Canadian Supreme Court Rules Ban On Assisted Suicide Unconstitutional 231
BarbaraHudson writes with word that Canada's Supreme Court has issued a strong statement in defense of Canadians' right to choose assisted suicide: [A] judgment, which is unsigned to reflect the unanimous institutional weight of the court, says the current ban on assisted suicide infringes on all three of the life, liberty and security of person provisions in Section 7 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It does not limit physician-assisted death to those suffering a terminal illness. The court agreed with the trial judge "that a permissive regime with properly designed and administered safeguards was capable of protecting vulnerable people from abuse and error. While there are risks, to be sure, a carefully designed and managed system is capable of adequately addressing them." Parliament has one year to enact new legislation modifying the Criminal Code to conform to the judgment.
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Well to be fair they also do it very politely when they kill anyone.
Re:Yay Canada! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's got to be better than forcing people to continue to live an unbearable life. If you were to do that to a dog, you'd be charged with cruelty, but ending a human's suffering in a dignified fashion? "Oh noes!!" The people who are against assisted suicide need to stop trying to impose their religious or other beliefs on others, same as same-sex marriage. When their time comes, they're free to tough it out til the bitter end, but I suspect that some of them will change their minds.
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And paradoxically, the option of assisted suicide is also provides a backstop to suffering that empowers patients to hang on, or attempt painful therapies that they might not otherwise have the will to try.
Knowledge that it's always an option if the suffering becomes too much to bear is of enormous psychological benefit.
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That's right. And we can bring back the T4 program and end all the suffering we see fit. With enough controls, it will bever morph into death camps for the politically undesirables. But at least the murderers can berate someone into wanting to die because they are defective in some way like being homosexual or transgender or diseased in some way. It will be more humane and give them a chance ay dignity.
Re:Yay Canada! (Score:4, Insightful)
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Except now that siucidal gay teen or the boy who thinks he is a girl doesn't have to kill themselves when they are tormented for not fitting into society- they can get a doctor to do it for them.
Gays and lesbians have full rights in Canada, including same-sex marriage. If one were to turn to a doctor because they are tormented for not fitting in society, the ER doctor would have them see a psychiatrist the same day.
As for the boy who thinks she's (gotta watch those pronouns in Canada - it's the law :-) a girl, they would also be interviewed by a psychiatrist, then a specialized team. If it is confirmed that they're transsexual (instead of going through a phase or just questioning who they are), t
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Including doctor assisted suicide. I guess it is better for society as a whole as someone will not be dispatched to clean the splattered guts of someone jumping from an overpass right when a speeding semi truck is rushing towards them. It might be easier than cleaning brains and blood off some things.
You cannot deny the option to kill themselves is not there to be considered as this is what the ruling is about. You even went through the motions in your original post "It's got to be better than forcing peopl
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The criminal code was revised to remove suicide as an offense in 1972. This law isn't about that - this law is specifically allowing for people to ask a doctor (actually, a team of doctors) for help in terminating their lives.
Some people who have gone to the courts for the right for help, like Sue Rodriguez, have medical conditions (in her case advanced Lou Gehrig Disease) that make it impossible to do anything without assistance. Others are afraid of the result of a botched attempt which just makes their
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You're right - it's not a law, but an acknowledgement that the right to assisted suicide a a constitutional right. Lets hope the government doesn't use the notwithstanding clause to cater to their base for the next election.
People can suffer from a non-terminal disease that still leaves them in pain, unable to fend for themselves, and with zero hope of recovery, so I think it's a good thing that they didn't limit it to the terminally ill. If you had to decide between being hooked up to machines, unable to
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Including even more batshit insane delusional bullshit. A doctor is going to tell you to drink Drano for an ulcer before he recommends suicide as a treatment for depression.
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And if it's causing them mental problems, they have a right to be helped.
Plus they have the right to bring up a complaint with the human rights commission, which should end it, or at least put people on notice that hating on someone because of their sexual preference is going to cost them.
Also, in Canada harassing someone over their sexual or gender identity is a hate crime. So there are plenty of remedies available.
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Except now that siucidal gay teen or the boy who thinks he is a girl doesn't have to kill themselves when they are tormented for not fitting into society- they can get a doctor to do it for them.
The part you're missing is that when that person goes to the doctor, they may find their first friendly voice they have ever heard.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/31/... [cnn.com]
"When Josh Alcorn voiced a desire to live as a girl, the Ohio teenager's parents said they wouldn't stand for that.
