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Robert Lipton of Lakewood writes:

Why does our society condemn sick old people who wish to die , to do so by starvation or dehydration? . It is a crime to starve an animal :but the only acceptable way for a sick person to die is to honor their advance directive not to sustain them with food or water. This is a disgusting condemnation of the individual. Why not honor their wish by allowing a comfortable death. If the constitution gives a woman the right to control her body and have an abortion why can’t a sick person have the same right of control and have their wish to die honored in humane fashion.

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READER COMMENTS

I always liked my mother's idea: she always said if she ever reached that level of hopeless incapacitation, she wants to be put in a room with a 20-pound box of See's chocolates (I don't think you have See's Candy in the Rockys--boy, are you missing out); when that's gone, call in Dr. Kevorkian.

Of course now Kevorkian, a sick old man himself, is rotting away in prison, a martyr to the cause of death with dignity. Detroit newspapers have caricatured him as a vulture; if you ask me (though I know you didn't), the real vultures are those who feed on the almost dead, raking in big bucks for keeping terminally ill people interminally suffering in a dubious defense of "life."

I'm all for life, but quality takes precedence over quantity.

Simple answers to simple questions:

"Why does our society condemn sick old people who wish to die , to do so by starvation or dehydration?"

Answer: Religious dogma.

I support euthanasia. In fact, I support young people on all of the continents.

Mr. Brando,

Life certainly should be a matter of quality first. But . . . ! The idea that before letting someone die there has to be evidence, or assurance, of the person's having properly "gotten religion" - and left enough to "religion", in his last will and testament, to impoverish his family in order to prove it - has come first for many centuries now.

Minding everyone else's business, all the way to the grave - and by so doing managing to rake off enough to build mega-auditoriums, and put chateaubriand on the table in the parsonage - means that anyone who wants to choose his/her own way out is going to be labled "incompetent" at best, and just plain "punished for the sin" in usual conditions.

In all truth, society is not all that far along from the cave dwellers - and most probably will never be - while superstition has as strong a strangle hold upon it as it does presently.

Dogma-R-Us. All Dogma, all the time.

I've made 50 trips around the sun and in that amount of time I've watched my father spend the last 40 years of his life with numerous medical conditions, and the last 20 years he spent in a VA nursing home. If anyone deserved to have the option of euthanasia, he did; but because of our society's hang ups with allowing for a humane death, he was forced to exist as no human should.

A good friend of mine in college was an indigent brittle diabetic, who amazed his doctors by surviving into his 30's. What eventually killed him was being stuck in a nursing warehouse...errr...home with other people waiting to die. When his spirit and will to live were destroyed, he passed away in a place that smelled like a poorly cleaned public restroom. He deserved to die with dignity.

Now I am witnessing a similar situation with my father-in-law in the nursing home that the insurance company thinks is a rehab center. Although as far as nursing homes go, this one is nice; but my father-in-law needs physical therapy to return to his normal active self. He does not need to be in a nursing home where in 11-days, he has had one room mate die and the current one is blind and suffers from a perpetual case of the Hershey Squirts, which makes the room stink to high heaven. Fortunately my father-in-law will be leaving the nursing warehouse and coming to live with us until he is ready to go home. Watching the depression, fear and hopelessness on his face is inhumane.

In the name of humane treatment, we put down dogs, cats, horses and all sorts of other animals so they won't suffer; yet society and organized religion has heartburn with the concept of legalized euthanasia that would allow a person to die with dignity and in a humane manner to end their suffering.

Jack Kevorkian had the right idea; but the wrong approach.

"All life is precious". That is the drumbeat of many fundamentalists. The life of QBT's father was forced to live is precious? The life of a baby born to starve in Sudan is precious? There are times when it is death that is precious.

Thanks to QBT for his letter. I hope things go well with your father-in-law. The humanity you eloquently showed for your friend and loved ones is in stark contrast to those who are more interested in rules than in individual people.

"All life is precious". That is the drumbeat of AlGore

"All life is precious". That is the drumbeat of AlGore

Money. Follow the money. If we had death with dignity laws everywhere the medical profession would lose a ton of money. It's all the same. Greed.

People have a right to die the way they wish to, it should not be up to the government or doctors, it is up to each individual as to what they believe and don't. People do not have the right to tell people how to live their lives, in the end, the only thing you have to do is pay taxes and die (paying taxes are optional for some). If people feel that the suffering they are enduring is to much, who is anyone to tell them they have to keep suffering. I know this will probably not be a popular answer, but watching my mom slowly and painfully die of cancer...I guess I learned to see things from all sides..the respect for life and to fight for that, but also from the sufferer's point, that they have a right to die the way they want.

