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Suicide clinic wants to kill grieving relatives too

I have just spent a few moments looking up if I can see any other account of this story in English besides the Daily Mail and I can't. I will wait until I see a story from a more reputable source before I comment any further.
 
Broberfett, you're getting a little spammy with all the weird news threads that have little to no commentary from you, sometimes no links, or are from tabloids. Can you dial it back a little please and try and post more content from reputable sources? Thanks.

I'll leave the other two open for now but this one is getting closed.

[edit] After speaking to Broberfett via PM, I'm reopening this. He has a more reputable link.
 
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I have just read the other source, which Broberfett sent to me, I consider it to be more reliable.

I believe that any person who is so dependent on another person that they can't see themselves living without that other person, is probably not that fit mentally to make a decision to commit suicide.
 
The only justification for suicide is an imminent terminal illness. Anybody else needs to be stopped and treated for mental illness or emotional instability.
 
The only justification for suicide is an imminent terminal illness. Anybody else needs to be stopped and treated for mental illness or emotional instability.

Why?

Because most emotional states are transitory and fleeting. One minute you may feel like killing yourself, the next minute you may realize how terrifying it would be to do so and prevent yourself from taking that step. Suicides that are not an imminent terminal illness, and are instead emotional, need to be addressed. How sad would it be for someone to kill themselves because they felt they were unloved and unwanted? These are things that can be changed. Life is precious and worth saving. Each person is worth love and salvation.
 
The only justification for suicide is an imminent terminal illness. Anybody else needs to be stopped and treated for mental illness or emotional instability.

Why?

Because most emotional states are transitory and fleeting. One minute you may feel like killing yourself, the next minute you may realize how terrifying it would be to do so and prevent yourself from taking that step. Suicides that are not an imminent terminal illness, and are instead emotional, need to be addressed. How sad would it be for someone to kill themselves because they felt they were unloved and unwanted? These are things that can be changed. Life is precious and worth saving. Each person is worth love and salvation.

What about a convicted murderer serving life in prison? What about a perfectly normal and healthy person who has reached an age/point in there life where they feel they have completed everything they wanted, and are happy with there life, who choose to end it on a high not instead of falling to the "down slope" of extreme aging, someone who wants to go out quick and painless instead of being plagued with the pitfalls of growing old.

I mean, we are all going to die, why not go out on our own terms?
 
What about a convicted murderer serving life in prison? What about a perfectly normal and healthy person who has reached an age/point in there life where they feel they have completed everything they wanted, and are happy with there life, who choose to end it on a high not instead of falling to the "down slope" of extreme aging, someone who wants to go out quick and painless instead of being plagued with the pitfalls of growing old.

RJ's definitions apply here as well, in my opinion.

I mean, we are all going to die, why not go out on our own terms?
Certainly we are all going to die, but that doesn't mean the cessation of life any sooner, when one is in fine physical condition, isn't rooted in being emotionally unstable or mentally unbalanced. Emotions can play a terrible trick on us, by convincing us we are ready for something of which we have no intellectual grasp beyond the most rudimentary elements. Hindsight is 20/20 unless you are no longer alive. Then there's no regretful changes of heart. The ultimate finality of death is why this issue has to be handled so carefully.
 
What about a convicted murderer serving life in prison? What about a perfectly normal and healthy person who has reached an age/point in there life where they feel they have completed everything they wanted, and are happy with there life, who choose to end it on a high not instead of falling to the "down slope" of extreme aging, someone who wants to go out quick and painless instead of being plagued with the pitfalls of growing old.

RJ's definitions apply here as well, in my opinion.

I mean, we are all going to die, why not go out on our own terms?
Certainly we are all going to die, but that doesn't mean the cessation of life any sooner, when one is in fine physical condition, isn't rooted in being emotionally unstable or mentally unbalanced. Emotions can play a terrible trick on us, by convincing us we are ready for something of which we have no intellectual grasp beyond the most rudimentary elements. Hindsight is 20/20 unless you are no longer alive. Then there's no regretful changes of heart. The ultimate finality of death is why this issue has to be handled so carefully.

Preventing death, it is not the same thing as prolonging life. We are too hung up on the former. So much so that we lose sight of the latter, sometimes even working against the latter INHO.

