Tony Nicklinson is dead
Not funny, sorry, in fact it's fucking shite. He has refused food since his right-to-die request was denied, and has now succeeded in starving himself to death. I can not believe that this has happened, and can only hope that this serves as a watershed moment.
Edit: I understand that any law allowing assisted suicide will need to be extremely thoroughly set out, and will take time to implement etc, but the idea that there isn't even a formal debate taking place is astounding.
Edit edit: it would appear that there *is* a formal debate taking place, thankfully (see Amadeus & Enzyme's posts below). I'm still astounded anyone would ever argue against it though.
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Hol[]y - WHAT CAN THE HARVEST HOPE FOR, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 14:09,
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I think extreme caution must me taken and all the checks and balances in place when selecting the right sort of pillow to hold over their face
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cumquat may will not be commenting further on the allegations, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 14:14,
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I agree.
It must be terrible to be smothered with a duck-down pillow, if you're allergic to feathers.
(, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 14:51, Reply)
Imagine a dutch oven induced death?
Rancid
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Fadgebadger Sweaty sumo wanks for everyone!, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 15:37,
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Isn't there a formal debate?
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Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 14:15,
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lot of talk. no action
it's no vote winner and leaves them vulnerable to attack by churchy group
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cumquat may will not be commenting further on the allegations, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 14:21,
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there seems to have been action against it.
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Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 14:22,
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I know someone had a left a Right To Life newspaper on one of the buses deliberately so I wouldn't be surprised.
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maiden is filmed before a live studio audience, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 14:24,
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I mean action against it in the courts (as above)
and in parliament.
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Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 14:29,
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Good on him, fucking inspiring. I can't begin to imagine how horrifying it would be to starve to death.
The prospect that he did this willingly is mind boggling. If this doesn't change our government's fucked up views on Eurhanasia it'll be a very sad day indeed.
Let's just hope his efforts make a change.
(, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 14:15, Reply)
I imagine it is quite easy to starve yourself to death
when you are physically incapable of feeding yourself.
The family agreeing not to feed him is the real clincher here. I don't think I'd have the strength to do that.
(, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 14:27, Reply)
Good point, in a rather unfortunate way, being locked in would have been at his advantage.
That being said, considering he was a fully concious individual, the psychological struggle with starvation would have been no different to anyone else. Plus, with it being his choice and all, I'm sure that if he broke, his family would have been on hand to give him a meal in a fraction of a second.
However you look at it, it's a sad but utterly admirable undertaking. Plus a lovely "fuck you" to the knobs that decided he couldn't die in a less painful manner.
(, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 14:34, Reply)
Wow.
Can't imagine the pain and turmoil he went through to starve himself, I hope this re sparks the debate and makes the courts think twice, at least he can rest in peace now.
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Chilli Heatwave ,shit, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 14:17,
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Very sad end to a very sad story
if proof was ever needed that you are not the owner of your own body this is it. The State dictates, for what it believes is the most morally correct reasons but in fact they have acted in the most debase way by denying him what should be his right. Instead he died in a horrible way - starvation is not a nice way to die.
We should never allow the abuse of assisted suicide especially for vulnerable people, but when it is obvious that this is the choice of the person and not others then there should be no authority greater than that person's right to choose!
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maiden is filmed before a live studio audience, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 14:17,
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This very muchly.
The fact that he was refused denial to go to another country where it is legal too for fear his wife and accomplices would be jailed just adds to the courts ( no other way of putting it ) cuntish behaviour.
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Chilli Heatwave ,shit, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 14:23,
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It really isn't.
While there is such a thing as judge-made law, it doesn't follow that the judges could do whatever the hell they liked: they're still bound by statute and precedent, and can only create law where statute or precedent are unclear or in internal conflict.
The Suicide Act says what it says, and their Lordships can't change that. If you read the ruling, they're sypathetic to the plight of the plaintiffs - but there's nothing they could have done.
As to whether there would be a prosecution: the chances are that there wouldn't be, because it wouldn't be in the public interest.
