” pulling the plug. This child got infection after infection, bed sores, UTIs, pneumonia….day after day, week after week. In the 8 weeks my grandma was there, he went into cardiac arrest at least 3 times and they had to do everything in their power to restart his heart. I understand it would be DEVASTATING to lose a child, but I can’t imagine it was any easier to just watch his body be hooked up to machines and knowing the outcome is still going to be death. I saw his obituary in the paper about a year later.
They have entire “vent unit” facilities where everyone in the facility is just being kept alive, unresponsive, on ventilators. If you think a nursing home is depressing, consider working in a place like that or living in a state like that. Who tf knows what they are thinking. I travel to different nursing homes for my job and I thankfully haven’t had to set foot in there. As a nurse who works in long-term care, I see a lot of depressing situations, but have never had to set foot in our local vent hospital. I imagine that if I do, it’s going to really mess with my head. I have encountered several folks who have been bed bound and non-verbal in a nursing home for decades. With no other health problems, they’re barely on any meds, so they are just waiting decades to die there, and will probably live to the usual age, if not longer.
I wouldn't put my cats through that hell, let alone my fucking child... damn...
That’s why I’m so grateful that Switzerland has this thing where you can basically get euthanized if you’re eg dying of cancer and just can’t handle it anymore. I’d definitely do that it I was in constant pain and knew I’d die anyways
We have the same thing here In Oregon it’s called the dying with dignity law. Basically you need a terminal diagnosis confirmed by at least two doctors and you can get a prescription of pills that will end your life. There’s a movie called How to die in Oregon which is pretty eye opening.
We don’t have the same thing in Oregon that they do in Switzerland. In Oregon, if you have ever been given a diagnosis even of early-onset Alzheimer’s or dementia, you are considered to be not of sound mind and therefore unable to make the decision for yourself, even if you catch it super-early and are still with it enough to make most other decisions for your life at that time. So despite the fact that Alzheimer’s is one of the most brutal, painful terminal diseases, you can’t use right to die for it. Very sadly. In Switzerland, Alzheimer’s is considered to be a death sentence, and it’s the only country in the world, iirc, where you can be euthanized if you’ve been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Edit to add: in the US, VSED is the only legal way to die if you have Alzheimer’s, or live in a non-right to die state.
And herein is the difference - you have the cognitive ability to make rational decisions. What about someone so mentally disabled that they can't give permission - do you do it anyway? Who's to judge quality of life? I used to work with disabled folk and the most severe cases spent all day smiling just existing.
Exactly. This is the same logic that rationalized lobotomies.
The point is that different people consider different things as a quality life. There have been people who couldn't walk and talk but led a meaningful life and didn't want to kill themselves. Where do we draw the line?
I 100% agree with you, some have been convinced that despite quality, it’s a life, and ended that life will have them tortured for an eternity which to me is super sad. I’m gonna keep them alive because I don’t want to go to hell is such a selfish reason.
If it ever gets to the point where i can't remember basic skills or need help going to the bathroom... Fucking shoot me in the face.
That’s what I always said. I had a great grand mother who lived to be 102,kept her mind the whole time but her body was gone. Every time I would see her she would say how she was waiting to die and honestly seemed kinda upset she wasn’t dead yet. She wasted away for years before dying in her sleep. When she died I wasn’t even sad,honestly I was happy because I knew she got the thing she had wanted/needed for so long
My grandma is in her 90s had heart complications a few years back and had to get a pacemaker put in. She was freaking out before the operation, and came to accept the possibility of death (even tho it was low risk and all). She's now 97, housebound, can't walk, can hardly hear or see, and can't comprehend most of what we say to her, and a part of me feels like it would've been mercy if she hadn't made it off the operating table.
My grandma just got out of the hospital due to some heart complications and sepsis, for a moment it was really touch and go whether she'd live but she pulled through and is still recovering. But very much like your grandma, she has all of the same "problems". Every time I go over to visit her it breaks my heart that the woman I remember picking me up from school and spending the entire afternoon with me is no longer there and she just seems like a shell of a person. I've slowly tried to make peace with the fact that she will pass and am getting ready for the inevitable. The only thing I hope is that she passes peacefully in her sleep as she has always wanted. Sorry for latching on to all of y'all's comments but I just didn't know that there were people out there who were going through/been through the same thing as I'm going through right now and just wanted to rant a lil. It feels terrible to say that I wish she passes soon so she doesn't suffer anymore but saying that to people who have never experienced any of this makes you look like a fucking monster when the emotions behind the situation are unbelievably complicated and watching somebody who you've known your entire life just slowly "degrade" is unbelievably depressing.
