>”I worry that even with the best of intentions and the most carefully worded legislation, it will be impossible to properly guarantee that no-one at the end of their life will feel a degree of pressure.”
>Ms Sturgeon said she was worried the legislation could be the “thin edge of the wedge” and that society could lose focus on palliative care.
>She said: “If we normalise assisted dying… then we will, as a society, lose focus on the palliative and end-of-life care and support that is necessary to help people, even in the worst of circumstances, to live with dignity.”
I think my main disagreement with this sort of reasoning is it sets something of a one-sided standard. To take an example that’s ever so slightly lighter, take airport security. I read a fascinating paper a while ago that argued that increased airport security can actually cost lives, because it encourages people to take other forms of transport such as driving that can be more dangerous. It might be tempting to argue that we should increase airport security because it (at least on paper) makes air travel safer, but on balance it might actually be counter-productive.
Similarly, palliative care is something of a trade off already. In a number of cases with palliative care, there are still potential options that will save lives – but people decide not to take those routes, because on balance those routes may substantially reduce their quality of life with a relatively low likelihood of success. I do not argue that any procedure for assisted dying is perfect or infallible, but expecting infallibility is both unreasonable and can undermine the policy objective of improving quality of life for terminally ill people.
Seems a case of allowing the best to be the enemy of the good. No law in this area will ever be infallible.
I watched my Grandfather die, slowly, from a degenerative illness. From the moment of his diagnosis, he knew how it would end. He lived every moment he could for as long as he could but there came a time when he couldn’t do that any more. A smart and active man became nothing but a shell of his former self. He asked me to help him die sooner. It was heartbreaking for him to do that and heartbreaking that I couldn’t help him do it.
Sure palliative care has a role but sometimes it doesn’t.
I hope she never has to watch a loved one take time to die
* We prosecute people for **NOT** ending the suffering of animals
* We prosecute people **for** ending the suffering of humans
The thin end of the wedge argument can be shot down, by making the decision require
1. two doctors – not in same hierarchy e.g. junior & their consultant
1. the patient have **zero** chance of survival
1. the patient be receiving palliative care
Any politician still objecting should be made to do a month at hospice / end-of-life in hospital
(Two months ago I lost my mother to pneumonia and it wasn’t good)
I think the conversation around the term “assisted dying” is so loaded that we lose sight of the fact we already assist people in their final stages up until their death.
The current standard is horrific, even with the best of intentions to make someone as comfortable as possible. At the end of our life we will be fed drugs and left to linger on, until we effectively starve or die of dehydration, until or unless something more immediate takes effect such as e.g. a heart attack.
The question and conversation in my mind shouldn’t be weighed down by the concept of assist dying, it should be focused on a right to a quality of life AND DEATH.
No one wants state sanctioned and approved deaths. But give people the choice and means to bring their end as peacefully and comfortably as possible.
If my last days are to be in some quasi state of lucid agony, and opioid fuelled stupor, I’d rather it ended sooner.
I must say I am surprised by her stance here.
I mean she was in power for almost a decade.
If she supported it we would have it.
Poor show from her. We treat dogs with more dignity than we do the elderly, terminally sick and dying
It’s not an independence vote so she’s not interested
She can veer away all she likes, no-one cares what that wee troll thinks anymore. Assisted dying is an essential process that is very important for people in the world, not just this country.
If you look at any given polling on the matter in recent years you will find popular support from the UK electorate between 60-75% in favour of assisted dying while only a minority sometimes as low as 14% are opposed to it.
I will never understand how successive waves of politicians regardless of their political parties end up opposing something that not only has so much popular backing that it’s a no-brainer to carry out but which has expert medical backing from a horde of doctors and carers who agree that sometimes there is more dignity and less suffering in death than a needlessly prolonged life past any sort of quality therein.
Sturgeon, Yousaf, Sarwar and Dross are all talking about “concerns” and how they aren’t going to vote in favour of it.
At least Liam McArthur the MSP behind the bill seems confident that it will pass anyway but it boggles the mind.
I feel the same way, honestly.
If you could guarantee that there was no pressure whatsoever I’d be 100% for it. Right now we live in a society where you will lose your entire fortune if you have to go into a home. There is undoubtedly some level of pressure at the moment.
The article makes it sound like Humza is opposed to it because the major religious bodies are opposed to it.
Hopefully that’s not influencing him as church and state should not be together in this day and age.
Sturgeon’s argument is a fair and valid one and I say this as someone is cemented in the pro assisted dying camp as it has worked in other countries.
Her concerns are right but I really don’t think it’ll take away from the palliative care already provided (whatever is left of it mind you).
Assisted dying isn’t a slippery slope – it’s a cliff edge – and looking at nations like Canada we see how quickly it evolves to target the disabled and vulnerable. A vote for this is a vote for stripping away safety for the most vulnerable in our nation.