"We don't support that, religiously," Alcorn's mother told CNN on Wednesday, her voice breaking."
---
That boy had no one to provide a friendly voice, his parents took him to a christian therapist:
"My mom started taking me to a therapi
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I'm not missing anything. May as in might does not equal always and you will never know if the doctor is a die hard fundy, a goreific sociopath.
This may even be especially true in situations where a government entity is directing the doctors actions.
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What is wrong with me? We have people celebrating the fact that a court has ruled it is a right for a third party to assist in killing a person because that person or their legal representative states they might want to die. It says right summery that this is not limited to terminal illness either. If it was, I could understand it better but this is anyone.
We have seen this before. It didn't end well. No one in the know figured it would go that way when it started either. It too was celebrated as humane and
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This might be the dumbest thing I've read so far this year. It's ok for you to take your tinfoil hat off once in a while.
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You should read some history then. Mercy killings set the groundwork for the final solution. It started by a father begging for the government to end the life of his crippled boy arguing about how shitty the quality wouls be and how dignified he could die. It ended up with the government killing anyone it didn't like. You may know its end better by the term holocaust.
But hey, that will never happen again right? Especially if we make ourselves so ignorant of the past that we do not know it happened before.
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Every decision might end up having unintended consequences. So I suppose it's hypothetically possible that not forcing people suffer through end-state cancer might end up with Nazi death camps, despite Canada not being Nazi Germany. On the other hand, forcing people to suffer through end-state cancer amounts to torturing them to death, with no "might" about it. And an
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I'm sorry, you must be reading something different than what the rest of us are. Would you mind sharing?
Oh and BTW, the article summery even exposes that " It does not limit physician-assisted death to those suffering a terminal illness." And it should be noted that Nazi Germany was actually held in high regard at one time before it wasn
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You may know its end better by the term holocaust.
The people I grew up with, many of whom had actually escaped from Germany, or fought in Germany, some of whom knocked out a few Nazi tanks or troop trains, usually referred to it as "The concentration camps" or just "World War II."
The term "holocaust" didn't become popular until around 1980, when some of the Israel-firsters started using it to justify doing everything they wanted to do, like blowing up Sol Hurok's office and killing his Jewish secretary. Because -- Holocaust!
https://books.google.com/ngram. [google.com]
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You should realize you're living up to your UID again.
As much as early surgeons paid the way for Nazis making lamps from people, sure, if you're into eighteen dumbfucking levels of false conflation.
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Being in denial and attempting to hurl insults does not make you right or correct or anything. This is history and all you are doing is showing that you do not know it and do not care how ignorant you look when letting everyone else know the same about you.
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Hate much?
I do not remember singling jews out at all. I do remember pointing to a progression that went to killing jews though. I'm not sure why you are so upset over the truth though. Perhaps it's just a sign of why this is important to know (all of it).
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Yes, in a perfect world only those who believe others should suffer as long as possible would be the ones who die slow painful deaths, but the world is not perfect, so it unfortunately happens to decent folks as well. We do treat animals better and that is a sad commentary on society.
Even more sad is the old laws forced some people to cut their lives short earlier - killing themselves when they are still physically able because they fear the day they won't be capable of doing it themselves.
Certainly tight
Re:Yay Canada! (Score:5, Informative)
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Someone asks you three times if you are sure you want to off yourself (after you have signed the paperwork and everything), and they hand you a cup of poison.
You have to drink it yourself.
If you are too senile or weak to drink it yourself, tough luck.
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But certain caring individuals, mostly at insurance companies, don't like paying for his treatment since it's expensive. And yes, they've recommended and tried to convince him to move to Washington and off himself. In my mind, if you're going to legalize it, that sort of behavior should be a felony.
What insurance companies were these individuals working for? What do they do, call up your father and tell him air fare to Seattle is pretty cheap this time of year? You said people who worked for insurance companies, plural, encouraged your father to move to Washington state, that's pretty amazing, really nearly unbelievable, that people at multiple insurance companies are urging your father to off himself. My wife has been an oncology nurse for forty years. She's had to deal with hundreds and hundreds o
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Maybe you live an ideal world where nobody would try to kill somebody for financially based motives, but I've seen that happen far too many times in the news. And I don't trust insurance companies to not bully people if they're allowed to. Those bastards are cold hearted.
