Gallstones wrote:If we are talking about teenagers or young adults or adults in their first episode of depression then I agree with you. They should be encouraged to seek treatment. And to show just what a hypocrite I am, I would be very concerned about any one I cared about who was suicidal regardless of the circumstances and would want to be able to do something to assist them and get them to reconsider. Even to the point of intrusion and interference by making the necessary phone calls to summon the proper authorities.

Here's the thing though, a person quickly learns how the system works and then can avoid triggering a response by the system.

There are those who suffer from depression who get no relief from the standard treatment options and have not gotten relief for many years to many decades despite having made the good faith effort to try. For most people I think you are correct, they can and will find the condition transitory. However, in order for them to have a chance at survival they need a support network. And one of the first things to be lost during prolonged or severe depression is that network--people drop you like you are infectious, or they get disgusted or discouraged or angry--their own discomfort with you causes them to avoid you. And the nature of the disease is such that once the threshold is breached where one is struggling just to function, one is often unable to affect help for oneself, withdrawal intensifies and the situation gets worse. A person has to be extremely mentally tough to endure that and wait it out while willfully maintaining hope for getting back your life. That is difficult to do alone. Also, the disordered thinking that goes along with depression can cause a person to be temporarily disoriented and obsessive and unable to tell if their thoughts coincide with reality or not. It might take a second, informed person to derail that process.

r.c. wrote:I feel committing suicide when you have loved ones is akin to deserting your best friend in his time of need. Of course, you have the right to do it, but is a selfish option.

Gallstones wrote::hug: I was addressing whomever is making the argument that the pain of the survivors should take precedence over the pain of the depressed and suicidal person.

shh wrote:What's wrong with being selfish?

The New York Times wrote:
July 15, 2009
With Help, Conductor and Wife Ended Lives

By JOHN F. BURNS
LONDON — The controversy over the ethical and legal issues surrounding assisted suicide for the terminally ill was thrown into stark relief on Tuesday with the announcement that one of Britain’s most distinguished orchestra conductors, Sir Edward Downes, had flown to Switzerland last week with his wife and joined her in drinking a lethal cocktail of barbiturates provided by an assisted-suicide clinic.

Although friends who spoke to the British news media said Sir Edward was not known to have been terminally ill, they said he wanted to die with his ailing wife, who had been his partner for more than half a century.

The couple’s children said in an interview with The London Evening Standard that on Tuesday of last week they accompanied their father, 85, and their mother, Joan, 74, on the flight to Zurich, where the Swiss group Dignitas helped arrange the suicides. On Friday, the children said, they watched, weeping, as their parents drank “a small quantity of clear liquid” before lying down on adjacent beds, holding hands.

“Within a couple of minutes they were asleep, and died within 10 minutes,” Caractacus Downes, the couple’s 41-year-old son, said in the interview after his return to Britain. “They wanted to be next to each other when they died.” He added, “It is a very civilized way to end your life, and I don’t understand why the legal position in this country doesn’t allow it.”

Sir Edward, who was described in a statement issued earlier on Tuesday by Mr. Downes and his sister, Boudicca, 39, as “almost blind and increasingly deaf,” was principal conductor of the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra from 1980 to 1991. He was also a conductor of the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden in London, where he led 950 performances over more than 50 years.

Lady Downes, who British newspapers said was in the final stages of terminal cancer, was a former ballet dancer, choreographer and television producer who devoted her later years to working as her husband’s assistant.

“After 54 happy years together, they decided to end their own lives rather than continue to struggle with serious health problems,” the Downes children said in their statement.

British families who have used the Zurich clinic in the past have said that Dignitas charges about $6,570 for each assisted suicide.

Scotland Yard said in a statement on Tuesday that it had been informed on Monday “that a man and a woman” from London had died in Switzerland, and that it was “looking into the circumstances.” The information that prompted the police inquiry appeared to have been given voluntarily by the Downes family, which, Caractacus Downes said, “didn’t want to be untruthful about what had happened.”

“Even if they arrest us and send us to prison, it would have made no difference because it is what our parents wanted,” he said.

Attempting suicide has not been a criminal offense in Britain since 1961, but assisting others to kill themselves is. But since the Zurich clinic run by Dignitas was established in 1998 under Swiss laws that allow clinics to provide lethal drugs, British authorities have effectively turned a blind eye to Britons who go there to die.

None of the family members and friends who have accompanied the 117 people living in Britain who have traveled to the Zurich clinic for help in ending their lives have been charged with an offense. Legal experts said it was unlikely that that would change in the Downes case.

But British news reports about the Downeses’ suicides noted one factor that appeared to set the case apart from others involving the Dignitas clinic: Sir Edward appeared not to have been terminally ill. There have been at least three other cases similar to the Downeses’, in which a spouse who was not terminally ill chose to die with the other.

Sir Edward was known for his support for British composers and his passion for Prokofiev and Verdi. After studying at the Royal College of Music in London, he joined the Royal Opera House in 1952. His first assignment was prompting the soprano Maria Callas. He traveled widely as a conductor and became music director of the Australian Opera in the 1970s.

