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Terry Pratchett Considers Assisted Suicide
cHALiTO writes "Beloved science fiction and fantasy writer Terry Pratchett has terminal early-onset Alzheimer's. He's determined to have the option of choosing the time and place of his death, rather than enduring the potentially horrific drawn-out death that Alzheimer's sometimes brings. But Britain bans assisted suicide, and Pratchett is campaigning to have the law changed. As part of this, he has visited Switzerland's Dignitas clinic, an assisted suicide facility, with a BBC camera crew, as part of a documentary that will include Britain's first televised suicide. Pratchett took home Dignitas's assisted suicide consent forms."
It is every person's right to decide how they die. Not the governments.
If I were in his situation, I'd do about the same thing. I'd fill out the forms to be carried out in a few months. That way if he stopped progressing he could just do whatever, but if he kept progressing he may not be lucid so they could do their thing.
We'll miss you, Terry, but you have the power over your own life and I respect that.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
I was deeply saddened by the news last year when i heard of his illness. Terry Pratchett is still one of my favorite authors and i wish him a lot of time left.
But i have to confess that i understand his reactions 100%. Rotting away with Alzheimer is my personal worst nightmare. Though i am not allowed to vote in the UK, i will give his initiative my full support whereever i can.
I believe that, if you have don't have the right to end your own life, you are not free at all. My life belongs to me, but to no goverment, to no society and to no god.
Yours, Martin
Speaking as a libertarian:
Unless the government is claiming ownership of your body (which apparently the UK government is), you should be able to terminate yourself any time you want - especially if you're faced with a terminal illness. By not allowing him to commit suicide the government is basically making Mr. Pratchett the property of the queen. What year is this? 1772?
"The state of slavery is of such a nature, that it is incapable of being introduced on any reasons, moral or political; but only positive law, which preserves its force long after the reasons, occasion, and time itself from whence it was created, is erased from memory: it's so odious, that nothing can be suffered to support it, but positive law." - Judge Mansfield, Queen's Bench.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Alzheimer's is the result of tau protein brain plaques crushing neurons to death. Tau proteins seem to form around foreign particles in the brain. It is quite plausible that this process is some form of very primitive "immune" response that evolved in single-cell lifeforms or some sort of colony (a jellyfish would probably benefit from toxic chemicals being engulfed even if it meant part of the colony being destroyed).
This leads to two questions:
1) How did the foreign bodies get into the brain in the first place?
2) Would it be more harmful or less to deactivate the immune response?
It may be that solving (1) would be sufficient. It is certainly necessary, especially if (2) shows that removing the response would actually lead to a worse condition due to toxic buildup. (1) is certainly sufficient for some forms of Alzheimers, such as that caused by aluminum toxicity.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Don't say that. It's false hope.
Right. I prefer to go with the real hope, which is: If we* keep busting our asses like we are, then maybe in 50 years we will laugh at Alzheimers. Or at least be able to do something about it. We need hope to pursue this cause, but we can't act like it's a foregone conclusion.
* I mean "we" as in "humanity".
The enemies of Democracy are
Personally, I'd prefer it if the stem cell researchers could find a way to reverse the damage and bring him up to full health. It's not an either-or situation. Every day TP is alive and well, there is a chance (however microscopic) of a breakthrough. However, I also respect the fact that you've got to draw the line somewhere and I respect where he's drawn his. The only question that remains is whether the US (the country capable of funding R&D at the necessary rate) will actually back stem cell research enough to save him and countless others. Not just from Alzheimers but from any death that results from a relatively small number of cells that cannot be repaired by the body unaided.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Which is to say we already have socialized medicine in the US, it's just very badly managed. Putting in a proper system of socialized medicine would be much better and cheaper. The only other choice is letting people die in the streets.
The starting point for these evils is the liberal and materialistic view that man is the owner of his life; that he is free to choose the moment and manner of his death. Those who hold this view define suicide as “the last liberty of life.”
Free will my friend. Your religion my decide that my suicide is a sin; that does NOT deprive me of the right to commit that final sin. That right and decision is mine alone. Even if you prove correct, and i have indeed stolen that life from your God, judgment is his. It is not yours, not the Church's and most certainly not the State's.
If we adopt a law holding that a person has the right to kill himself, soon we will also adopt euthanasia; because if the individual has the right to say when his life is no longer worth living, soon society will claim this right as well.
Wait what? This is a pretty egregious logic fail - even for a religious organization. Euthanasia and assisted suicide are nearly diametrically opposed. One leaves the final decision in my hands; the other in the hands of society. Stating that there is a connection between the two is not sufficient to prove that connection.
Sorry, I stopped reading once I realized that the remainder of that "article" is based on both conflating the two actions, and upon the false premise that under your religion I do not have free will to sin or not.
There is a funny fact about assisted suicide. If Alzheimer/cancer/similar incurable painful disease would be monitored by a veterinarian without putting the animal down, he would be sued for animal torture. And lose.
It's quite telling when our current "general" code of ethics is against torturing animals in this way, but not against torturing humans in the same way.
It basically shows that our laws are written by religions. Putting an animal down when its terminally ill is seen as merciful, because we don't want it to suffer needlessly.
However, people aren't allowed to commit suicide in the same circumstances to avoid needless suffering, and there's only one possible reason: religious proscriptions against suicide. And also because humans are seen as completely different from animals, a viewpoint which again is rooted in religion.
It would be nice if the first-world nations (and maybe others too) would pour some more funding into research to combat these diseases. You'd think that maybe some of these greedy leaders would be interested in more treatments and cures for old-age diseases, considering most of them aren't that far away from old age themselves and thus have a significant chance of acquiring these diseases themselves.
Sounds hauntingly familiar - we went through all of that with my mother. Taking away the car keys turned out to be easy. When she asked we told her the car was at the mechanics, and astonishingly quickly she forgot about it. Showers became a hazard as she would sometimes turn on the hot water full blast. Installed a locked temperature knob. The biggest hassle came when she started wandering off. The police would return her - she was found roaming the neighborhood, going to visit a friend (said friend had been dead ten years, and lived 40 miles away when she was alive - far too far to walk). When it started happening at night we had to move her to a locked care facility. Oy. She cried not to leave her there on that first night, like a child being left at camp for the first time. The second night was no better, nor the third, nor the fourth, but she did eventually settle in at the new place, though went downhill quickly. One day she simply refused to eat. No coaxing could get her to, and we refused to have her fed intravenously. And maybe two weeks after that, it was over. Her death was not a sad time; we viewed it as a time of release. This was a woman who was a trained nurse, a grand master at bridge, and ace at the NYT crossword puzzle, and a voracious reader, reduced to making belts woven out of leather strips in a day room. The woman who was my mother had been dead more than four years before her body finally caught up with her. A death I would not wish upon my worst enemy.
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