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Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 14:42,
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If such laws are set in concrete to that extent - why even bother with the courts then?
Other than as a media showcase to raise awareness the lawyers must have known it wasn't going to come to anything, unless there is far greater flexibility than you give credit for. Judges have been known to set precedent often to the dismay of the public, surely a judge can take a stand and set precedent with his/her ruling? If not then the whole thing is a nonsense of bureaucracy.
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maiden is filmed before a live studio audience, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 16:14,
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As per my blog post,
I'm not wholly convinced that the case should have come to court.
I mean: Nicklinson's legal team was trying to show that the law could accommodate what they were after via the doctrine of necessity and Article 8 rights - but I think that their case was incredibly flimsy, especially after the Pretty ruling dismissed her Art. 8 claims (correctly, in my view).
EDIT FOR CLARIFICATION, 16:30: By this, I mean that the role of the judge in cases like this is to adjudicate when there's an ambiguity in the law (as determined by statute and precedent). But I don't see that there was any real ambiguity here. I think that the Nicklinson case was more about pushing the boundaries - which is why their Lordships ruled as they did: cf paras 150 and 151 of the ruling.
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Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 16:26,
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Hmmmm...
It's true that you're not the owner of your body: it's an established legal principle that there is no property in the body, which means that noone owns it, and it's impossible to own it. That's generally taken to be a principle defensible on the grounds that it (usually) protects people.
As for the right to choose... well, it's one thing to choose to kill yourself, but quite another for another to be entitled to help. Like it or not, the situation is morally and legally a lot trickier than it's sometimes thought to be.
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Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 14:46,
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There's all sorts of debats.
Formal, informal, telly progs.
5 seconds googling found this
www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/backbench-business-committee/news/debate-on-assisted-suicide/
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Cerebus Sticky! Sticky! Stick! Stick!, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 14:18,
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Lots of informal, I'd say
I hadn't heard about the debate you've linked there, but thanks for posting it. I guess what I mean is that the debate doesn't seem to be in a mature state. Again, though, I might be wrong.
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Hol[]y - WHAT CAN THE HARVEST HOPE FOR, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 14:24,
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Haven't really been keeping up with this
But for his sake, I'm glad he's dead now.
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Extinct Jesus Dossier "...I think it counteracts Hitler's magic...", Wed 22 Aug 2012, 14:23,
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I guess in the end he did commit suicide,
and the only way to do that without assistance, for a man in his condition, is to starve yourself.
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Brandy_Bumwinkle, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 14:28,
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There is a formal debate taking place.
Only last month I got an invitation from the House of Commons to submit evidence about yet another draft assisted dying bill. (Note to self: Do something about that, instead of twatting about on b3ta.)
Open any edition of a bioethics or medical law journal, and there's a chance that there'll be a paper on euthanasia or assisted dying in there somewhere (I've published four or five, I think, in the past few years myself). If there's a problem with the academic debate, it's that it's so rare for something new to be said. But that hasn't stopped people saying it.
As for the rulings on Nicklinson and "Martin": well, they could hardly have been otherwise. See my predictions here and here, and my initial response to last week's ruling
here.
Roger Crisp (Oxford) takes a different view from me - see this post on the Practical Ethics blog - but I think he's wrong, and I churned out 1500 words yesterday for either that blog or the BMJ one explaining why, before realising that there was plenty in what I was preparing to sustain a(nother) full-length paper.
For the record, I can't see any particular reason why assisted dying should not be legal - and I'd probably go further than most lawmakers, because I see no reason why it should be restricted to the terminally ill and/ or suffering. (I think that to restrict it to the suffering is indefensible, and possibly self-defeating anyway, since the greater the suffering, the more problematic it becomes: see the argument here (.pdf format) if you have institutional access.)
/shameless self-promotion
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Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 14:29,
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there was the Falconer report,
I thought that was quite well known.
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Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 14:30,
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That as well.
It is well known; but it's also bollocks for the most part. (Oh, dear: I'm about to re-engage the self-promotion... See this. Such are the wonders of academic publishing that even I can't access that - but I'll happily send a .doc version to anyone who gazzes me their email.)
