Posts by Sacha
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Access: Right to die?, in reply to WaterDragon,
Just as non-disabled people have a range of views on this topic, so do disabled people.
Recent local news story is one example.
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There's a history to the concerns expressed. The motivation for the Nazi Aktion T4 systematic euthanasia project is relevant:
However, the criteria for inclusion in this program were not exclusively genetic, nor were they necessarily based on infirmity. An important criterion was economic. Nazi officials assigned people to this program largely based on their economic productivity. The Nazis referred to the program’s victims as “burdensome lives” and “useless eaters.”
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According to bureaucratic calculations, the state could put funds that went to the care of criminals and the insane to better use—for example, in loans to newly married couples. Proponents for the program saw incurably sick children as a burden on the healthy body of the Volk, the German people. “Wartime is the best time for the elimination of the incurably ill,” Hitler said. -
Access: Right to die?, in reply to Moz,
I believe I should have the right to say no. Those who want to should have the right to say yes.
This is the result we need to create.
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Access: Right to die?, in reply to Rosemary McDonald,
please go back and read what Moz wrote. Not theoretical but experience-based.
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Access: Right to die?, in reply to Chelle Hope,
Thank you.
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I can see both sides of this issue, but it is not an easy conversation. So much depends on our personal and social relationship with complex things like suffering, pain, dependence, death. We do not talk about them enough.
There’s a prevailing stereotype that depending on others is a bad fate, and yet in many cultures and times it is perfectly normal. Suffering is a normal part of life, and whole aspects of theology address it. Even in past Pakeha generations we grew up in homes with grandparents and siblings alike being ill and disabled and dying in our everyday experience.
With ageing boomers and stretched healthcare dollars, there’s a move against doing everything medically possible to extend life at the expense of quality. Atul Gawande’s 2014 BBC Reith lectures on this and his recent book Being Mortal are impressive. Palliative care is a wonderfully effective field, but there will always be some people who have had enough pain or suffering and who want to feel more in control of something as otherwise uncontrollable as dying.
I’ve seen a proud family member struggle with great pain, diminishing independence and reducing quality of life in his final weeks, and I believe he might have opted for an earlier end if it was available. It would have fitted what was important to him, including the impact on those around him. I have heard other older people talk about not wanting to be a burden. The checks and balances in any euthanasia legislation must be able to counter that sort of stuff.
While social attitudes and stereotypes about disability remain as they are, the risk is very real as Martin and Hilary have said that disability will be regarded as sufficient reason for an early death in too many cases.
If euthanasia is made legal, protective mechanisms must include people beyond the medical profession who tend to have very unhelpful beliefs about disability. We also need a massive and sustained investment in broad public awareness campaigns (and remedial training for many doctors) that make disability just another part of life, not a bogey to be avoided at all costs. Current efforts are tiny, fragmented and seemingly being used as a replacement for previous community project funding sources. Not good enough to prevent utterly predictable harm.
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Envirologue: 1080, "eco-terrorism" and agendas, in reply to Moz,
I thought both of those were obvious?
Not enough, hence the Nats using that public ignorance to smear environmentalists instead of their own voters.
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Here is the RNZ interview with Lecretia Seales.
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Hard News: To defame and deflect, in reply to BenWilson,
I sometimes wonder if there's two Hootons. Van and Jethro.
applause
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Envirologue: 1080, "eco-terrorism" and agendas, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
not so keen on tap-water you can set fire to in some of the clips of fracked towns in the US.
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