Friends of Sir Edward said that his decision to die with his wife did not surprise them. “Ted was completely rational,” said Richard Wigley, the general manager of the BBC Philharmonic. “So I can well imagine him, being so rational, saying, ‘It’s been great, so let’s end our lives together.’ ”

Jonathan Groves, Sir Edward’s manager, called their decision “typically brave and courageous.”

But even among those who support decriminalizing assisted suicide, Sir Edward’s death raised troubling questions. Sarah Wootton, chief executive of Dignity in Dying, said in a BBC interview that the growing numbers of Britons going abroad to die, and the manner of their deaths, made it more urgent to amend Britain’s laws. There are “no safeguards, no brakes on the process at all,” she said.

The British Medical Association voted this month against legalizing assisted suicide, or lifting the threat of prosecution from “friends and relatives who accompany loved ones to die abroad.” Last week, the House of Lords defeated a bill that would have allowed people, subject to safeguards, to travel abroad to help people choosing to die.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: July 16, 2009
An article on Wednesday about the double assisted suicide of a distinguished British conductor and his wife at a clinic in Switzerland misstated British law on suicides. Assisting others to commit suicide is a criminal offense, not attempting suicide. (The prohibition on attempting suicide was decriminalized in 1961.).

Scott H wrote:

shh wrote:What's wrong with being selfish?

There are two types of selfishness: the selfishness of entitlement to happiness as a conscious being (good selfishness), and the selfishness of disregard for the feelings of others (bad selfishness).

Thus, voluntary euthanasia may be seen to promote good selfishness, while forcing people through needless suffering may be seen to promote bad selfishness.

shh wrote:

Scott H wrote:There are two types of selfishness: the selfishness of entitlement to happiness as a conscious being (good selfishness), and the selfishness of disregard for the feelings of others (bad selfishness).

Thus, voluntary euthanasia may be seen to promote good selfishness, while forcing people through needless suffering may be seen to promote bad selfishness.

That's just a categorization, it's not a justification of the categories.

shh wrote:You're missing my point. I know how you apply the labels, I want to know why you do.
What is "bad" about not caring about someone else's suffering? Is there some kind of axiom that it is every individual's responsibility to care about every other individual's suffering?
Do you think it's actually possible to care about everyone else's suffering?
Do you really think it's possible for everyone to be happy?

Scott H wrote:
To answer your third and fourth questions, I myself care about everyone's suffering. I meditate throughout the day on everyone else's consciousness.

Scott H wrote:If no one cared about your suffering, then anyone could have your head.

To answer your third and fourth questions, I myself care about everyone's suffering.I meditate throughout the day on everyone else's consciousness.

I do suspect it's possible for everyone to be happy, provided that everything that causes sadness is eliminated (possibly even animal-to-animal cruelty!) and we finally win what we have struggled so long to achieve.

I certainly don't believe that one tiny bit of suffering justifies bringing a great deal more of it into the world, or that the continued existence of suffering means that we should leave it as it is.

Any jerk can tell you that there will always be cruelty; it takes bravery and compassion to do something about it.

shh wrote:Let's bravely and compassionately make abstract rules for governing the lives of people we don't even know then. To the Batmobile!

Cito di Pense wrote:

shh wrote:Let's bravely and compassionately make abstract rules for governing the lives of people we don't even know then. To the Batmobile!

I don't mean to Nagel, but "what is it like to be a Batmobile?"

shh wrote:

Scott H wrote:If no one cared about your suffering, then anyone could have your head.

Lol. So what? That has nothing to do with anything.

To answer your third and fourth questions, I myself care about everyone's suffering.I meditate throughout the day on everyone else's consciousness.

Lol That's not possible. You don't know everyone.

I do suspect it's possible for everyone to be happy, provided that everything that causes sadness is eliminated (possibly even animal-to-animal cruelty!) and we finally win what we have struggled so long to achieve.

I do suspect this is fail.

Scott H wrote:It has to do with your head. And your lack of empathy.

To say that because you don't know everything about a subject means you don't know anything: what fallacy is this?

You might as well tell Stephen Hawking that he doesn't know Cygnus X-1 contains a black hole because, well, he doesn't know the exact temperature of the black hole. Or its exact radius, or distance from the solar system. You might as well tell me that you don't know whether I'm right or wrong, because you don't know how tall I am.

You can meditate on the fact that others are conscious without knowing everything about them. (That is, unless you are the only one conscious, and in that case, your sadness might necessitate an assault on those who lacked consciousness -- a possibility I discuss in the thread titled, 'Refuting sadism.')

I'll revise my statement a little and say that I meditate on the possibility that everyone else is conscious, which is almost just as important.

Other than by justification through brute force, is there any reason why you suspect such a project would fail?

Gallstones wrote:I read this on anther site.

You've sat through a movie and it started out bad and didn't get any better. There is no reason to think it's going to suddenly get enjoyable in the last few minutes so who would fault you for getting up and walking out early?