You mean an ideal world, with a single-payer health care system?
Couldn't happen.
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Indeed. However, it is hard to determine if the patient actually participated in signing that statement, was not tricked into doing so, or was even competent during the signing of the statement. The multiple witnesses would go a ways into that but is not a guarantee.
In the op's example of insurance companies, they can employ professional witnesses just like your poor next of kin who stand to inherit your fortune
Re: Yay Canada! (Score:2, Insightful)
The Black Pill (Score:5, Insightful)
When I have no more good days left, and every waking moment is agony or drug-induced, drooling stupor, I would like the option to give these borrowed molecules back to the universe when I am ready...not after my suffering has been prolonged by pointless medical procedure(s).
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Note that you've pretty much always had that option. Or are you required to be in a hospital against your wishes wherever you live?
Note that "assisted suicide" isn't about you killing yourself, it's about your doctor helping you to do
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Note that "assisted suicide" isn't about you killing yourself, it's about your doctor helping you to do so. Which meets the legal definitions of murder in most places.
According to the supreme court, it no longer meets the definition of murder. I expect to see a lot of Americans coming to Canada to seek relief from a system that insists on cruelly punishing people who can no longer bear the pain and suffering they're experiencing.
Also, 2 states have already legalized it, so please don't blame Canada :-)
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People in Canada have had the legal right to kill themselves for years - 1972 to be specific. That's how long it hasn't been a crime.
Any new laws the government proposes will have to be around regulating "how it works", because the supremes have found that banning assisted suicide infringes on 3 different constitutionally-guaranteed fundamental rights. If they do nothing, then it's up to the provinces to pass their own laws concerning the mechanics of assisted suicide (Quebec has already enacted its own la
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Re:The Black Pill (Score:5, Insightful)
What is assistance? Asking advice on the most painless, quick and reliable way of doing something?
If you're a wheel chair bound quadriplegic what is the option for suicide?
If you're a 100 year old senile man who can't remember if he's wearing pants what are your options for suicide?
If you're able bodied enough to actually do the work, how do you do it reliably? Carbon monoxide poisoning works well providing you have a garage and no noisy neighbours but every chance is you may wake up in hospital after some Good Samaritan saved you. Do you jump of a bridge and risk not having an instant death and instead dye in agony? Or maybe swallow every pill you find and end up with an agonizing death as your organs slowly fail? Heck there are people who have bitten the bullet and survived with half their brain missing.
Suicide and professionally assisted suicide are not the same thing. If you're lucky enough to have the option of one, it doesn't negate the need for the other.
Re:The Black Pill (Score:4, Interesting)
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Why not look at what other countries have done?
Easy: nitrogen asphyxiation. More or less infallible, and not only does it not cause any pain, it actually gives the subject a sense of euphoria before death. BBC did an entire documentary [bbc.co.uk] on nitrogen asphyxiation in the context of replacing random drug cocktails for executions. Deat
Re:The Black Pill (Score:4, Insightful)
So, end your days when you are still capable to decide. Opening the door to let someone decide for you because you have lost this capability and you believe today these individuals should be terminated is not the way to do it. You believe you have a right to decide. Yes, of course as long as you are capable to decide. Beside that, no one has the right to kill someone else, be he a doctor (m.d.).
Giving a de facto authorisation to doctors to terminate life when someone is incapable to decide is opening the door wide to abuse by the doctors and by the government itself. In case you are not aware, the healthcare in Canada is paid by the government acting as an insurer, when times are hard, the temptation is high to end the life of many who are costing to the treasury even if they paid tax their whole life to have access to this healthcare when growing old.
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So, end your days when you are still capable to decide. Opening the door to let someone decide for you because you have lost this capability and you believe today these individuals should be terminated is not the way to do it. You believe you have a right to decide. Yes, of course as long as you are capable to decide. Beside that, no one has the right to kill someone else, be he a doctor (m.d.).
Sure. If you are given that luxury. Sometimes things happen in rapid and surprising fashion, perhaps taking your ability to decide out of the equation. We could simply leave instructions. There is medical precedence for this with the widespread implementation of Do Not Resuscitate orders.
Giving a de facto authorisation to doctors to terminate life when someone is incapable to decide is opening the door wide to abuse by the doctors and by the government itself. In case you are not aware, the healthcare in Canada is paid by the government acting as an insurer, when times are hard, the temptation is high to end the life of many who are costing to the treasury even if they paid tax their whole life to have access to this healthcare when growing old.