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Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 14:33,
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I read a bit of it,
I was a little perturbed by how certain people's opinions apparently count as "evidence".
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Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 14:39,
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Also I'm not very happy about the way the word "dignity" keeps being thrown about.
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Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 14:42,
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Totally. Dignity is a horribly misused word.
It's more or less on the index within the profession.
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Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 14:47,
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Promote away!
It's all interesting stuff!
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Hol[]y - WHAT CAN THE HARVEST HOPE FOR, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 14:40,
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I'd be more than a little concerned with the 'ethics' of this if made legal.
once passed, who is to say a vulnerable, elderly patient who has no family could be coerced into it?
(, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 14:51, Reply)
or even if they do have family,
or aren't necessarily elderly. What happens when it becomes completely socially acceptable to ask your doctor to end it all when you've got nothing more to live for? Is that the sort of world we want?
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Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 14:56,
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yep
suicide rescues would be a thing of the past.
(may catch them for organ harvesting)
(, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 14:58, Reply)
it would cut our pensions burden,
as well as every other sort of benefit, being disabled or otherwise unemployable being "undignified".
The baby boom generation is just coming into pensionable age, as well as the economic crisis with all its austerity measures, the timing of the sudden interest in the euthanasia issue concerns me.
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Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 15:02,
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Nope.
There's no tension between legalised assisted dying and suicide rescue - and the organ harvesting canard is utterly baseless.
(On this note, incidentally, the law in Belgium allows euthanasia, but not assisted suicide: that is, there are circumstances in which it's legal to kill someone, but not to provide the means for them to kill themselves. This is because they have a good samaritan law - and to provide the means to commit suicide is incompatible with the duty to attempt to rescue someone whose life is in danger. I think. That's how someone explained it to me. It's odd, I'll admit.)
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Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 15:03,
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actually that doesn't sound so odd to me,
even if it's the opposite end of the slippery wedge we are currently trying to grasp by the horns at the moment.
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Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 15:06,
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Annoyingly I have to go to a meeting
but I would say that yes that is the world I want. Not the world where vulnerable people are taken advantage of, but one where you can take your life in as controlled (I hope that's not too robotic a word: I mean it emotionally as well as physically) a fashion as possible, after exhausting all other options.
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Hol[]y - WHAT CAN THE HARVEST HOPE FOR, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 14:59,
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There'd be all kinds of safeguards built in to any plausible law.
There's no particular reason to think that the vulnerable would be more at risk under a legalised assisted dying system.
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Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 15:00,
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Revenue?
Once it becomes 'de rigueur',a few slip under the radar, one less pension, one less costly, long-term, medically assisted bed free.
(, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 15:15, Reply)
PrisonPlanet is -----> that way.
There's no evidence of people being quietly bumped off in any of the countries in which any form of assisted dying is currently legal. Under any plausible system, it would not even be available with consent - only on request. That is: the idea would have to be generated by the would-be dead person. Even then, there'd almost certainly have to be repeated requests, and certification from a psychiatrist or someone in a similar role.
Bumping someone off contrary to their wishes would still attract a murder charge, just as it does now. And if you're determined to bump someone off contrary to their wishes, it isn't obvious to me that the small matter of the law is going to stop you (which is why I think the argumentum ad Shipmanum against legalisation doesn't work: if the illegality of killing didn't stop him, then the idea that having illegal assisted dying is going to stop anyone also takes a battering).
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Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 15:23,
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in the Netherlands the number of assisted suicides has risen year on year,
presumably as social acceptance builds. There is a group now arguing that anyone over 70 who is "tired of life" should be eligible. That worries me, frankly.
We're not controlled by other people so much as by our ideas, which we get from our social environment.
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Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 15:26,
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But why shouldn't people who're tired of life be eligible?
And so what if the number is rising?
By contrast, the evidence from Oregon is that making assisted death available has meant that lots of people get the drugs, but never use them: they do, however, seem to be less likely to be depressed, possibly because they know they have an out in the future if they want it.