I’ve always been in favour of assisted dying, but having seen how some family members act when there is money up for grabs there’d have to be serious controls in place to ensure it’s an individual’s choice and not something forced upon them coercively.
I believe that assisted dying will lead to bad things like it has in Canada.
People may feel pressure to end their life prematurely (for financial reasons perhaps). I also believe the NHS will evolve so that more patients feel that taking up this option is the only option to them.
And despite this, I look at people like Tony Nicklinson (the chap with locked-in syndrome) and cannot even begin to imagine his suffering. He wasn’t terminal – he only died because he withdrew from food/etc and contracted pneumonia. I’d want the option to die too.
And the options for people with illnesses like dementia likely won’t exist, because we will deem that these people cannot consent. Does that mean we will see people die early, like Robin Williams, for fear of them ending up in a home without capacity to end things?
If I don’t die peacefully in my sleep or suddenly, then I’d like to have the option to die with dignity. However it is an incredibly tricky thing to introduce from a policy perspective.
If it is legal to get an abortion it should be legal to have assisted dying. Enough said.
Who is this woman?
Assisted dying will become mandatory dying to save the NHS money.
Instead of “assisted dying”, we need a legal right to suicide, that would give people the legally protected right not to be prevented from committing suicide. This would mean that the government’s powers to restrict access to effective and humane suicide methods would be drastically curtailed, and the need for a medical practitioner to be present would be limited.
The reason that we need “assisted” dying is mainly because of the fact that we have a paternalistic government that infantilises us by restricting our ability to commit suicide without risk of failure. So ‘assisted’ suicide is a partial and very narrow solution to a problem created by suicide prevention policies.
None of us consented to being born, and all of us should have the right to die unless there is substantial reason to justify infringing upon our negative liberty rights. It should be for the government to justify why we shouldn’t be allowed access to an easy and effective suicide method; rather than for us to justify why our personal circumstances merit an exemption from the default of being slaves to society.
I really don’t understand this. We don’t really own anything in life, we have bits of paper that say we do but it’s all a construct. The only thing I actually have is myself and I’m bloody sure that when I want to go, I’ll go. The system needs to be planned out extremely well to stop abuse, but nobody has the right to tell anyone what they can do with their own body.
Thank you for continuing to disappoint Nicola.
WM will just block it as usual and let Wales go ahead when it wants to. As per usual.
Nae disrespect tae Nicky but as a nurse in care of the elderly for over thirty years I wish some people had witnessed some of the awful deaths I’ve seen over the years.Every nurse I personally know supports assisted dying .
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Tory
>”I worry that even with the best of intentions and the most carefully worded legislation, it will be impossible to properly guarantee that no-one at the end of their life will feel a degree of pressure.”
>Ms Sturgeon said she was worried the legislation could be the “thin edge of the wedge” and that society could lose focus on palliative care.
>She said: “If we normalise assisted dying… then we will, as a society, lose focus on the palliative and end-of-life care and support that is necessary to help people, even in the worst of circumstances, to live with dignity.”
I think my main disagreement with this sort of reasoning is it sets something of a one-sided standard. To take an example that’s ever so slightly lighter, take airport security. I read a fascinating paper a while ago that argued that increased airport security can actually cost lives, because it encourages people to take other forms of transport such as driving that can be more dangerous. It might be tempting to argue that we should increase airport security because it (at least on paper) makes air travel safer, but on balance it might actually be counter-productive.
Similarly, palliative care is something of a trade off already. In a number of cases with palliative care, there are still potential options that will save lives – but people decide not to take those routes, because on balance those routes may substantially reduce their quality of life with a relatively low likelihood of success. I do not argue that any procedure for assisted dying is perfect or infallible, but expecting infallibility is both unreasonable and can undermine the policy objective of improving quality of life for terminally ill people.
Seems a case of allowing the best to be the enemy of the good. No law in this area will ever be infallible.
I watched my Grandfather die, slowly, from a degenerative illness. From the moment of his diagnosis, he knew how it would end. He lived every moment he could for as long as he could but there came a time when he couldn’t do that any more. A smart and active man became nothing but a shell of his former self. He asked me to help him die sooner. It was heartbreaking for him to do that and heartbreaking that I couldn’t help him do it.
Sure palliative care has a role but sometimes it doesn’t.
I hope she never has to watch a loved one take time to die
* We prosecute people for **NOT** ending the suffering of animals
* We prosecute people **for** ending the suffering of humans
The thin end of the wedge argument can be shot down, by making the decision require
1. two doctors – not in same hierarchy e.g. junior & their consultant
1. the patient have **zero** chance of survival
1. the patient be receiving palliative care
Any politician still objecting should be made to do a month at hospice / end-of-life in hospital
(Two months ago I lost my mother to pneumonia and it wasn’t good)
I think the conversation around the term “assisted dying” is so loaded that we lose sight of the fact we already assist people in their final stages up until their death.