I'd say the freedom to prematurely terminate your life should come with the freedom to extend it, as each individual sees fit. If you want to leave this life as you entered it, kicking and screaming for every breath, that
Re:The Black Pill (Score:5, Informative)
when someone is incapable to decide
Just to point out - that was NOT the decision the court made. instead of paraphrasing I'll quote:
physicianâ'assisted death for a competent adult person who (1) clearly consents to the termination of life and (2) has a grievous and irremediable medical condition (including an illness, disease or disability) that causes enduring suffering that is intolerable to the individual in the circumstances of his or her condition.
Full judgement text available here [lexum.com]
So the decision was not to allow doctors to make an arbitrary judgement on people who could not consent. The judgement was to prevent the government from finding doctors guilty of murder for respecting their patient's clearly expressed and competent wishes to end their lives only in circumstances of nonredeemable suffering.
Min
Re:The Black Pill (Score:4, Interesting)
So, end your days when you are still capable to decide. Opening the door to let someone decide for you because you have lost this capability and you believe today these individuals should be terminated is not the way to do it. You believe you have a right to decide. Yes, of course as long as you are capable to decide. Beside that, no one has the right to kill someone else, be he a doctor (m.d.).
Oh please.
Durable Powers of Attorney for healthcare have been around for ages now, and they are crucial if you don't want to suffer stuffed with medical equipment that will only ensure that your life is as painful as possible for your remaining days or hours.
My SO was the DPoA for her ex. She got a phone call last October and said that Eric was in ICU and told me she was his DPoA. His mental state had changed and he was no longer "there" to make decisions for himself. I could have been a dick and said "he's not your responsibility anymore" especially since there was an alternate. But no, I said "You do what you have to do. Do what's right by Eric."
He had gone in for chemotherapy. But then things started going badly very quickly and the healthcare professionals were putting out fires one after another. Eric had been intubated as an emergency measure because his body couldn't keep his airway open. He was also restrained to keep from semi-consciously reflexively trying to yank out the tubes. He was one of those people that stuff like that scared the shit out of him.
The intubation could have kept Eric alive indefinitely were it not for his entire body failing because of the cancer. Keeping him intubated was just delaying the inevitable.
So my SO helped him end his life by having him disconnected after his ex-wife (the alternate DPoA and still his best friend) flew in from upstate NY. Make no mistake, everyone knew that disconnecting him was killing him by many people's definitions and this required the approval of the nurse on duty, two doctors, and one of the DPoAs. He lived for hours after, so she stayed by his side, read poetry, and sang to him and said goodbye. Eric's greatest fear was that he would die in pain and alone tied to a machine (he didn't have any family here). Because he had someone to make the crucial decisions for him and be there for him, he didn't die that way.
I learned a few things over those days.
I learned that I needed my own DPoA, and I knew I found someone who would do the right thing if I needed it.
Assissted suicide would be similar. It wouldn't just be /one doctor/ alone making the decision for you if you were unable - it would be two doctors, and your DPoA at least. It would simply be an extension of existing DPoA laws.
And btw, your last thing: American insurance companies make the decisions to kill people every day by refusing to cover drugs or drag their feet covering valid treatments. So bringing up the "BIG SCARY CANADIAN GOVERNMENT IS GOING TO KILL YOU WHEN THEY HAVE A BUDGET SHORTFALL" is totally disingenuous, intellectually bankrupt, and stupid.
--
BMO
The problem (Score:4, Interesting)
So, a carefully designed and managed system is capable of determining whether your life is not worth living? Presumably they will also find that some people are wrong in wanting to die, otherwise they wouldn't need a system at all.
Which lives are worth living or not sounds to me like the kind of question it's maybe not right to set an official answer to.
I have sympathy with people who feel life isn't worth living. But I wish they would not demand that others validate their choice by killing them.
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Maybe you should actually read the judgment [lexum.com] It is the individual who makes the determination, not the doctor, though as a safeguard the doctors have to make sure that the person is competent to make that decision.
So there's no "official answer", no "checklist" - it's up to the individual, in consultation with friends, family, and doctors.
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Not necessarily. Somebody with a incurable disease and a lot of pain would be considered quite sane to wish to end the hopeless suffering.
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Quebec has already changed its laws to allow assisted suicide. This is because they recognize sometimes, for some people, there's no point in extending the suffering. So no, the law now says that not every person who considers suicide is mentally ill.
