@putin, i said:"I don't think there there is any good reason to believe that humans are in fact conscious."

you said: 'Please explain.'

Ok, please define consciousness and then prove that you are conscious.
The burden of proof for extra-ordinary claims lies on you, but neither can i disprove something which is so vaguely defined. However i'll give you a clue, my answer will include the word illusion.

@ President. Thank you for your considered response. You have, quite correctly, described the various constraints etc. that you would place on the practical aspects of euthanasia. These would have to be formulated as legislation, in which case we really will have to pin down exactly what the word ''terminal'' means. Would a chronic illness fall under this definition or would need to be acute? Does pain enter the definition, if so what degree would qualify? Would there be any time limits attached. For example,supposing someone was told that their aortic wall was very thin and at some point, possibly in five years time, it would split. In the meantime, however, their life would be normal and pain free, would they be accepted as a euthanasia candidate?

It seems to me that, when it comes down to it, what the proposed legislation will amount to will be the medical accession of a suicide request, largely to the exclusion of the ''terminal'' qualification. Is this really what you/others propose?

I would propose allowing suicide in all cases where the patient demands it.

There is no point in wasting medical/societal resources on an individual who does not want to live. What next imprison them and put the on suicide watch?

Terminal is not important to my mind, the law need not 'decide' what is a terminal illness and what is not. However medical practitioners should be required to demonstrate that they have informed their patients.

Proof of informed consent beyond that which is currently considered acceptable. I know most doctors take the opinion that if the patient is to be truly informed of the risks then they need study a medical degree and further work as a doctor for a decade and further have multiple previous experiences of the specific disease/circumstance in question to draw upon...

I also know humans are inherently bad at judging risks. But i'm fed up with the bullshit elitist attitude among scientists and doctors that 'normal' lay people can't possibly comprehend or understand the information... The fact is these 'elites' are failing in their duty to the public to communication in a comprehensible manner. </rant>

in short. I think in an ideal world informed consent would be all that is necessary. Alas we don't live in an ideal world.

@ orathaic: ''I would propose allowing suicide in all cases where the patient demands it.''
and ''Terminal is not important to my mind''

Thank you for your clear insight and honesty on this issue. In my opinion this is what euthenesia actually amounts to in practical terms. You are for it and I am against it.
Can you envisage the day time TV adverts for your nearest handy clinic? Debit card payments only of course! :-)

I didn't say i supported advertising freedoms. I am talking about an ideal, not a practical reality.

So yes, i can imagine such a thing in the US, but in some countries you're already not allowed advertise things like smoking, drinks companies are forced to put in something about 'being responsible' and probably pay for the constant anti-drinking campaigns we see. There is NO pharmaceutical ads in Ireland. There is no ads for abortion, anti-depressants, or Viagra, except online.

So while i can see your position. I do not live in the same culture as you and do not fear the same things. We can simple continue to regulate advertising as we always have.

Also in my ideal world medical care would all be paid for, thus doing away with the need for doctors to advertise at all.

Fulham's trying to make the case that terminal is too vague. Really, what do doctors mean when they say something is terminal? If it has no meaning and is too vague then why is the term even used? Terminal indicates no possibility of recovery and a negative prognosis. Why is this so complicated? Or are you just trying to make it seem like it's complicated because you're against it in principle? You like honesty you say, so be honest.

I have to ask the opponents here: What is the difference between 'assisted suicide' and Do-Not-Resuscitate orders (which exist in every state)? Are you opposed to DNRs too? Is the big difference that one is passive while one is active? I don't get it.

Why force people to live?

Well unless you are Aubrey De Grey (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrey_de_Grey ) you likely think that you are going to die. Thus you are currently suffering from a terminal condition called living.

In that case ALL people would be entitled based on this 'terminal condition'.

I think Fulham is complaining about how vague the term is because there are people like me who will interpret like the above. (in a logical rational way, which happens to suit my stated position, and which happens to be in opposition to Fulham's stated position)

I really don't see the problem with letting people who want to die, die.

"Why separate out the task like that?"

I'm not necessarily following your critique. You made mention of the fact that if diagnosis and euthanasia were combined that the doctor would have incentive to prolong the suffering to get paid.

How the *hell* is that a good thing? ;>_>

And if the separation factor is a problem, you don't have to have exclusive roles here, either. Perhaps all the doctors can diagnose and euthanize. But if you make the patient get a diagnosis from a *different* doctor than the one that would perform the euthanasia, that doctor would be more objective, because he's getting paid the consultation fee or whatever for diagnosing still (and thus has incentive to get the diagnosis right), but in being barred from also performing the euthanasia on the same patient, you remove the incentive to give a false diagnosis to get paid for euthanasia as well.

