Slippery Slope?

[bob sterman]

Matthew Parris seems intent on lubricating any slope to make it as frictionless as possible - all for the economic benefits...

We can’t afford a taboo on assisted dying
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/we-c ... -n6p8bfg9k

By "afford" - yes - he is talking about financial costs. Because according to Parris, unproductive people "place a burden on the tribe" and "tribes that handicap themselves..." (by keeping unproductive people alive) "...will not prosper."

Brought to you by the author of...

Soon we will accept that useless lives should end
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/soo ... hould-end/

[bjn]

Matthew Parris seems intent on lubricating any slope to make it as frictionless as possible - all for the economic benefits...

We can’t afford a taboo on assisted dying
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/we-c ... -n6p8bfg9k

By "afford" - yes - he is talking about financial costs. Because according to Parris, unproductive people "place a burden on the tribe" and "tribes that handicap themselves..." (by keeping unproductive people alive) "...will not prosper."

Brought to you by the author of...

Soon we will accept that useless lives should end
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/soo ... hould-end/

Eugenics in a different dress. What a nice man. By nice I mean complete c.nt.

[Tristan]

I thought much the same reading this yesterday.

I used to be fairly pro-Assisted Suicide but seeing what an absolute cluster the Canadian MAID has become has made me realise some slopes genuinely are slippery. I just don’t think we can go there.

IMG_9349.jpeg (260.14 KiB) Viewed 754 times

[noggins]

I dunno, surely anything that reduces the tory vote is worth considering?

[lpm]

This forum, and the preceding, has a long and notorious history of believing all choices are freely made.

Most forum members previously rejected the possibility of coercion, choices from desperation or decisions made while not in one's right mind.

The turnaround in the past couple of years has been remarkable.

[jimbob]

This forum, and the preceding, has a long and notorious history of believing all choices are freely made.

Most forum members previously rejected the possibility of coercion, choices from desperation or decisions made while not in one's right mind.

The turnaround in the past couple of years has been remarkable.

Are you sure?

[bjn]

This forum, and the preceding, has a long and notorious history of believing all choices are freely made.

Most forum members previously rejected the possibility of coercion, choices from desperation or decisions made while not in one's right mind.

The turnaround in the past couple of years has been remarkable.

Anecdata.

I am a close friend of a palliative care doctor resident in a jurisdiction that permits assisted suicide. The law in question has multiple safe guards, including the need to be terminally ill, be suffering pain, have multiple sign offs by independent doctors and to have made the request to die multiple times to multiple witnesses and in writing. My friend has worked in a hospice looking after terminally ill patients for many years and initially was against assisted dying, believing palliative care was sufficient. However, they changed their mind after the law passed and observed a range of assisted deaths and now helps those who have made the choice. They say in nearly all cases the family is pleading for the patient to stay, that in all case the death is much better than being wracked with cancer/parkinsons/… and being doped to the eyeballs for the last months/weeks of a life. It’s how they want to die should they be in such a situation.

That is a world away from what Parris is suggesting, which is killing people he thinks are surplus to ‘needs’.

[jimbob]

This forum, and the preceding, has a long and notorious history of believing all choices are freely made.

Most forum members previously rejected the possibility of coercion, choices from desperation or decisions made while not in one's right mind.

The turnaround in the past couple of years has been remarkable.

Anecdata.

I am a close friend of a palliative care doctor resident in a jurisdiction that permits assisted suicide. The law in question has multiple safe guards, including the need to be terminally ill, be suffering pain, have multiple sign offs by independent doctors and to have made the request to die multiple times to multiple witnesses and in writing. My friend has worked in a hospice looking after terminally ill patients for many years and initially was against assisted dying, believing palliative care was sufficient. However, they changed their mind after the law passed and observed a range of assisted deaths and now helps those who have made the choice. They say in nearly all cases the family is pleading for the patient to stay, that in all case the death is much better than being wracked with cancer/parkinsons/… and being doped to the eyeballs for the last months/weeks of a life. It’s how they want to die should they be in such a situation.

That is a world away from what Parris is suggesting, which is killing people he thinks are surplus to ‘needs’.

At the moment we require doctors to provide treatment to patients when id they were other animals, vets would be committing professional misconduct for prolonging suffering.

There's would indeed need to be a lot of safeguards, at the least a court of protection and best interests assessments as for restrictions on liberty due to reduced mental capacity.

[bob sterman]

Everyone can set out their beliefs in "good" assisted dying - with abundant safeguards - with only the person's interests in mind. But that's not what we'll have.

The trouble is - odious individuals like Matthew Parris clearly show that the proverbial "slippery slope" is not a paranoid thought. It's there - it's slippery - and he's greasing it up.