Well written QBT!! I have always been an advocate for euthanasia. You are a gentleman and compassionate person.
Caring for an oldster can be trying, but love, and patience can work miracles. When your father-in-law is no longer exposed to the (gulp) nursing home he will get well much sooner.
many old people's "loved one's" don't care if they rot in those horrible places!

Kudo's to you and your wife!!!

To those who agreed with and thanked me for my posting, I do appreciate it.

As a lot of regular readers of my posts know, I am not the most humane and compassionate person out there, nor do I claim to be.

However, having witnessed the things I've briefly described above has made me believe that although life is precious, a quality life is far more important than a quantity life. I would rather have 50-years of high quality life than 100-years of a crappy life.

Although humans have evolved very quickly over the course of approximately 4-million years, human evolution has not kept pace with our technological advancements to preserve life functions.

Approximately 5,000 years ago, a 50 year old man such as myself would be considered quite elderly. So imagine how Pharaoh Ramses II would be considered the prototype for Methuselah as he lived to age 92. Living to 92 and hoping that said life is a quality one is scary enough in our modern world; but to live to 92 during Ramses' time must have been a real trial to the mind and body.

As I and others have said before, societal and religious dogma has prevented humanity from providing our aged and in-firmed with a humane and dignified way to die and end their suffering.

Although my Father-in-law has had a setback, we are expecting it to be a minor one and hope to have him in a family atmosphere soon instead of an institutionalized one. He will thrive and recover when he is as independent as possible and lives with dignity once again.

If assissted suicide is okay for Jesus Christ it is okay for me, except make mine painless.

First of all, nursing homes don't have to be "horrible" warehouses for the elderly and sick. Our society has moved away from the nuclear family that existed in the past. Thus N.H. exist to provide care for those whose families are unable to or are unwilling to. It is due to our laws that the elderly do not recieve the high quality care that they deserve. The N.H. owners are only obligated by law to staff at the minimal requirements, thus the poor conditions in some instances.

Doctors are required BY LAW to sustain life unless the individual has made out an "Advance Directive" or a "Medical Power of Attorney" in which they have discussed their wishes with the executor. They don't specifically make any money off of sustaining that life and in many instances do not support the measures taken by grieving family members. However, their hands are tied by society rules.

The rules set up by the insurance company in the instance of QBT's father-in-law are what the N.H. must follow or they will not be re-imbursed. Thus, it is the insurance that is delegating his recovery..insurance that he bought.

In my 20+ years of Long Term Care nursing I have often advocated for residents with "like abilities" to be roomed together so that the one's progress can be cheered and encouraged by the other, however, once again the government mandates that patient's being rehabilitated must be housed in a specific area of the facility. Thus, the man with the severe diarrhea had to be placed there BY LAW.

I have cried, comforted and held a hand as death finally came to many elderly people, it is sad that many times I had to search for the family to at least come and get the person's belongings. Take an active interest in your loved one's life, strangers shouldn't be the ones who make decisions for them. YOU should.

It comes down to this...WE THE PEOPLE elect our government officials, they in turn pass the rules and regulations that oversee the end stages of life. If WE THE PEOPLE don't vote and let our elected officials know our wants and needs about this issue, the government will continue to "guide" our lives.

This thread was also interesting to me after the huge human interest in the Terri Schivo case and the many people who advocated her continued vegetative state. Where was her right to die with dignity?
Peace,

Didn`t the Eskimo people used to put their old ones out on the ice for the polar bears? Of course if the bears are dying out....

06:33 PM

A number of the Native American cultures had traditions by which those who had reached a position of being unable to contribute to the tribe - by way of age, or disability - were, in one way or another, "abandoned" (or took themselves off to die); with the tribe honoring them as well for doing so for the "common good", as it were.

Of course, the cultures had/have a totally different view of death than that of Western religion - Romanism and the Je$u$ Bu$ine$$ - and welcome the opportunity to "move on" in ways Westerners cannot understand.

Today, it's not so much a matter of the bears dying out, as it is the dying out of the culture (or the suppression of it to meet the white man's "standards").

If I recall correctly, the ancient Greeks did something similar to what the American Indians did that OG refers to.

Thank you Catholicism and its Christian offshoots for all that you do to hinder humane end of life treatment for mankind.

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