The point here is NOT to create ulterior motives with something as serious as literal life-or-death decisions. One way this is done is by banning euthanasia outright. I propose that these motives are not an inevitable consequence of legalizing euthanasia and that therefore the ulterior motives basis for banning euthanasia is faulty.

"These would have to be formulated as legislation, in which case we really will have to pin down exactly what the word ''terminal'' means. Would a chronic illness fall under this definition or would need to be acute?"

The legislated definition of 'terminal' here would be directly taken from the existing medical definition. I'll grant that off the top of my head I don't know the exact wording, but Putin already gave you the concept. I'll expand his a bit to say "no [or very minimal] possibility of recovery and a negative prognosis." The exact line on where 'very minimal' is drawn, I think, is what you're getting at here, and truthfully there's no way I can think of to draw that exact line other than simply saying no chance like Putin did. I think that in the two-doctor system I proposed before, however, that you can trust doctors enough to give them the subjective wiggle room to say whether or not euthanasia is viable.

After all, in theory it's no different than the doctor you see for allergies that's given discretion on what medicine to prescribe if any, just (obviously) with larger consequences. But the actual principle is the same as what's already medically practiced.

As for the remaining concerns, I'm realizing my specific restriction to terminally ill patients is difficult to legislate, so I'm going to have to concede that point. I think orathaic is more on-target with where I'm leaning now in light of it, and he also raised some points I hadn't immediately considered anyhow.

Ortahaic my point about day time TV was largely rhetorical. Although over here we already have an array of cosmetic surjery, ambulance chasing lawyers ready to sue the NHS and loans offered at over 4 000 % APR, but that is another story and another debate. To the point:

If word terminal indicates incurable (as good a definition as any other and better than most) this will be completely open ended. Unfortunately, any decent (or do I rather mean competent) lawyer will drive a coach and horse through the law-maker's undoubted good intent. Ortahaic's and Preident's (evolving) position of euthenesia amounting to only having the constraint of patient consent is therefore entirely logical. I happen to disagree with it, largely for the exemplified practical reasons I have already elaborated. I do not think that there is much more which I can usefully add.

Fulham:

DNRS - ban them?

"you remove the incentive to give a false diagnosis to get paid for euthanasia as well."

my problem with that is i don't think any system will be free from such incentives so long as you incentivize health care with monetary reward on a per patient basis.

@Fulhamish, you have a valid point, however it is far from a universal phenomena.

Also i feel compelled by the practicality of my arguement. You can not prevent suicide if a person truly wants to die.

I believe that facilitating them AND providing or their health care needs is a better course of action. I would suggest at least 6 months of councilling for anyone who is suicidal.

My objection to having a specialized euthanizer is the same as my objection to any other specialization. I you want to be prescribed anti-depressants just talk to a psychiatrist, if you want to be prescribed weed go to a weed-doctor (at least in California) if you want to be prescribed alternative a homeopathic remedy go to a homeopath.

In several cases there are alternatives which do work, but the actual health professional who you see will be unlikely to refer you to someone else (especially when they know that 90% of the people who came to them with the same complaint went away happy and got better)

This is not useful for finding the best treatment, and euthanasia is not even an option...

That said, forced sterilization was a popular practice in several states from about 1907 (in Tennessee i think) until ~1950 ("The 27 states where sterilization laws remained on the books (though not all were still in use) in 1956 were: Arizona, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin." - wikipedia)

It only became unpopular as a result of the Nazi policies becoming widely known.

If I was assured that I had the option of doctor-assisted suicide when I get so ill I want to die but cannot do it myself, I may be less inclined to act preemptively while I still am able to do it.

So allowing euthanasia could prevent suicide.

@ manganese
''So allowing euthanasia could prevent suicide.''

As I understand it we are talking about assisted suicide, or have I this wrong?

@ Orathiac, I wonder if you might explain your analogy between forced sterilisation and euthanasia please?

@ putin ''DNRS* - ban them? '' * Do not resuscitate.

May I repeat a portion of my very first post in this thread?

This debate is a tricky one. I think that to look for absolute yes and no answers is very difficult and maybe it is best to stick to the pragmatic nod and a wink system we have now. At its best palliative medicine usually addresses the end of life issues we are all familiar with. To formalise this as a recorded assistance to suicide is fraught with danger and potentially open to much abuse.

I don't see how the potential dangers would be any different than with DNRs. In a case involving my own family, there was a dispute as to what "feeding tube" or "machine" meant for the purposes of moving to a DNR. So my grandmother didn't eat for multiple days because of a lack of clarity over the word "feeding tube".

