Last week my mom and I were talking about a family acquaintance who has a son with severe mental problems brought on by drug use. I knew the kid in high school - he was a grade below me and we had mutual friends and there was always something a bit "off" about him and while we weren't friends, we were always aware each other existed. My strongest memory of the guy is being at lunch at Nice&Easy with my boyfriend of the time (Michael) and him swinging me around onto his back for a piggy back ride back to school.
Well, the kid got into a lot of drugs... like, super psychedelics and heroin, I believe. He's overdosed quite a few times and has been placed in a mental institution that he promptly checked himself out of. Most recently, the father (the family acquaintance) left his job to help this kid out. My mom remarked that the family would be better off if the kid just killed himself.
The fact that my MOTHER (who cries when she hits a squirrel with her car) said that took me back a bit... but then it got me thinking. If suicide/assisted suicide is best for everyone in a situation, why WOULDN'T it be legal? This kid would be out of pain, the family wouldn't have to worry about him overdosing every second of the day...
There's an ongoing case in the UK regarding assisted suicide (can be read: http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/10/23/uk.switzerland.assisted.suicide/index.html?iref=mpstoryview). Quick synopsis is that this kid was paralyzed during a rugby game, traveled to Switzerland (where assisted suicide is legal) under his parents' OK and now the parents may be charged for allowing him to go through with it. I see a lot of problems in this whole thing...
1) The kid didn't want to live in pain. He wasn't able to do the one thing he loved - play rugby - and couldn't do normal things that we all take for granted (walking, writing, going to a regular school, getting up to grab the remote). Essentially, his will to live wasn't there. The best thing in his mind was to move on from this world. Instead of jumping off a cliff or slitting his wrists, he died in peace with his family surrounding him in a place where assisted living is legal. He is now being prosecuted - posthumously - for actions he felt would better the lives of the people around him.
2) His parents AGREED with him. I'm sure they didn't go around saying "OMG I WANT MY KID TO DIE HE SHOULDN'T LIVE ANYMORE" but they recognized that he didn't want to be alive any longer and respected his wishes. The kid was able to make decisions for himself and was a legal adult - they didn't make this decision for him. The only thing they did was love their son and respect what he wanted to do.
3) I am troubled by the fact that they had to go to Switzerland to get this done. I don't know the laws pertaining to such decisions, but I'd bet on saying there are some legality issues if the person isn't a Switzerland citizen. That being said... it's legal there. Why does the British Royal government need to know what happened in another country if it isn't wrong in said country? Is this some "big brother" nonsense going on?
My personal feelings: The kid can do what he wants. I know some will counter with the argument that I *CAN'T* know what the family is going through because I haven't been through it, but seriously... If my mother was in a car accident and paralyzed completely, living in pain, but still had brain function and could make her own decisions and decided the best thing for her was to quietly and painlessly pass on, I would respect her wishes to do so. It's hard to see a family member die, but I feel it's harder to see them in never-ending pain. Assisted suicide is a dignified way to die... it's not throwing yourself off the 6th floor of the mall and hurting other people in the process...
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2 comments:
Wow... that's a pretty amazing post.
Assisted Suicide? I think this is walking a fine line in the magnitude of abortion rights, yet it's leaps and bounds beyond it because the fetus now has an opinion in the matter.
...however, I don't think the problems with assisted suicide lie solely within the ethics of the act like abortion does, but also within the financial aspect of it.
Think of a life insurance company that pays for this kid that was from the UK that went to the swiss to have this procedure done. What is their obligation? do they pay out on the life insurance or don't they?
As it is now, if you commit suicide, life insurance companies have no obligation to pay up.
What about these parents of that UK kid? at 23, they had no obligation to help him commit suicide, but what about if he was under the age of 18? then they would have had the power of attorney, supposedly someone under the age of 18 cannot make medical decisions for themselves without the consent of a parent or legal guardian... but if he was under 18, the parents would be considered homicidal.
From an ethical standpoint it also makes me wonder why this story was even published. A stupid 23 year old kid commits suicide because he can't recover from dislocated vertebrae? Think of the people that live everyday of their lives in a wheel chair or worse, and have less function of their body than he did... but they make the most of it. What would this kid have done when he reached 80 and his joints and bones started to fail him because he played Rugby all his life and his body was tired? would he have committed suicide then too? It's kind of a slap to the face to those that don't have the choice in abilities and functionality of their body... sometimes from birth, sometimes not. If nothing else, it makes this kid out to be a mentally weak individual ...but I'm not the one to determine what is too painful and what isn't for a person to function going on with their lives, as I personally believe that the human race gives a poor example of natural selection.
This guy from Westmo you say fits eligibility for assisted suicide? the kid doesn't even want to recover... you wrote it yourself, he checked himself out of the institute he was put in. Obviously the "pain" he is in, is more tolerable than his parents lead you to believe. So that begs the question, who are we to determine what sort of pain can a person endure? Just because he's overdosed a couple times, doesn't mean that he was going for suicide as the outcome, could have just been trying to achieve a greater high. So I guess the UK guy is fine with me, while I think that he's a mentally weak individual, he still wanted to die. Where your westmo boy... not-so-much, at least given what you've written it can't be said that he actually wants to die.
So my short opinion: If you want to participate in assisted suicide (as the person dying) then that's fine with me, just don't expect your life insurance company to pay up. If you want to participate in an assisted suicide and not be the person dying, you may want to think twice and find out your loop holes ahead of time with the law.
To lighten the subject up a bit... I quote Dante and Randall from Clerks 2
Dante: "What are you writing over there??? your memoirs?"
Randall: "I'm battling this jackass on his blogs message board."
Dante: "About what?"
Randall: "About how he's got too much time and no life. This is a guy a wheelchair that's always preying on everyone's sympathies, writing these long diatribes about how he'll never walk again and how walkers should appreciate the blessings of their functioning legs. So I've been getting into it with him, throwing it back in his stupid crippy boy face about how I just love to sit around, and how I'd rather drive to the end of the blog than to walk."
Dante: "...the guy is in a wheel chair!"
Randall: "Ya... that's why I called him crippy boy."
There should definetely be a life insurance stipulation re: the matter of assisted suicide. I don't know if there is in Switzerland.
I don't think the kid from Westmo should kill himself... I might have pushed the post as that's the way I felt, but it's not what I intended (just that his situation is one that made me think about the subject of AS). But I do think that if he DOES want to kill himself, that's his prerogative... though that brings up the point of how sane this kid actually is (or isn't).
Who the fuck knows. It's a touchy subject. I was trying to get all *deep* and *moving* but I have no brains left to write coherent entries on difficult stuff anymore!
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