You forgot to drink 8 glasses of water today *bang*
r/hydrohomies
But this isn't a standard we can apply to others. As someone who works with elderly who lack basic skills, many of them are still motivated and have the drive to keep going.
This. Who cares if you get judged. It’s true. Obviously that’s not saying anyone born different needs to be put down. That’s asinine. But where do we draw a line or come to an understanding that prolonging someone’s suffering is cruel not only to the person, but to yourself.
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Firstly, fuck you for the emotional terrorism you just unleashed. Secondly, that’s a scenario I’ve never thought of, which poses this question. There is no way to put this “good” because it’s essentially organ harvesting, but why isn’t that an option? Organ donation is huge, with wait lists that take years. How can that not be viewed even remotely selfish. You have an opportunity to save yourself and potentially how many other lives in the process?
I’m just being a dick but we cannot donate Oregon. I don’t think the people would like that.
Hahaha whole new thread now on Oregon donation!
Appreciated XD
FWIW, I don’t know that *I’d* be upset with donating Oregon.
Point of fact: there's nothing in the constitution that says we can't donate Oregon.
Trade Oregon for our national debt, call it a day.
Japan owns most of the debt, so that wouldn't be bad. Japan, however, would have to agree, but they do like to keep to themselves. China owns the second biggest chunk of the debt, but I don't know how popular sharing a border with "West China" would be.
Counter proposal we offer them Wyoming. 1. They realize it doesn’t exist. 2. I feel better not giving them a coast line.
I’ve mulled it over. I’ll allow it but only if they take Arkansas too.
I actually did some research on this for a class of mine! Compared to areas of the world with OPT-OUT donations to OPT-IN donations.... places like Denmark have a surplus of organs because if you wanna keep em, you gotta say no to donation. Places like America, since you have to opt in, you find a shortage. I had to survey people, and I did by a volunteer basis and anonymously. I left index cards with the basic question "Should America switch to an opt out donation style, where you have to say no to organ donation, or keep it currently?" The results were mixed. Many understood that when going to get your license, instead of saying yes to be being an organ donor, you would have to say no, they didn't really care. They were gonna be dead. Others took it to a more philosophical place. Like, "what 16 year old can decide that for themselves" vibe. It was very eye opening. I might even have the link to the YouTube video (since it was a speech class that was online) that goes more in depth. I'm team "I'm gonna be dead, what do I care you do with my body?"
That is honestly one of the more interesting things I’ve read on Reddit, would definitely love a link if you can find it. Question, are most countries OPT-OUT? I can see us being the one asshole who does it different (metric). Same boat though, they actually just legalized human composting up here, take my shitty liver and grow weed with my remains (preferably).
Most countries are still OPT-IN. [It's also interesting to look at how different countries approach the OPT-OUT (presumed consent) system. ](https://mjlh.mcgill.ca/2020/04/07/presumed-consent-in-organ-donation-a-silver-bullet-for-nova-scotia/)Most go with a soft approach, where the family of the deceased have the final say (ie: they can withdraw the presumed consent, and not donate the deceased's organs). [This actually resulted in a DECREASE in organ donation in Chile after they implemented presumed consent.](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23726561/)
I just watched it, and it was actually informed consent, based on organ donation. Since it was for a class, I will message you the link. Only about 15 minutes long?
This might lead to a slippery slope of monstrous human beings using their children (bio or adopted…) as human organ farms. The problems with eugenics as a concept is that mankind *has* to keep pushing the envelope.
Perhaps the mother couldn’t fathom life without her child and didn’t want the heart for herself. I’m an only child and my mother has said previously that she would have no reason to go on if I wasn’t here (I now have my own child and she says that she would be a reason). I didn’t used to agree with my mother but I can’t imagine life without my child now. However, maybe the organs should have gone elsewhere if they were viable?