The law in Oregon seems to have addressed these issues quite adequately with their Death with Dignity Act, especially the issue of depression and mental illness. Is there rampant abuse there I'm not aware of? Does the potential for abuse outweigh the guaranteed pain and suffering inflicted upon people who do not wish to endure it any longer?

"We should try to avoid, as best as possible, inflicting unnecessary suffering on living things. Complexity of thought is irrelevant."

This is very dumb. You know that, right?

Animals do not think, at least not all of them. You admit this. You must. Did you know that plants are thought to possibly have emotions? So what? Even vegetarians execute plants by the thousand to fill their bellies.

And why is that ok? Because they don't think. It seems your line of thought is that an animal "thinks" if it has a brain that processes inputs and outputs actions. No. That's not what I mean by thinking.

In one sense of the word that is thinking - use of a brain. But that's not the "thinking" I'm talking about. I'm not even talking about "complex thought" because there are a lot of complex thoughts in certain non-conscious animals.

Flies are not conscious. Grape vines are not conscious. Rats are not. Frogs are not. The gray area comes with close relatives and other complex animals. I personally do not know whether they are conscious but research suggests they may be. Cuttlefish is the most recent addition.

But it seems you may not grasp why only conscious life is necessary, morally, to be preserved.

You must ask why it is wrong to kill a person. First, remove concerns of people they know. Pretend you meet a hermit who no one knows in the forest. It is still wrong to murder him for his axe, right? Yeah. I'd hope you say it is. This is why:

The guy has a life. By life I mean - he knows he is alive, he knows about his existence, he is capable of thinking about what it means to be alive, and about what his meaning is, and about what hopes, dreams and ambitions are. Killing this form of life is wrong, because this form of life is worth preserving in and of itself. Harming this form of life is wrong, because, being conscious, he will know you are harming him, and it will cause him pain and discomfort, which he will dislike. So intentionally harming a conscious being is also wrong.

A chicken however has none of these attributes. So if you meet a chicken in the forest, and you have already seen a billion chickens in this forest and you are confident no one has any emotion attachment to the chicken, and you need to kill the chicken for a practical and not a sadistic reason, then there is nothing whatsoever wrong with doing so. Because the chicken does not think and does not know what is happening to it. It's "life" is as much a life as Deep Blue's life, or any other difference engine.

Do you see now the distinction between human (and otherwise) lives and animal lives?

Regarding infants: no, I do not think that they "think" per se. I suspect this could have something to do with why you don't remember anything from that time - because *you* (if you is defined as your consciousness) didn't exist yet. I don't know if that specifically is true however.

Does that make killing little babies always ok? No.... not at all. I find the act repugnant as I hope you all do. Look above at all the things that had to be true of the chicken before killing it was legit. That and more must be true of the baby. Except, again, for ridiculous hypotheticals, my feeling is that it is basically never okay, because one of two things will almost always be true:

1) someone will be upset that their baby or even a baby was killed, usually providing reason enough not to do it
2) there is probably some other way to avoid killing the baby. thus if you do it you will know this and therefore you are the type of person that would needlessly kill, making your act immoral (same for sadistically hunting animals)

Anyway I digress but abge raised an interesting question:

I have to kill one of the two:

1) a terminally ill elderly
2) a 10 month old child

Clearly the intent was to get me to bite the bullet and say I'd kill the infant, which is bad because it has a whole life ahead of it. But remember.... nothing happens in a vacuum.

I would not kill the infant for the reasons listed above - which are powerful reasons. One of the most important, indeed, is the "whole life ahead of it" that I talked about. I would not like to have to kill either, thank you.

So I'm not sure what you were getting at abge. Yes, the baby is not conscious and the old person is. This is powerful but in this case other moral concerns trump that.

Also: as much as this topic animates me, I have found in the past that if I talk too long about it I can get too excitable so I will leave you guys to it. I don't want to get pissed or start to think of you as terrible.

However - to those who are like "i'm not imposing my ideology on anyone but look at thucy imposing his narrow..."

I say this to you: any action, even inaction, counts as action. Legalizing a bill like what you propose would change society. You are thus imposing a new society on me. Neither of us is any more or less dogmatic, so come of your high horse.

Furthermore, yes, if I were in huge pain I would probably want and ask for someone to end it. I'm not an idiot, I know it's a perfectly natural response. But I'm saying that right now while I am lucid and have lots of time to think about it I've decided I don't think I'd want anyone to let me do that. But in a society where this type of thing is legalized, me and other people like me will feel pressure to renege that sort of thinking.