The current standard is horrific, even with the best of intentions to make someone as comfortable as possible. At the end of our life we will be fed drugs and left to linger on, until we effectively starve or die of dehydration, until or unless something more immediate takes effect such as e.g. a heart attack.
The question and conversation in my mind shouldn’t be weighed down by the concept of assist dying, it should be focused on a right to a quality of life AND DEATH.
No one wants state sanctioned and approved deaths. But give people the choice and means to bring their end as peacefully and comfortably as possible.
If my last days are to be in some quasi state of lucid agony, and opioid fuelled stupor, I’d rather it ended sooner.
I must say I am surprised by her stance here.
I mean she was in power for almost a decade.
If she supported it we would have it.
Poor show from her. We treat dogs with more dignity than we do the elderly, terminally sick and dying
It’s not an independence vote so she’s not interested
She can veer away all she likes, no-one cares what that wee troll thinks anymore. Assisted dying is an essential process that is very important for people in the world, not just this country.
If you look at any given polling on the matter in recent years you will find popular support from the UK electorate between 60-75% in favour of assisted dying while only a minority sometimes as low as 14% are opposed to it.
I will never understand how successive waves of politicians regardless of their political parties end up opposing something that not only has so much popular backing that it’s a no-brainer to carry out but which has expert medical backing from a horde of doctors and carers who agree that sometimes there is more dignity and less suffering in death than a needlessly prolonged life past any sort of quality therein.
Sturgeon, Yousaf, Sarwar and Dross are all talking about “concerns” and how they aren’t going to vote in favour of it.
At least Liam McArthur the MSP behind the bill seems confident that it will pass anyway but it boggles the mind.
I feel the same way, honestly.
If you could guarantee that there was no pressure whatsoever I’d be 100% for it. Right now we live in a society where you will lose your entire fortune if you have to go into a home. There is undoubtedly some level of pressure at the moment.
The article makes it sound like Humza is opposed to it because the major religious bodies are opposed to it.
Hopefully that’s not influencing him as church and state should not be together in this day and age.
Sturgeon’s argument is a fair and valid one and I say this as someone is cemented in the pro assisted dying camp as it has worked in other countries.
Her concerns are right but I really don’t think it’ll take away from the palliative care already provided (whatever is left of it mind you).
Assisted dying isn’t a slippery slope – it’s a cliff edge – and looking at nations like Canada we see how quickly it evolves to target the disabled and vulnerable. A vote for this is a vote for stripping away safety for the most vulnerable in our nation.
I’ve always been in favour of assisted dying, but having seen how some family members act when there is money up for grabs there’d have to be serious controls in place to ensure it’s an individual’s choice and not something forced upon them coercively.
I believe that assisted dying will lead to bad things like it has in Canada.
People may feel pressure to end their life prematurely (for financial reasons perhaps). I also believe the NHS will evolve so that more patients feel that taking up this option is the only option to them.
And despite this, I look at people like Tony Nicklinson (the chap with locked-in syndrome) and cannot even begin to imagine his suffering. He wasn’t terminal – he only died because he withdrew from food/etc and contracted pneumonia. I’d want the option to die too.
And the options for people with illnesses like dementia likely won’t exist, because we will deem that these people cannot consent. Does that mean we will see people die early, like Robin Williams, for fear of them ending up in a home without capacity to end things?
If I don’t die peacefully in my sleep or suddenly, then I’d like to have the option to die with dignity. However it is an incredibly tricky thing to introduce from a policy perspective.
If it is legal to get an abortion it should be legal to have assisted dying. Enough said.
Who is this woman?
Assisted dying will become mandatory dying to save the NHS money.
Instead of “assisted dying”, we need a legal right to suicide, that would give people the legally protected right not to be prevented from committing suicide. This would mean that the government’s powers to restrict access to effective and humane suicide methods would be drastically curtailed, and the need for a medical practitioner to be present would be limited.
The reason that we need “assisted” dying is mainly because of the fact that we have a paternalistic government that infantilises us by restricting our ability to commit suicide without risk of failure. So ‘assisted’ suicide is a partial and very narrow solution to a problem created by suicide prevention policies.
None of us consented to being born, and all of us should have the right to die unless there is substantial reason to justify infringing upon our negative liberty rights. It should be for the government to justify why we shouldn’t be allowed access to an easy and effective suicide method; rather than for us to justify why our personal circumstances merit an exemption from the default of being slaves to society.
I really don’t understand this. We don’t really own anything in life, we have bits of paper that say we do but it’s all a construct. The only thing I actually have is myself and I’m bloody sure that when I want to go, I’ll go. The system needs to be planned out extremely well to stop abuse, but nobody has the right to tell anyone what they can do with their own body.
Thank you for continuing to disappoint Nicola.
WM will just block it as usual and let Wales go ahead when it wants to. As per usual.
Nae disrespect tae Nicky but as a nurse in care of the elderly for over thirty years I wish some people had witnessed some of the awful deaths I’ve seen over the years.Every nurse I personally know supports assisted dying .