Say you have a man, he's 80 years old and in perfect health for a man his age. He is retired, his family is secure, he's happy with his life. You are saying he shouldn't be allowed to choose to end his life then, when he wants and how he wants with all his family around (supporting his decision) together. He should be treated as a mental patient and forced to continue living a life he feels has reached it's natural end simply because Death is wrong? He should be forced to waist away for another ten or twenty years, a life really of existing nor living, just because people are hung up on the issue of death? Wouldn't that be the near the same level of mental torture, spread out over a greater time, as someone with a terminal illness?
 
What about a convicted murderer serving life in prison? What about a perfectly normal and healthy person who has reached an age/point in there life where they feel they have completed everything they wanted, and are happy with there life, who choose to end it on a high not instead of falling to the "down slope" of extreme aging, someone who wants to go out quick and painless instead of being plagued with the pitfalls of growing old.

RJ's definitions apply here as well, in my opinion.

I mean, we are all going to die, why not go out on our own terms?
Certainly we are all going to die, but that doesn't mean the cessation of life any sooner, when one is in fine physical condition, isn't rooted in being emotionally unstable or mentally unbalanced. Emotions can play a terrible trick on us, by convincing us we are ready for something of which we have no intellectual grasp beyond the most rudimentary elements. Hindsight is 20/20 unless you are no longer alive. Then there's no regretful changes of heart. The ultimate finality of death is why this issue has to be handled so carefully.

Preventing death, it is not the same thing as prolonging life. We are too hung up on the former. So much so that we lose sight of the latter, sometimes even working against the latter INHO.

Say you have a man, he's 80 years old and in perfect health for a man his age. He is retired, his family is secure, he's happy with his life. You are saying he shouldn't be allowed to choose to end his life then, when he wants and how he wants with all his family around (supporting his decision) together. He should be treated as a mental patient and forced to continue living a life he feels has reached it's natural end simply because Death is wrong? He should be forced to waist away for another ten or twenty years, a life really of existing nor living, just because people are hung up on the issue of death? Wouldn't that be the near the same level of mental torture, spread out over a greater time, as someone with a terminal illness?

Your premise that once you reach a certain age you start to "waste away" is false to begin with. Some people are healthier in their 70s and 80s than they were in their 20s and 30s. If your hypothetical 80-year-old is in good physical condition and has no chronic ailments impacting his life, why would he want to die?

It would be different if he had some kind of incurable, progressive disease slowing eating away at him. But you seem to be implying that once you reach a certain age you inevitably start to lose everything, and that's just untrue.

I understand your point about not prolonging life just to escape death, but you seem to have gone too far in the other direction--that we should think it's OK for an otherwise healthy and fit person to off themselves just because they're "finished" with life. Someone who has had a good life and is enjoying themselves and isn't on death's door is not going to have that attitude; it means something is wrong.
 
. . . Some people are healthier in their 70s and 80s than they were in their 20s and 30s. If your hypothetical 80-year-old is in good physical condition and has no chronic ailments impacting his life, why would he want to die?
Maybe just because “enough is enough”!

Any mentally competent adult has the right of absolute sovereignty over his own mind and body. That includes the right to exist, as well as the right to end one's existence at a time and place of one's choosing and by a method of one's choosing.

To assume that anyone contemplating suicide, who isn't terminally ill or in irremediable pain, must be mentally/emotionally unstable is to posit a classic Catch-22: Only sane people should be allowed to commit suicide, but anyone who wants to kill himself must be crazy.

I've even heard some people say they believe in the right to life, but not in the right to commit suicide. That's like saying everyone has the right to have sex, but no one has the right to be celibate.
 
The only justification for suicide is an imminent terminal illness. Anybody else needs to be stopped and treated for mental illness or emotional instability.

First of all, your stated justification is not logical. It makes no sense whatsoever. You're saying that a person has a justification to kill himself... if he's going to die anyway?

A good justification for killing oneself is a chronic discomfort that is “unbearable” and “unfixable”, but a person decides for himself how bad is “unbearable” and how long is “unfixable”. I know for people who have killed themselves over a incurable pain in the butt, and I find that a good justification. However, a justification is not required to be good, and “I want to kill myself” is a justification enough – you don't go making choices for other people.

Also, labelling all people who killed themselves mentally ill or unstable is rather excessive, if not a little offensive. Just because someone is stupid enough to not realize that his fleeting problems are going to be fixed, doesn't mean that he has a mental illness. If a person wants to act stupid, let him do it (unless you're his friend, or care about him, but even then, there are boundaries you can't cross). And "emotional instability" is in the same category as stupidity. Quite a lot of people are unable or unwilling to make rational decisions, they base their entire lives on how they felt about the matter, they made life-shattering decisions without any good rationalization, they are unable to think in the long term, some of them might be inherently pessimistic, or jump and make rash decisions about everything. The point is, there entire life is like that, and a suicide will be just as good as all their other decisions. And since in general you can't say “Hey, you're too stupid/unstable to be allowed to make your own decisions,” you can't say it about suicide either.