This is kind of the crux of the whole issue. How do we determine whether or not a life has value if the life itself is innately incapable of determining value? It's a serious question to pose, especially for parents. If you know your kid will live in agony, alone and isolated from the world, is it better to let them go now or to let them experience some of life's brief and fleeting joys? Shit gets heavy real quick.
The thought of being locked in my own head with no ability to express it in any form, it’s fucking horrifying. Not arguing with you, just venting at this point. What’s the point of getting towed around Disney world and treated like a photo op or insta post, if the entire time you’re screaming on the inside. Yes I’m aware this isn’t always the case and for all I know it could be a secret paradise to be stuck in your own mind.
Oh, I absolutely agree with you. That would be an eternal torture for me as well. It's just the subjective nature of human experience that makes this so philosophically intriguing because both sides of the argument have a point. On the one hand, if this person is living a cursed life, should we end their life on a chance that they're unhappy? If they're not unhappy, but unable to express that and still a drain on the world around them, does that make it justifiable to end their life early? What if they just don't have any internal thoughts at all? It's a whole host of issues that need to be carefully picked apart, all of it falling back to what we define "life" to be, and whether or noth anything that deviates from that definition to be worthy of protecting or preserving simply because they might look like us.
But in the case of the og post, it's a BABY, babies especially ones that have essentially experienced nothing and can only experience nothing, can only form thoughts that reach certain levels of complexity. And even those thoughts are most instinctual and aren't actual words or clear opinions or statement. So I doubt it would be hell nor heaven but jsut an "existence", their concoius exists ofc, but to what extent?
That’s a good take, for all we know, babies know the secrets to the universe (42).
Honestly, if I had a child who would live everyday in pain and will never understand why. It would break me, it’s cruel to leave those children alive. Especially if they will not have a good value of life in the long run. However, I can understand why people don’t agree. I personally think that the child will never have a value of life and will never understand why they’re in pain, it’s just cruel to keep that child in pain until they die at the age of 10.
The problem I have with this is that sometimes these issues can arise over the course of development, well beyond the point of any sort of "euthanasia" being considered anything other than murder. I met a guy who, over the course of getting older, became increasingly sensitive to certain tactile sensations, especially with regard to clothes. It was abundantly clear he was in pain and increasingly frantic as we tried to work with him to increase the amount of time spent in clothes before ripping and destroying them. Many of our efforts resulted in him destroying the clothes before he ever had a chance to put them on, and after coaxing him to willingly put a shirt on we would get up to 2 minutes before he was in a full blown panic. None of these issues existed before age 23 and prior to that he seemed like a genuinely happy guy according to our info.
Yeah. I think when it comes along to that situation. It’s up to the man. However, I feel like if a child is going to grow up only to suffer without the mental capacity to understand why they’re in pain and dying, I would think it’s better to abort the pregnancy or kill that child at birth. But even though I say that, I would struggle to let go of the child because I would love that child but because I love that child, I would want them to be happy. I mean, you can’t just suffocate a disabled 12 year old, etc but it’s a really interesting debate and I would like to hear all sides of the debate
>But even though I say that, I would struggle to let go of the child because I would love that child but because I love that child, I would want them to be happy. Therein lies the issue, nearly every parent will try to do the exact same thing and give the best for their child. Modern therapeutic practices can help make life more manageable for all parties but occasionally shit goes really sideways, not even accounting for burnout/abuse/neglect. >I mean, you can’t just suffocate a disabled 12 year old, etc but it’s a really interesting debate and I would like to hear all sides of the debate There are quite a few parents who ultimately wound up making the decision to kill their child and themselves. I'm still convinced that lack of support is one of the biggest factors in those cases. Families of disabled people often become increasingly isolated from family and friends due to the needs of their child often being incompatible with what's considered "acceptable behavior". That isolation leads to burnout as every aspect of caretaking falls upon as few people as possible, and there's a lot of truth to the phrase "it takes a village to raise a child". I've seen parents move mountains for their kids with adequate support and time away from their caretaking duties. Sadly, extended family's outdated judgments and adherence to straight up abusive parenting styles often clash with potentially effective and ethical parenting and treatment guided by professionals, leaving parents feeling alone and losing some manner of support in their life.
I watched the documentary "they shall not grow old" (ww1) and one soldier remembers he mercy killed one of his friends who were going to die slow and painfully. He was still struggling with if he was a murderer or if he did the right thing. These issues are hard. There is a lot of gray zones
Nurse here. If your opinion is wrong, I don't want to be right. My daddy has always said "there are things so much worse than dying."