And experience in Canada shows - if someone is in hospital having been diagnosed with an awful but manageable illness - when it comes time to plan discharge and a potentially expensive package of care at home - there is no doubt that people are going to be pestered (perhaps repeatedly) to consider assisted dying. Far cheaper than expensive NHS Continuing Health Care (CHC).

https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/05/0 ... -is-cheap/

[Gfamily]

https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/05/0 ... -is-cheap/

Who the f.ck takes an article in Spiked as authoritative?

[lpm]

This forum, and the preceding, has a long and notorious history of believing all choices are freely made.

Most forum members previously rejected the possibility of coercion, choices from desperation or decisions made while not in one's right mind.

The turnaround in the past couple of years has been remarkable.

Are you sure?

Absolutely sure.

[lpm]

There's would indeed need to be a lot of safeguards, at the least a court of protection and best interests assessments as for restrictions on liberty due to reduced mental capacity.

But that fails in practice.

[bjn]

https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/05/0 ... -is-cheap/

Who the f.ck takes an article in Spiked as authoritative?

This.

[bjn]

There's would indeed need to be a lot of safeguards, at the least a court of protection and best interests assessments as for restrictions on liberty due to reduced mental capacity.

But that fails in practice.

References?

[dyqik]

This forum, and the preceding, has a long and notorious history of believing all choices are freely made.

Most forum members previously rejected the possibility of coercion, choices from desperation or decisions made while not in one's right mind.

The turnaround in the past couple of years has been remarkable.

Are you sure?

Absolutely sure.

Then everything you say can be ignored.

[Imrael]

From a purely selfish point of view I would very much like to have the option of assisted suicide under certain circumstances. And to be honest if those circumstances included not spending my resources on long term care with a low quality of life, I think I should be free to make that choice as well.

[lpm]

https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/05/0 ... -is-cheap/

Who the f.ck takes an article in Spiked as authoritative?

That won't do.

The Canadian cases described aren't in dispute and appear in other articles, on Wikipedia etc.

[Bewildered]

If we start accepting one slippery slope argument then fairly soon we’ll be accepting all slippery slope arguments and then we’ll be in a world of hurt.

[Boustrophedon]

If we start accepting one slippery slope argument then fairly soon we’ll be accepting all slippery slope arguments and then we’ll be in a world of hurt.

Isn't that 'thin end of the wedge' though?

[Woodchopper]

Are you sure?

Absolutely sure.

Then everything you say can be ignored.

Wouldn’t be that difficult for someone to look up previous discussions on the topic on this forum.

[Woodchopper]

https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/05/0 ... -is-cheap/

Who the f.ck takes an article in Spiked as authoritative?

Hopefully a more reliable source: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals ... DF91A2F568

[Bewildered]

If we start accepting one slippery slope argument then fairly soon we’ll be accepting all slippery slope arguments and then we’ll be in a world of hurt.

Isn't that 'thin end of the wedge' though?

Well then you are really opening Pandora’s box.

[Bewildered]

A wedge is typically not very slippery though and being pushed up it is much tougher on the poor buttocks than just sliding down a well lubricated smooth surface.

[Grumble]

Let’s not get all witty on this one, it’s grim.

Was there an issue in Canada before they expanded it to non end of life situations?

[Woodchopper]

Let’s not get all witty on this one, it’s grim.

Was there an issue in Canada before they expanded it to non end of life situations?

The academic article I linked to above criticizes the government for poor data collection, so it may not be possible to get a comprehensive picture.

But it does mention cases of people who had assisted suicide before the law was changed, and who weren't expected to have a “reasonably foreseeable natural death” (RFND).

As for whether there could have been a slippery slope, it states that:

In 2021, eligibility for the Canadian MAiD regime was further expanded through legislation, Bill C-7 (Parliament of Canada 2021). The legislation introduced a regime of 2 MAiD pathways. Several safeguards from the initial regime were removed from what was now called “Track 1,” a pathway for which an applicant still has to have an RFND. Bill C-7 added “Track 2,” a new pathway for those with a serious disease, illness, or disability and an irreversible decline of capabilities, but who are not approaching their natural death. This means de facto persons with disabilities. A delayed implementation clause for Track 2 (“sunset clause”) stipulated that those with sole mental disorders would become eligible for MAiD in March 2023 (Gaind Reference Gaind2022a).

Bill C-7 was the government’s response to a single lower court judgment in the province of Quebec (Truchon), which ruled that the RFND requirement was unconstitutional (Cours Supérieure Quebec 2019). Unusually, the federal government did not appeal the ruling despite having compelling reasons to do so (Lemmens and Jacobs Reference Lemmens and Jacobs2019). Despite the fact that the case did not deal with mental illness, and that the Supreme Court explicitly stated in the Carter case (Supreme Court of Canada 2015) that it was not ruling on MAiD for mental illness (Lemmens et al. Reference Lemmens2023; Lemmens et al. Reference Lemmens and Jacobs2019), the law nevertheless included mental illnesses as forthcoming qualifying diagnoses.