Also, we allow people to sign DNRs. That can be seen as a form of suicide, but it's legal and rational. What isn't rational is to only allow people to actively end their lives by refusing food and letting them starve to death. How is that NOT sick?
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When the doctor decides whether you are competent to make that decision, they do give an official answer. If a healthy and normal person demanded it, they would probably say he was irrationally depressed.
So they make a value judgment based on the contents of your life, on how much pain you are in, on what your prospects are. etc. Some lives are deemed rational to want to end, others are deemed not rational.
Re:The problem (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:The problem (Score:4, Informative)
Repeated studies have shown that in the Netherlands, where physician-assisted suicide has been legal for some time now, medical professionals report that they do not wait for the patient to decide that they want to die.
That is correct. Only you are conveniently forgetting that the frequency of that happening went down by a factor of 4 after euthanasia became legal in 2002. To quote from a peer-reviewed article in the Lancet: "Ending of life without an explicit patient request in 2010 occurred less often (0Ã2%; 95% CI 0Ã1Ã"0Ã3; 13 of 6861) than in 2005, 2001, 1995, and 1990 (0Ã8%; 0Ã6Ã"1Ã1; 45 of 5197). "
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(12)61034-4/abstract
(And for those who are not used to reading responsible research that tries to report findings, instead of support a pre-determined position, CI refers to the confidence interval and is a measure of how certain the researchers are of their numbers. If you would like to point to other studies, don't bother if your study is not peer reviewed and does not include such basic means of determining the underlying statistics.)
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Post some evidence, or stop spouting nonsense.
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It's been my experience that doctors encourage patients to ask questions about their treatment. They put the "informed" in informed consent because to do otherwise would be malpractice and/or assault.
As for eugenics, once a person is no longer capable of reproducing, you can't "clean up" the gene pool by offing them. Also, natural selection is eugenics. It's the environment that controls who wins and who loses, and the gene pool is improved in terms of survivability.
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Because doctors have a secret urge to kill their patients ?
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The doctors do not make much money with eldery
Even assuming doctors are cold calculating psychopaths, there's plenty of money in treatment of elderly. And even if they wanted to get rid of them, it would be easier to make it look like a natural death by killing them when nobody's watching. Actually putting the assisted suicide as the official cause of death is going to attract attention from the rest of the staff, and family/friends.
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Re:The problem (Score:4, Insightful)
If it tells some people that they are irrational in demanding to die (e.g saying they are depressed), and others that they are rational in demanding to die, then it implicitly does.
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Asking for help to end suffering doesn't sound like a demand. Anyone is free to refuse giving assistance.
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I have sympathy with people who feel life isn't worth living. But I wish they would not demand that others validate their choice by killing them.
Well then today is your lucky day!
Because you don't know what youre talking about and are completely mistaken about how it all even works.
The person who wants to die makes the choice and is the one who actually carries out the act. All the doctor typically does is discuss, in realistic and rational fashion, the patients options. Which really is what doctors do already. It's just that presently when someone has no options and there is no more that can be done, that's the end of the conversation. the patient
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Involving other people so they become complicit in your death doesn't sound like demanding nothing to me.
If you know how some people use suicide threats (and even suicide attempts), that "maybe a little compassion" doesn't sound quite so innocent.
The General Attorney of Canada missed the point (Score:3, Interesting)
I believe the General Attorney of Canada missed the point in this case and did not defend properly his position. If you can easily think anyone has the right to decide for his own life, the point is about asking someone else to kill him. The argument revolved around the right for an individual to put an end to his days, and this has been declared unconstitutional to force him to live. However, what about giving permission to someone to kill someone else? This is the entire point at my humble opinion and this is where there will be abuses. It will become very hard to sue someone who have killed someone else in the conditions described by the Court to prove the killed one has never asked to be killed.
Re:The General Attorney of Canada missed the point (Score:4, Informative)
If the person has the right to end their life because it's not possible to help them and they want to end their suffering, and you deny them assistance when they are not physically capable of doing it themselves (just do a search for Sue Rodriguez), you have effectively removed the right for that person to end their life.
And that is unconstitutional in Canada.
And as the court noted, other jurisdictions have installed safeguards that work; there's no reason to believe and slippery slope will occur.
It will become very hard to sue someone who have killed someone else in the conditions described by the Court to prove the killed one has never asked to be killed.