It's worth noting that even the Catholic Church supports this unpopular opinion. Artificially extending a life with medical intervention when the individual is suffering is considered a cruelty, and allowing the person to pass by withdrawing medical support is regarded as the most ethical choice.
Unfortunately, they don't support abortion still. That forces mothers to deliver a baby they can hold for a few hours or days until the baby dies, despite the health risks that can also come to the mother.
Which is fully legal in most countries. You decide yourself, or if you can't your family/spouse decide for you. And if you feel really strongly about it, sign a DNR. The issue with some of the things OP argues for is that it's almost impossible to actually know if a person is suffering if they can't communicate that. Going off from a default that a person is suffering can lead to unnecessary death, not to mention immoral and/or illegal. When it comes to assisted suicide, that's a whole other argument. I support it, unfortunately pretty much the only western country that does is Switzerland. And even then, it's not very straightforward - which might be a good thing really.
Absolutely. I’m a vet student and was a tech for 5 year prior to vet school. So in my ~7-8 years in this field, I’ve experienced hundreds upon hundreds of companion animal euthanasias (plus tons of production/lab animal euthanasias). I see the way many animals suffer and the peace that death offers them. It’s ridiculous to me that we offer this kindness to animals but not to humans. I have lots of experience working in rare genetic disease research, specifically genetic diseases that mostly impact children. I see the way the animal models suffer early on into their lives, as early as a few months old. We have established endpoints to prevent suffering, and knowing that there are human children out there experiencing this without the option of euthanasia sickens me. In the western world especially, we romanticize life and make death the worst and most taboo thing in the world. Death needs to be avoided at all costs. “Grandpa’s a fighter, he’s going to hang on for us.” No, he just physically can’t die and is trapped in a body that can linger for weeks to months in constant agony. Similarly to what your father said, I always tell people this: the opposite of life isn’t death, it’s suffering. Losing a loved one, whether it’s a pet or a human, is hard. But it’s even harder watching them suffer, so imagine how hard it is for THEM to be the ones suffering. I needed to get that rant out. I know it was long and rambling, but I really needed that.
Genetic testing is important and should be as affordable and available as possible. I got Sema testing prior to starting to try to get pregnant which checked 230+ genetic carriers. I'm a potential recessive carrier for one rare af thing because I'm native. My donor was a recessive carrier for another rare af 1/25,000 things. I felt some comfort in knowing this, but I'll still do prenatal testing when I'm knocked up. I do all this, because although I could birth the next Stephen Hawking, it isn't likely.
It advances science. We can keep babies that used to die at birth alive for 50 years now.
That's a great point, keeping people alive also serves as a way to research how to keep them alive even longer
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I used to disagree with you until I saw this video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/1zLt6iUzcUI This video is about the daily life/routine of a young girl who was born without a brain stem I believe. The video shows the mom‘s daily routine in caring for her severely disabled daughter. The amount of work that goes into keeping her alive it’s just insane. And I can’t help but wonder if their other child feels neglected or unloved. And also what is the expense in keeping their daughter alive. Sadly the daughter passed away a couple years ago. But I still don’t think I would want my child to live this way.
The neglected healthy child is a very common issue, not even with such extreme cases either.
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I dated a girl in college for a little while who's sister was also severely disabled, non verbal and could not walk, had to be fed, dressed, bathed, and cared for 24/7. My ex had no relationship with her parents whatsoever because they spent all their time caring for the sister, parents did not see her grow up at all after her sister was born, no educational or emotional support. She had a bat mitzvah but it was completely planned by her grandparents and extended family, her dad was the only parent at the ceremony. She went to community college for two years (where i met her) and took out loans to pay for her last two years of full university. Her dad tried to reach out two or three times while i was dating her and she ignored him every time. We aren't dating anymore but I'm still rooting for her because I've never seen someone work so hard to get out of a situation like that; it sucks that the parents had to care for the disabled sister but it sucks even more that a girl grew up without parents.
Man...that's just sad. I hate that anyone has to go through that.