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Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 15:39,
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I challenge the very legitimacy of the idea of being "tired of life."
It is a turn in social values that this idea can become accepted. Obviously people are only saying what they are feeling, but I'm concerned that people are starting to feel this way, and to pander too it seems like the wrong way to go. What is wrong with modern society? Why are suicide rates continuing to rise?
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Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 15:52,
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Are suicide rates continuing to rise?
And, even if they are, does that necessarily tell us much of moral importance? I mean: we're getting quite good at curing illnesses that would have killed us a little while ago; and yet we're still mortal, and everyone still dies. This means that, by dint of mere statistics, the rate of suicide is likely to rise, simply because people haven't been killed by cholera before they get the chance.
As to the being tired of life bit: isn't it a bit strange to think that life is worth having simply for its own sake? Why isn't it possible for someone to decide that they've done everything they wanted? (Have a look at Bernard Williams' "The Makropoulos Case" - he claims there that dying is a bad thing for the one who dies, but that not dying is really no better.)
Suppose someone does say that they no longer derive any satisfaction from life, or consider it a burden. On what grounds would you be able to say that they'd made a mistake? And if you can't say that, why not take them at their word?
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Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 16:00,
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They are, if you look at the graphs,
historically that could be down to the effects you suggest but not in recent times.
Is it strange that, as Kant put it, "a man is an end in himself"? No, it's not. But here we reach the crux of the matter, where all arguments kind of grind to a halt. Because all of this really is the ultimate logical conclusion of western value-based morality, rights-based ethics and individualism, all of which I have suspected of being dubious for quite some time. From my point of view this conclusion of things is irony both Socratic as well as dramatic. But there is little more I can say, other than simply to restate that I don't believe that the purpose of life is to get what you want.
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Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 16:10,
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That's not really what Kant claimed.
His claim is more along the lines that the humanity in a person is an end in itself. By "humanity", he has in mind something like the capacity for practical reason. It's certainly not a claim about individual humans as biologically understood. (On Joss Walker's reading of Kant (here), it might not even be about individuals at all...)
Sorry: as well as assisted dying, Kantian moral philosophy is another of my pet subjects. I've even published a paper linking the two, but I'm not going to spam any more of my stuff.
As for the historical alterations - and, again, I'd want to see the graphs in question - that might be explicable. If suicide was thought of as shameful (as it frequently was), and the family of a suicide stood to be disinherited (as was frequently the case), then there'd be a very good reason to cover up suicide and call it something else.
I genuinely don't understand what you mean by the rest of your post, though.
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Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 16:21,
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I'm thinking of the last few decades,
I can't find any good data right now but I've definitely read that suicide rates are rising, as well as the diagnosis of depression and prescription of anti-depressants. But it seems like you're trying to worm out of it even before seeing the data...
What I mean is, the whole secular utilitarian ethos, taken to its logical conclusion, is that suicide should be available on demand to anyone who wants it, life itself becomes nothing more than a commodity of no intrinsic value*. You even preempted me on that last point. This is at odds with other theories of goodness and the purpose of life, notably religion so nobody should be surprised that the Church is opposed to this sort of thing. Rights-based ethics is evidenced in statements about people's "right to die", that's a right I never heard of a few years ago, we always used to talk about the right to life to criticise the death penalty &c, where does the "right to die" come from? Well it comes from the ideas of individualism and dignity (ugh!) in which the sole purpose of government is to facilitate people getting what they want. Or as you put it "satisfaction". In the modern mindset, we all have the right to satisfaction, in accordance with our individual values.
edit: very expensive book btw
* i.e. only the means to something else, such as pleasure or happiness
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Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 16:40,
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I'm not trying to worm out of anything.
You made a claim about suicide rates, for which you've offered no evidence. All I've done is suggest that things might be more complicated than the bare statistics would suggest, even if - on the face of it - numbers have risen.
"Religion" is much too vague a concept to introduce here - it's not as if all religions are of a voice, or even that all adherents to any particular one agree. (I know of at least one clergyman who's a member of Dignity in Dying, for example, and there're plenty more who're sympathetic without being members.)