The conditions that the court envisions would make what you describe impossible.
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I believe you don't know what you are talking about. I did try to sue a doctor for killing my own mother without her consent and before this judgment from the Supreme court of Canada. I then filed a complain to the police officiers and the province prosecutor refuses to sue. I remind you this was not even legal and this doctor did act so under the current criminal laws.
Do you know why the police refuses to even take the case? Because, living in province of Quebec, there was a legistlative debat to make assi
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I'm sorry for your loss, but if there was a DNR or the doctors decided that attempts to save her life were going to be futile, nobody will prosecute because it doesn't make sense to continue any treatment in such cases.
Living in DDO, QC., the Quebec legislation directly affects me, and I'm good with it. Completely OT, what part of town are you in?
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Sorry again to tell you you don't know what you are talking about. You are living in an ideal world, an utopia and want to believe it. The reality is papers are falsifiable and are actually falsified. I have the medical records of my mother which was killed by the doctor, and I was there when it happened, they lied to us to inject her a letal dose of morphin and another 'medication' which does not figure on the medical records. The medical records are wrong on many aspect, including the description of this
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Sorry again to tell you you don't know what you are talking about. You are living in an ideal world, an utopia and want to believe it.
And you're projecting everything on your N=1 personal experience.
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What you have is an anecdote. Do you presume that the rights of individuals to take their own lives should be limited because of the case you've cited? Should others have to live in misery? While I'm sorry for your loss, you can't project it on everyone else's situation.
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Do you say that to everyone who disagrees with you? Then there's the fact that you're wanting to manage to the exception (shut down the whole system rather than deal with the rare possibility for abuse), rather than managing the exception (put systems in place to catch abusers).
Which is a fallacy.
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It will become very hard to sue someone who have killed someone else in the conditions described by the Court to prove the killed one has never asked to be killed.
In most assisted-suicide schemes, the burden of proof is on the "killer", not on the prosecution. The killer will have to prove in exquisite and irrefutable detail that the victim wanted to die. In any good system, such proof is filed and challenged before the assisted suicide even takes place.
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Methinks you trust Systems too much.
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It will become very hard to sue someone who have killed someone else in the conditions described by the Court to prove the killed one has never asked to be killed.
Maybe you should read the rest of the summary before assuming they missed the point. Specifically where they say: " a carefully designed and managed system is capable of adequately addressing them."
Courts to prove the killed one never asked to be killed? We have legal systems that can cover all manners of a person's life including granting a person to the right to his own identity. Is it so inconceivable that a system is designed that has effectively a statistically insignificant error and abuse rate?
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Read my comments to others above. I have answered this question in detail. A criminal prosectution cannot be initiated by an individual. This is initiated by the general attorney or a representative. This attorney is due to the government, the same entity that is managing the healthcare system and paying for it, and has an interest to reduce the burden of the healthcare system on the budget.
You are talking theory, I am talking practice. Did you ever try to sue a doctor who has kill your mother without her c
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Your line of reasoning has consequences I'd imagine you haven't thought of, because it can be extended to abuse in ANY system than can cause death. By your logic, the fact that somebody could rig someone else's brakes to cause a fatal car accident makes allowing people to drive cars a slippery slope. You can't have electricity in your house, because someone could rig a device to electrocute someone else.
If an abuse comes up, you deal with that abuse you don't use a small outlier as reason to throw the baby
A good thing (Score:2)
If I do my math right, in Switzerland the suicide rate is 14 in 100k * 7.8mio people = 1100/year. According to the statistics (PDF) [dignitas.ch] from Dignitas they assist ~10 Swiss nationals/year. What does this mean? That 99% of suicides are unassisted - or at least without official assistance. Almost everybody could find a way to kill themselves. It could be messy, it could be painful, it could fail - one of the people in Terry Pratchet's "Choosing to die" had two failed suicide attempts behind him. The worst are thos
Small business owners will oppose this in USA (Score:3, Funny)
Now this, if these people decide this life is not worth living and decide to kick the bucket legally, without any consequence, what would happen to their businesses? Who would create jobs? Nothing should put the well being and motivation of the small business owner to risk. The access to steady supply of cheap labor and over supply of laborers should be maintained by the government at all costs. Allowing legal suicides would imperil the most sacrosanct class of Americans, the small business owner.
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Excellent post, sir and/or ma'am. You've reeled in three and counting...