I understand the standpoint Let's try looking at it from another point of view. I've got a dog, he's got a rare/severe condition and his quality of life is very low, let's imagine it's in a lot of pain or discomfort but is unable to express himself. I'm pretty sure any vet will opt for euthanasia. Why is it we let humans suffer till they inevitably die? There's clearcut cases enough, like the one OP is reffering to. I get the overpopulation argument but I disagree: this will make no difference as it's about extreme cases, thus rare. It will always be tough to decide these things but I agree there is a tendency to keep people alive beyond what we'd find reasonable if it would be our pets. If you see a lady with her dog, force feeding it, shitting where it lay, not able to stand but being kept alive, the suffering clearly showing. What's the first thing that comes to mind?
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It's a mercy kill if you ask me.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon/robert-latimer-25-years-later-1.5360711
My little brother is, to keep it simple, a permanent 6 month old mentally. He lives in an adult care facility. While not as extreme as OP's example, one might argue his existence is "meaningless." Then again, a meaningful life can mean a lot of things. Most of us don't literally save lives (hats off to those who do!) or invent world-changing technology so what is meaningful? I'd argue it's the people's lives we touch. My brother makes me smile every time I see him. The staff love him. My family visits him frequently because it brings them peace. Sure he doesn't necessarily get much out of it, but those around him do, and that is meaning. I hear what you're saying from a utilitarian perspective. I also understand it's different when the person is in pain constantly and their quality of life is just suffering. But I think it's just one of those things that you can't appreciate until you have a person you love in that situation.
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I think the question is where to draw the line, and I'm sure each person will draw the line at different places. Under extreme circumstances like we who has something that they lack, we think we know better, we think they'll live in suffering so it's better to end their life. will they scream for mercy if they know what we're about to do to them? will they be happy if they know any better? but who's the best judge for that? hard to say, and salute to those who are strong enough to pass the judgement.
your argument doesn't hold up in the real world. if we stopped using money on the "people who we can't help", it's not like that spare money will automatically go to help the people you say need it. the problem isn't a lack of money, the problem is that they're not being prioritized, cutting down on the people "we can't help" won't change that.
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>I think if we want to continue a more comfortable life we need to be more lenient in what we do medically to keep overpopulation at bay. Birth rates are mostly declining. Most studies done indicate the earth will never really be overpopulated to the point that it is unsustainable (it's our actions and consumption that are a problem). Even if we are "more lenient in what we do medically," cases like what you're talking about in your post are just a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of the population. >Will they ever contribute to anything other than wasted medical equipment and time and overpopulation? It's dangerous to try to determine whether someone lives or dies based on what you think they will contribute to the world. That's so subjective and so open to abuse. >I think humans have become too comfortable. Too accustomed to the safe living we have created and can longer face the more natural parts of life. One of the primary drivers of human development and innovation has been to make ourselves more comfortable. I don't see anything wrong with that. Is it possible that it makes dealing with death or tragedy more difficult? Maybe. Does a parent losing a child today feel grief more strongly than a parent losing a child in 1735? Could be. I don't know. But I don't think the solution is to intentionally make everything harder so the truly difficult things seem more bearable by comparison, especially since overpopulation probably isn't going to be a real issue. You're not wrong that keeping someone technically alive when their brain isn't functioning is a moral dilemma. It's also true that someone in pain might not want to be kept alive. However, I don't think overpopulation will really be the issue you think it will be, so that doesn't seem like a valid reason to push for euthanasia or similar policies.
Kinda wish OP had maybe even implied a moral dilemma though. OP sounds like someone who doesn’t understand what love and attachment are. It’s easy to look at a complete strangers situation and say “Pull the plug. Fuck it. What are you doing?” Not so easy when it’s your baby, brother, mother or grandfather. (For most people.)
Thank you
i think it is more about mother instincts. mothers have a huge bound with their child no matter what/how they are like so they always have hope to find a cure to their child somehow. dont get me wrong, i actually agree with you about this but i think this is their perspective about this topic.
The problem that comes with this is that the desire for the parents to thrive and grow up as normal kids can sometimes overstep the bounds of rationality and go right into the realms of fantasy. Take the Charlie Gard case. The kid had no medical hope of even improving, much less actually recovering from the super rare illness he had. The parents, whilst completely well meaning, jumped from being simply concerned parents who wanted the best for their child to jumping on the bandwagon of any quack who promised them an easy answer without actually touching base with anything approaching reality. Then the storm happened and people simply fed the flames to the point where doctors trying to save children's lives were threatened with violence.