Not to mention the fact that I think it's morally wrong. So no I can't convince you nor you me, but what I have done here is attempt to show you why I find assisted suicide wrong.

(Aside: can we quickly go over what makes AS different from euthanasia? AS requires the consent of the dying, euthanasia is just a mercy killing. Can we not agree that euthanasia is fucked up? Remember those doctors in Katrina? Come on.)

I guess all I'm saying is if it's legal, and I'm dying, and I know it's there, and my family does too, I will either want to do it enough to convince them, or they will mention it to me because they think its best for me. But I don't want to even have the option, because I know how weak I would be. I would like to live out all the days of my life for better or worse, thank you.

Call me a barbarian if you want to but if you are so damned individualistic. But you too constrain individual choice, every day. To pretend you don't is hypocrisy. Most of you wouldn't let your healthy friend kill himself right?

Oh but isn't it his right to die? Doesn't he have personal sovereignty?
Sure he does but not for shit like this.

"Does the potential for abuse outweigh the guaranteed pain and suffering inflicted upon people who do not wish to endure it any longer?"

yes.

"What is the difference between 'assisted suicide' and Do-Not-Resuscitate orders (which exist in every state)? Are you opposed to DNRs too? Is the big difference that one is passive while one is active? I don't get it."

The difference is that you active choose to kill approximately 0 people per day, while we passively allow millions to suffer and die. It is a question of habit. </sarcasm>

Actually when it comes to moral perception there is a big difference in passively allowing nature take it's course and actively taking an action.

In fact this feeling distinguishes the two things.

@Fulhamish, you know i can't quite recall what the analogy was, except that some things have been common practice in the past and have now gone out of fashion.

Some governments have felt it as appropriate to take away reproductive rights, which i guess is closer to an abortion debate than it is to this one.

@ orathaic on the pre-war history of enforced sterilisation in the USA - ''Some governments have felt it as appropriate to take away reproductive rights, which i guess is closer to an abortion debate than it is to this one.''

I agree, and perhaps we had better not go there, unless you want to start another thread. :-)

"Even vegetarians execute plants by the thousand to fill their bellies.

And why is that ok?"

because we as humans define good/evil and what is 'ok' for us to do. Vegetarians define it to be ok because they can't survive without doing so, and people who don't survive don't get a vote.

Further, i would say it is ok to kill an animal if there is no undue suffering.

And i find myself consistent in choosing quality of life over quantity.

In the UK anyway, hospices can be very good (from my personal experience). At the end there is often little ''passive'' about their treatment regimes.

I lost a very dear friend recently, every organ practically gave out on him. At the end the Doctors asked if he would like some help ''with the pain''? He answered - '' I prefer not as my brain is the only part of me which still functions normally!'' I only wish that I could be so brave when my time comes, I doubt it somehow.

@Thucy

"But I don't want to even have the option, because I know how weak I would be."

But the problem is this: You *do* have that option, because making something illegal doesn't make it impossible to do.

"So intentionally harming a conscious being is also wrong."

please prove that you are conscious.

@thucy: "I say this to you: any action, even inaction, counts as action. Legalizing a bill like what you propose would change society. You are thus imposing a new society on me. Neither of us is any more or less dogmatic, so come of your high horse."

No, the argument is that your dogma is that all people should have their own freedom to choose, and that his is morally superior position because he allows that a society should have different personal moralities but the ethics of a nation (on which their laws will be based) will be some kind of minimal commonly accepted morals.

The arguement which has your opponent on their high horse is that their free-er system without collectivizing morales decided from on high is more just and fair.

Which is itself a moral judgement and an opinion to boot. However given the history of the world and movement away from centralized powers which dictate moral authority and judgement upon the weak - which a more learned historian probably has a nice name for, like Imperialism, but which i will refer to as Paternalism - given the Paternalism in our society and the fact that our society generally and commonly considers this in a bad light (what with the enlightenment and invention of free will) Your opponent is thus taking the unspoken position that our collective society already holds true.

Thus he's not imposing anything on you. Merely existing in our society you already have this imposition upon you.

You are the one who is adding to what you believe society should impose on others. Based no less on your personal interpretation of morality.

How and ever, as a moral relativist, i do not think either position is superior to the other, each is just relative to the others. Actually i choose between them based on my emotional attachment to the ideas and what i personally weigh to be 'good' - ie my own moral judgement. As such i do not wish to seem on a high horse, merely opinionated and good at rationalizations (whereby i make up justifications for the moral position which i find emotionally attached to.)