Cure for diseases and repairs should come first. (Score:2)
Cures for diseases and repairs should come first. While there are some unbelievably horrendous diseases out there that at present time we cannot cure. An example of this is one of the worst Cancers you can get, Transitional cell Carcinoma, which we wage an endless struggle even slowing down it moves so radically fast. That doesn't meanwe shouldn't keep looking for cures where ever is possible.
If you're a wheel chair bound quadriplegic we should be looking for a way to repair, regrow, or use a cybernetic aug
I for one am glad to see the ruling (Score:2)
While my migraines aren't making me suicidal, they do give me a lot of sympathy for people who are suffering from more debilitating and painful conditions in the later years of their lives. I can easily imagine a life that is so miserable that I'd want to end it on my terms instead of prolonging it.
I don't want to live much past 65-70 (I'll be 51 in April.) The idea of spending years in a nursing home eating shit for food, bored to tears, and listening to my neighbour tell me for the 40th time about th
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Let's see. The motto used to be "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters." This is clearly Stuff that Matters.
It's definitely related to biology, which IS a science. Look at the recent articles about extending the length of telomeres to try to extend life spans. If we succeed in that, we're going to have a lot more people who are going to, at the end, need a dignified exit. The time to have that debate is before we get to that point, rather than doing it ad hoc.
Also, there are the ethical questions. Even Eins
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Re:Slippery Slope (Score:4, Funny)
I sure hope not, for three reasons:
1. This shit really stinks, like burning old clothes which were stored in an attic for decades
2. People who are high usually listen to loud music, and it's annoying
3. We can only produce a limited quantity of snacks
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1. This shit really stinks, like burning old clothes which were stored in an attic for decades
Really? I have heard people complain about cigarette, or worse pipe tobacco/cigar, smoke; but not marijuana. If it is grown properly, it usually has a sweet citrus smell.
Yes, it does stink, as do cigarettes. It wasn't a comparison. I was stuck living in a room with a frequent user who thought he could cover up the smell...idiot.
2. People who are high usually listen to loud music, and it's annoying
Are you sure it's not people who listen to loud music that often tend to smoke marijuana?
Yes, and while I occasionally enjoy loud music, the roommate mentioned above played Meatloaf "Bat Out of Hell" about fifteen times a day at max volume. It was the late 70s, and he ruined a perfectly good album for me.
3. We can only produce a limited quantity of snacks
I believe poptarts are a renewable resource.
Possibly, but if that drives the price up due to increased demand, I'm gonna have to hurt someone.
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So, define person. http://hardware.slashdot.org/s... [slashdot.org]
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"And what do you do about the sort of person who thinks they want to die but decided that irrationally and you expect would change their minds between jumping off a building and hitting the floor?"
If the doctors believe that the person is acting irrationally and they expect the person would change their mind, it just isn't going to happen. That's the whole point of having mandatory safeguards.
"Also, given that for most suicide "attempts" the objective is to get people's attention rather than to die"
[citation needed]
I'm pretty sure that Robin Williams would have disagreed with you. Michael [leftbehindbysuicide.org] Landsberg [calgary.cmha.ca] certainly does [torontosun.com].
And so do I [slashdot.org].
Like Landsberg said in one interview: "You're in a meeting and you look at your watch and say 'Sorry, I've got an appointment with my dentist.' No problem. But when you say "Sorry
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I knew that for at least a week now. Old news.
No you didn't because today is Sunday, Feb 8 2015 and the decision was announced Friday Feb 6 2015 [cp24.com]. That's 2 days ago, and I submitted the story the same morning [slashdot.org].
Or you can read the date on the actual judgment [lexum.com], again just 2 days ago.
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I am sick of idiots who think they have a right to interfere in the lives of others.
Of course the US is full of such idiots, and I am most of the time embarrassed that
I share a country with such scum.
I'm sick of idiots who think that only their opinions matter. I'm embarrassed to share the same country with such intolerance.
As for interference in the lives of others, and this is just my $.02, I'll agree up to the point where it interferes with someone else's rights (take your suicide off my lawn punk). Or, possibly is attempting to assist the suicide of someone in order to collect their insurance, inheritance, etc. As long as proper controls and safeguards get implemented...have a Kevorkian day!
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Please back up your tin-foil hat argument.
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The statement that "suicide is illegal because it is of no benefit to the state" implies that some conspiracy of the state has created the anti-suicide laws. This is patently false.