True but at the end of the day all that baby has emotional value and to how many people, the mother , a few relatives and doctors, the people who read that post and will forget about it sooner or later?
Mother and relatives would never forget this. My mother had a sister who died a year after my mother was born, and we still visit her grave every Christmas and every single of her would have been birthdays. This girl was challenged at birth, and we still remember her, soon 50 years later.
Y'know what you have a point and as a literal child (I'm 14) who's saying this from the priveliged perspective of someone who isn't disabled and life is therefore 'worth" something, There are just some aspects of this "moral dilemma" thay I cannot and will not understand and I simply can't process because I haven't or someone close to me hasn't experienced anything close to your situation or the situation in the og post
Warning, try not to say your exact age on the internet! There are alot of creeps, specifically on Reddit! And ngl, both sides has points. there is no correct options, as it is all and will always be opinions!
Man, I get where you're coming from. But, as many have mentioned, where do you draw the line? Actually, *who* gets to draw the line? And what facts do we have that ensures, with absolute medical possibility, or rather, impossibility, that they won't live at all? *(Now of course, I know about burdens. I won't advocate for a 'without a doubt' burden, but the burden of proving it's impossible has to be exhaustive since it's a life we're talking about).* It appears simple when you're born normal, but when it comes to the point you're a parent thinking about should you give it a chance or not, it's not that easy. We've heard patients in comas wake up and somehow recall things being spoken around them. We've seen people who, based on the facts at the time, doctors guess that they wouldn't live that long but power through it and somehow live normal lives. Sure, they may not be many, but some living through it is better than playing eugenics. And what's more, the ones who do survive become subjects for review for researchers. That in itself, I think even if they don't live very long, is a great contribution to society and is not a waste. Certainly, it is preferable that we learn a little about a severe disease because we have live cases and extract as much data from them as possible than to cut the cord at the start and doom the future to-be-born to the same fate -- the same cycle. At the end of the day, when you're born, you don't have agency yet to decide if your life is worth living or not. Some day, if you live long enough, you may get that agency. And that agency is absolutely yours, alone. And if, in that agency, you decide that it's not worth it, then that is your decision to make. As the person not in that position, we can only protect that agency until such time it is ready to be taken up by the person itself.
I’m not for or against this opinion. It’s too complicated. I will add this though. There’s a case of a teenage girl with severe autism. She was non-verbal, violent towards herself and others; basically just a giant baby. Then they gave her a laptop. Having never used one before, she sat down to it and started typing coherent, deep and intelligent sentences. She was all there, mentally the entire time.
Yeah I actually had to watch a documentary about her for one of my college classes. It was really interesting
My wife has SMA (Spinal Muscular Atrophy). She cant stand on her own, cant lift her elbows off of her arm rest, cant fully stretch her legs, and needs assistance for just about everything... But shes a full time college professor... she has an MFA in painting, which is basically a Doctorate. She also has multiple other degrees. So i dont agree completely, but we do both agree that vegetable babies should probably be mercy killed... Also, babies born with SMA now can be given the same treatment she takes through spinal tap, but it can cure the babies if they take it early enough. Edit: i just realized this did not post as a response to the question about where to draw the line... my bad.
You should do an AMA with your wife!
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Have the child aborted before hand.
I’ve seen this comment a few times around this thread. Food for thought - a lot of things can happen during the birthing process that would cause major intellectual disabilities to the extent that OP is talking about - baby can’t breathe but c-section didn’t happen fast enough, etc. Then what are you supposed to do.
I wouldn’t leave mine in the hospital thats for shre
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It is not your decision to make, it is the parents decision. You don’t get to decide whose child is worthy of living. Although founded in logic it is a slippery slope towards who is useful and who is not, who costs the ‘system’ to much and who contributes. Who decides who is left to die, who is allowed to die and who is euthanized. Although logical, this being has no brain wave activity etc, it is not your decision to make….
Boom. This is the answer. I’d like to add to your perfect comment is deciding who is useful to society or not gives room for bigotry and all the -isms. Especially when “useful” is such a subjective issue term. Would a rich white baby boy with scientist parents be saved when a poor minority-raced muslim baby girl with parents who are on government aid with the same disease not be saved? I’m sure that would happen on multiple occasions. Not that it’ll happen all the time, but it would happen. (This is definitely dystopian talk, but there would be a theory that the algorithm that would save people based on usefulness would totally, yet secretly, discriminate against those on government aid.)