But suppose there is a "religious" viewpoint: so what? I've never been at all convinced that religious ethics has anything much to say: strip away the apologetics, and it becomes regular moral philosophy done more or less well. (Usually less well, in my experience.)
And while I agree that there's a lot to unpick in appeals to a "right to die", I think that you're rather simplistic about things. Not the least of the reason is that a serious rights claim is not necessarily a utilitarian claim: inasmuch as utilitarianism is a consequentialist line of thought, and rights theory properly so-called is non-consequentialist, it's more likely that there'll be a tension between rights claims and utilitarianism. Admittedly, they often amount to the same in practice - but this doesn't mean that they're compatible.
It's a horribly expensive book - academic volumes invariably are. I'm trying to wangle a free copy, but no joy so far.
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Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 16:56,
Reply)
It's still premature to analyse statistics you haven't even got yet...
alas I can only find graphs for a few specific countries: Japan, Australia and India; and Scotland which shows the opposite.
I mention religion, in fact I wrote "Christianity" first but then I thought Islam and Judaism don't approve of it either. The point is that other ethical systems come to different conclusions, and religion was a much bigger social force in this country historically, now it's on the wane society is going a different way. (Individual clergy, however, sometimes don't even believe in God, but there you go.) I don't think the secular world has some special claim on being right about this.
True enough, rights claims are essentially moral absolutism, but it rather seems more a case of rule utilitarianism since this new right cropped up, it seems like rule utilitarianism based on Peter Singer's Preference Utilitarianism. The primary idea is that of the satisfaction of the will, the rights come along to facilitate that, or to post-justify it more likely. Call this an oversimplification if you will. I rather call it a distillation. Obviously social forces are in reality far more complex than that.
But to make a point, personally I don't believe that the satisfaction of the will is of primary importance, and that we have not just rights but duties.
I'm glad to discuss this with you anyway because you seem like someone who knows what they are talking about.
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Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 17:18,
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This is 'pre' legislation.
www.guardian.co.uk/politics/reality-check/2012/aug/01/black-wednesday-new-nhs-hospital-doctors
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2090332/Four-patients-die-thirsty-starving-EVERY-DAY-hospital-wards-damning-new-statistics.html
www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/nov/11/nhs-care-elderly-starved
(, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 15:36, Reply)
Noone is denying that things go wrong.
But none of your stories has the slightest thing to do with assisted dying.
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Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 15:40,
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Not ,not assisted dying........
but pretty much negligence that lead to death. So with the caveat of 'the laws behind us' the only way is down. IMHO
(, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 17:19, Reply)
" think we can only go for terminal illness at the moment, so this doesn’t actually apply to the people who are probably about to go into care homes. But, you know, baby steps."
davidalton.net/2012/02/03/baby-steps-towards-euthanasia-why-the-council-of-europe-is-right/
Attributed to one Joyce Robins by the Daily Mail and others, who is also quoted in the Falconer report thus:
Joyce Robins, Co-Director of Patient Concern, agreed with Christine Kalus that the impact of assisted dying on the doctor–patient relationship ‘would depend a lot on the people involved’. She said the trust between older people and doctors is already at a low ebb:
I don’t put any credence in this thing that people will then be scared, they will then be frightened, because my goodness people are frightened now, terrified of going into care homes, hospitals, so on and so forth, because they’ve seen on television before their eyes what actually happens to you there. [In] my elderly community down on the south coast, people are terrified.
Instead of assisted dying adding to people’s fears about how they die, she suggested that ‘it could take that away’.
Curiously, she seems to suggest that the right way to address the problem that our care homes are seen as a fate worse than death, is to offer death as an alternative option.
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Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 15:47,
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We should have fantasy suicide centres all across the country. End it all however you please.
Sliced to death and urinated on by Japanese schoolgirls etc.
(, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 15:19, Reply)
^^^^ THIS ^^^^
'Kin' hell, I thought I'd been forwarded to Mumsnet.
#Knobs
#2 girls 1 cup, etc.
#goatse
(, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 18:55, Reply)