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This is a normal post 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).
 (I helped save b3ta! Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 15:23, Reply)
This is a normal post 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.
 (I helped save b3ta! Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 15:26, Reply)
This is a normal post 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.
 (I helped save b3ta! Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 15:39, Reply)
This is a normal post 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?
 (I helped save b3ta! Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 15:52, Reply)
This is a normal post 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?
 (I helped save b3ta! Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 16:00, Reply)
This is a normal post 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.
 (I helped save b3ta! Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 16:10, Reply)
This is a normal post 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.
 (I helped save b3ta! Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 16:21, Reply)
This is a normal post 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
 (I helped save b3ta! Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 16:40, Reply)
This is a normal post 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.
 (I helped save b3ta! Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 16:56, Reply)
This is a normal post 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.
 (I helped save b3ta! Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 17:18, Reply)
This is a normal post Noone is denying that things go wrong.
But none of your stories has the slightest thing to do with assisted dying.
 (I helped save b3ta! Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 15:40, Reply)
This is a normal post 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
 (Spin Its a thing., Wed 22 Aug 2012, 17:19, Reply)
This is a normal post " 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.
 (I helped save b3ta! Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 15:47, Reply)