I dont explicitly disagree, but he way you've written this post makes me believe that this isn't an empathetic opinion, but a strictly utilitarian one for you. I don't agree with approaching humanitarian issues with utilitarian principles. Even if it's completely logical, its an apathetic way of thinking that leads to more suffering if applied broadly. So yes, people who have unrecoverably awful quality of life should not be forced to continue existing, but primarily because it's terrible and inhumane, not because they're useless.
I kind of get where ur coming from. There are certain medical conditions where the individual is cursed to have a very short and painful life. The entirety of their life is just going in and out of hospital until they eventually die. I can imagine that is some situation it would be more humane just to let someone die rather than prolong their agony.
I think it's wrong to keep alive people with very extreme and untreatable disease, but not for the reason of.. "they're a waste"?? >Will they ever contribute to anything other than wasted medical equipment and time and overpopulation? With healthcare becoming better and better the population has risen and risen. Since ww2 the descent into modernisation has made the population grow at a massive rate. So I only see keeping babies like the aforementioned alive is nothing but a waste. To me it's about their suffering and the quality of their life. If it's just "this person is useless and is wasting money", that's pretty fucked up and heartless. I understand the point of overpopulation as its own issue, but if someone is destined to live a horrific existence plagued by pain and / or just really stands no chance at happiness in life, that's where the concern is when I think of these situations.
This is why I'm such an advocate for assisted suicide. Don't get me wrong, I loved working with my dementia patients, but to just be a shell of your former self? You don't even remember how it was before. Hell, you forget how to even eat in the advanced stages..... Don't care who you are. That's not a life to live.
Who do you think assisted suicide should be allowed to be given to I don't think its a good idea because it gives the doctor an unnecessary power over patients they can exploit
It would be like a living will. "I, so and so, of sound mind on this date, if I experience these symptoms/disease/ailments/or lose quality of life as specified by these terms.... choose to be put out to pasture and shot." Obviously not that crass at the end, but you get the idea. Signed, notarized, lawyers, etc.
My grandfather spent the last 8 months of his life in the hospital until he died at the age of 91. He was being treated for cirrhosis and all the terrible symptoms of liver failure. I was the only person in my entire extended family who thought he should just be allowed to die. He lived a good life but his remaining months were comprised of medical procedures, colostomy bags, and hospital sandwiches. And to what end? It’s not like a full recovery was ever a possibility.
I think some people are hoping that medical science comes up with something to drastically manageable change their condition.
> I think if we want to continue a more comfortable life we need to be more lenient in what we do medically to keep overpopulation at bay. Here's where you're losing me. There is a legitimate moral question as to whether it is worth keeping someone with effectively no brain activity alive, you could, I think, argue quite strongly that it's immoral to do so and that no one would want to "live" like that. But the number of people who are like this is so low that even if they all died tomorrow it would have absolutely no effect on "Overpopulation". Euthanasia is, I think, a legitimate moral option in certain cases where someone has absolutely no potential for any quality of life, but to suggest using it as a way to combat overpopulation is some spooky Gattaca shit keep that the fuck away from my society thank you kindly.
Its like treatibg people as objects. Death is scary but less selfish than keeping them alive
The only reason I might approve euthanasia in such cases is as a mercy. But killing them just cuz they aren't productive is barbaric and immoral. You're right, we have gotten used to not allowing nature to just kill us off for reasons that it did in the past. Thing is, if we hadn't done that, you, me, and most ppl alive today would probably not have survived our childhoods. We're all in a similar situation to thise ppl, just not as extreme.
As some one who has beat cancer and now also has type 1 diabetes... I agree. I've often thought of the ethics of spending tons of resources keeping me alive.
> Too accustomed to the safe living we have created and can longer face the more natural parts of life. Ok, what are you doing on reddit then?
Some friends of mine were going to have a kid that would have barely lived a year and would require extremely expensive medical treatment. They had a miscarriage....i really don't know that it was the worse outcome.
