Join me at the State House to oppose Physician Assisted Suicide in Vermont

[nancyd]

I must admit, that this is a very difficult topic and I should qualify my position. While I personally find it objectionable to end life intentionally, You have the right to choose for yourself. However, I feel it is wrong to expect healthcare professionals to do it for you. Physicians and nurses take a Solomon oath to "Do No Harm", above all. We take that very seriously. Our professions are fully based on preserving life and providing comfort when life can no longer be sustained.

You have the absolute right to choose your destiny...your end path. But the responsibility of ending one's life should not be placed on the very people who have sworn to protect that life until your death.

 People do not need a "special" killer cocktail prescribed by their physician. Patients and families have found the ways and means to accomplish their goals.

You have the right to choose to die. You don't have the right to make us kill you. We love you too much!

[cedarman]

"Do No Harm"?   Really?   What "Harm" are doctors commiting to NOT do?  Physical harm, Psychological harm?  What about the doctors who DO harm in the name of science and advancing medical treatments, or situations where the treatment sometimes causes more pain and harm then the condition?  Yes, that is a slightly cynical (but also real) point of view.  It happens daily. 

How about Financial Harm?  Some people who have worked hard and saved for a life time to have something to leave behind for their children see that life time of work evaporate in escalating medical bills.  In some cases, from treatments they wouldn't pursue IF they had the ability to "Die with Dignity".

Yes, people have the choice to end their own lives. Some decide to do so while they are still capable of doing it alone.  Some may reach that point only after they cannot do anything for themselves and need assisstance.  By leaving things as they currently are, you are turning loving, caring family members who choose to help a diing family member leave on their own terms into a murderer.

Sometimes, those who decide to do it alone end up doing it in a way that is tramatizing to their entire family (I used to work with a guy who's father shot himself because his Parkinson's was advancing and he has first hand experience with that long term result and the cost).  THAT method of ending his life was far more tramatic to my former co-worker then IF his father could have had an open and honest discussion with his family about the choice he had made and was able to do it in a “cleaner” way that he felt comfortable with.

We are not talking about allowing doctors to kill people. We are talking about giving people an option to exit this world in a way that can be less painful and planned (and therefore easier on their families in MANY ways).  Is allowing doctors to drug people into a commatose state hooked up to machines for the sake of saying we are keeping them alive really a better option?  Does that really embody the principle of “Do No Harm”?

[mirjo]

It's clearly a slippery kind of slope, but prescribing whatever the "medication" is seems no different than prescribing sleeping pills or similar, which someone can OD on. If we're splitting hairs of course, which we are. Every side has a side as with all things in life. Opponents are going to point out everything that's wrong and the number of times someone was diagnosed incorrectly, and the value of palliative care--proponents are going to point out how people should make their own choices in a less traumatic manner than say a gun to the head in the garage or something.

The argument does not make either side more right, it's a moot point. The bill has some flaws, the basic point of it isn't one of them. Do medical professional take oaths to Do no harm in the care of others etc., yes they do, but as we all know human's are fallible. A lot of this is in the language Physician Assisted Suicide is inflammatory and suicided is used frequently, because it's meant to invoke a negative reaction. Death With Dignity: Patient Choices at the End of Life is a much more pleasant sounding euphemism for the same thing.

As someone pointed out, we are expected to make a living will and direct someone to "pull the plug" if we're in incapacitated, if in fact we don't want to live that way and it's ok to make that directive, but not this one. I also find this a bit of a double standard here--it's also something I hadn't thought of. I guess the difference is you're already mostly dead anyway (??) because you're in a coma and hooked up to respirators & what not (??) I think if my grandmother had this option at some point in the last stages of her life, she would have gladly taken it or called Dr. Kervorkian. (It may have even been pre-Dr.K)

Even if this bill could safeguard Vermonters at end-of-life from potential abuses – which it can’t – it cannot possibly keep suicide-prone Vermonters from thinking that the State of Vermont agrees that when life gets too hard, it’s okay to end it all...Edward Mahoney

Seriously? I'm not sure that's the message people will get. I'm not envisioning a mass exodus of the living, should this pass. My favorite quote from somewhere was about depression--"If we medicate them, they won't want to die earlier than their disease is killing them!" is how it reads to me. If I had a terminal illness, I think I would have a right to be depressed about it.

I know I am. I have looked at this and thought about it and have ultimately concluded that people should have a right to choose, flaws/risks and all. Ed Paquin, former Vt House member from Fairfax gave the most compelling argument against this bill I have heard--it was the only one that made me re-think my position. It was compelling and thought provoking, but at the end of the day, I knew I believed in this as I have from the beginning. And that's how I know, both sides are at an impasse. you're either for it or against it. It probably shouldn't be a legislative vote.

[Chris Santee]

Thanks for the kind words, ShadyLane, as to your question, I guess I'll never know.
It wasn't like those six years were pain free, but the good outweighed the bad, at least to us.

I'm sorry you had to suffer through your hardtimes.