Another thing. I sometimes have a mild desire to kill myself. The reason is that I'm simply not happy (and I don't remember ever having that feeling for more than a moment). This is mainly a result of my own stupidity and reluctance to do anything good for myself. Of course, I'm not at all inclined to kill myself over it – I know that it won't make me happy, I'll just stop being unhappy, and besides, there are a million of better things I could try instead that I'm always postponing. However, the whole thing has made me realize a few things about suicide:
1. No-one has the right to make that choice for me but me.
2. There are far worse things that you could do. I began watching Star Trek when I start feeling bad, which makes me forget the reasons I feel bad – I'm happy while I'm watching. OK, so I'm feeling fine, but there's no progress made. I could have simply killed myself, it would have had the same effect!
3. If you have a problem that you can't fix (or in my case, don't attempt to), and that problem creates enough trouble, suicide doesn't look crazy to you. Sure, in my case the problem can be said to be a mental problem, but someone else might feel the same for real reasons. And in that case, his decision to kill himself won't be a result of a mental problem.

To put it another way, a person uses his emotions to create his goals, and then tries to use his rational thinking to achieve these goals. Now, sometimes people would set their goals to something insane and unachievable, and then kill themselves over it – this could include things like suicides of people who lost their homes and belongings, who lost their life's work, who lost their first boyfriend, who failed to get accepted in university, or who want to live in outer space but can't. Trouble is, you can't really judge other people's goals since they are never rational, and you aren't in their mind to understand why or how they are important to them, and why they don't try to change them if they are impossible. For someone, changing their goals might be as bad as losing their life. Of course, you should always assume that their issue will pass if they try, and should try to convince them so, but you can't be sure.
 
Actor George Sanders said:
Dear World, I am leaving because I am bored. I feel I have lived long enough. I am leaving you with your worries in this sweet cesspool. Good luck (from his suicide note)

If you've accomplished all you were interested in accomplishing in life, what's the point of sticking around?
 
What about a convicted murderer serving life in prison?

Why should they be able to just skip off and not pay the penalty for their crimes? Why should they be able to sleep it off? Make them stay there and pay the price for their crimes.
 
If you've accomplished all you were interested in accomplishing in life, what's the point of sticking around?

Watching what you've accomplished unfold? Enjoying how cool it is? And there is always more that you can accomplish, you can always get interested in something else. Always.

Why accomplish anything if you aren't planning to relish it? Sure, getting there is half the fun, but come on, it's not *all* the fun!
 
This thread is about assisted suicide.

No-one should be allowed to help another person die unless that person is suffering considerably from a serious condition that there is no cure for.

My mother, who is 79 years old, is terminally ill with lung cancer. She has decided not to have any treatment (i.e. no chemotherapy, no radiation treatment). That is a choice she is free to make.

At the moment my mother is not suffering considerably. In the future, as the cancer, spreads she will. She has said she doesn't want to be resuscitated nor have any treatment that she doesn't consent to.

It would be wrong for me to help her commit suicide at the moment. The only time it would be right for me to do so would be if she suffering considerably and their was no way to ease that suffering. Up to then it is OK for her to take her own life, but not OK for someone to assist her to do it.
 
What about a convicted murderer serving life in prison? What about a perfectly normal and healthy person who has reached an age/point in there life where they feel they have completed everything they wanted, and are happy with there life, who choose to end it on a high not instead of falling to the "down slope" of extreme aging, someone who wants to go out quick and painless instead of being plagued with the pitfalls of growing old.
What about a really lazy person who doesn't want to work for a living for fifty years before retiring? What about somebody who doesn't want to go to school because they get bullied? What about somebody who's favorite TV show just got canceled?
 
Also, labelling all people who killed themselves mentally ill or unstable is rather excessive, if not a little offensive.
Suicide is about the clearest symptom of mental illness there is.
There's a lot of subjective cultural bias in how we define “mental illness.” For example, the old samurai code of bushido still has a strong influence on the cultural values of modern Japan. Some Japanese will commit suicide as a preferable alternative to living with disgrace or dishonor. Does that make them mentally ill?
 
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