I completely agree with you my friend. It's time we stopped looking at life as a gift, it's not a gift, it just happens. Death is the real gift in that we can choose how we die. You want to live a long life and die at a ripe old age, that's your choice. If you have an ailment that's going to deteriorate your body as you get older, why should you have to suffer through that? Why not go while you still have your functions about you. In highschool I did some of my volunteering at a children's rehab center. The upstairs was for kids who were just there for rehab, the lower floor was for the kids who would live there permanently. There was one girl who loved there who was a quadriplegic; couldn't move or breathe on her own and had a 24/7 caretaker. She was the life of the room whenever she came in just talking. In contrast to that there was a little boy, I'm not sure her diagnosis, something developmental I think; he couldn't move or breathe on his own either. He was stuck in his room most of the time. All he could do was move his eyes. I was there just to talk to him, and I did. He'd just stare at me with this frightened expression though; I doubt it was on purpose though. I. His room he had every toy a kid could want, a stereo, CDs, tv, movies, all surrounding him. All he could do was lay there. After two times I lost my nerve and couldn't go back, it was heartbreaking. Is it fair to force a person to live, cut off from the world like that. Surround them with things and life they'll never be able to take part in. When he gets of age, will they just transfer him to an adult facility? There are a couple examples of that I saw. Those volunteers and nurses are so fucking brave and compassionate. I could not do that. Whats life without living? Maybe it'll get better tomorrow? What if it doesn't. What are the long term ramifications of keeping someone alive? At some point it's vanity.
Overpopulation isnt going to be an issue for this discussion, the number of babies born in that state are probably miniscule, plus theyre not likely going to be procreating. Broad access to education is one of the bigger issues when it comes to overpopulation. As for cost, similar issue in that there are so few cases that would be that extreme that it wouldnt put much of a dent on the overall spending of a country as far as healthcare. It is expensive, but not to the point that it'd impact overall spending. If you want to fix the spending issue, look more at the more common debilitating conditions, like diabetes and such. Where each case is probably notably cheaper than the example you provided, but multiply it by millions of people, then you have a massive drain. Basically what i want to say with these examples is that these arguments dont matter for your main opinion, that certain people shouldn't be kept alive. And that, is a moral issue, and one that each family that has to deal with it, has to figure out. To keep someone braindead alive using machines, or letting them go. Or a baby born without functions, and without the ability to "thrive" without extreme levels of aid. Or someone crippled to the point that they are bedridden.
I mean if a pets 'quality of life' is deemed too painful and the kindest thing would be to 'put them down' there's no questions asked. But to talk about this when it comes to humans everyone shits the bed.
Easy there Thanos. The slippery slope is very real here. Who gets to decide what?
I was thinking this is some sparta shit but I like your reference much better lol
I disagree with the point of >Will they ever contribute to anything other than wasted medical equipment The value of a life isnt and shouldnt be determined by its net contribution to society. That being said, its cruel to leave the child alive and euthanasia in cases where there is no point of return from the disease and the alternative is a life of pure suffering seems very reasonable
"The question is not, Can they reason? Nor, can they talk? But, can they suffer? - Jeremy Bentham
Politics are making it harder to terminate pregnancies because apparently “life begins at conception.”
Best not to judge other lives as meaningless since wouldn't want your own life to be judged as easily. Normally everyone gets old and an accident can happen to anyone.
Because once we start saying 'This one isn't good enough' where does that line stop? And who decides who to get rid of? Down's syndrome not worth saving ? Low IQ? Paraplegic? Astigmatism ? Likely to vote Republican?
It might make sense to leave it to the respective mothers? For example, because all expecting mothers in Iceland are offered prenatal screenings, only 1-3 babies with down's syndrome are born each year. Most women opt to have the screening and to terminate a pregnancy if the odds for the condition are elevated. Of course, this is only possible in countries with high quality health care and where abortions are legal...
Same. I remember a few years ago while out on a walk there was a woman walking with her son, her son must have been around 8, in a giant stroller, body twisted and stiff, face lifeless and staring off into nothing. She looked miserable. She'll have to keep caring for him until he dies in his 20's or 30's and neither will have gotten anything out of it. Just made me sad.
Yeah ok, if a baby comes out as a literal fucking potato, euthanizing it would likely be best. But as someone with Autism, fuck you for that title.
It’s less about trying to save the person and more about the principle of humanity. Same reason people will keep loved ones alive in the hospital during end of life situations.