Terry Pratchett Considers Assisted Suicide 838
cHALiTO writes "Beloved science fiction and fantasy writer Terry Pratchett has terminal early-onset Alzheimer's. He's determined to have the option of choosing the time and place of his death, rather than enduring the potentially horrific drawn-out death that Alzheimer's sometimes brings. But Britain bans assisted suicide, and Pratchett is campaigning to have the law changed. As part of this, he has visited Switzerland's Dignitas clinic, an assisted suicide facility, with a BBC camera crew, as part of a documentary that will include Britain's first televised suicide. Pratchett took home Dignitas's assisted suicide consent forms."
Not much else to say. (Score:1, Interesting)
http://catholicexchange.com/2011/06/14/154594/ [catholicexchange.com]
Re:Every person's right (Score:4, Interesting)
Making suicide legal is giving the 'right' to decide when to die to the government , not the person, because the government will always decide , who is eligible for that 'right'. More so , it destroys protection for the vulnerable and the week, because it de-facto places the 'guardian' ( often the state) of a person in the place of deciding if they 'would want' to live.
Re:Last Wishes (Score:5, Interesting)
If I were in his situation, I'd do about the same thing. I'd fill out the forms to be carried out in a few months. That way if he stopped progressing he could just do whatever, but if he kept progressing he may not be lucid so they could do their thing.
Not as simple as that. AIUI, you have to be able to get there under your own steam and take the drugs (or at least ask for them to be administered) in the full understanding of what they are.
So you can't leave instructions with a relative to cart you off when you get to the point that you're lucid for maybe an hour a day. You more-or-less have to go over there earlier than you'd otherwise like.
(ICBW, mercifully it's not something I've ever had to look into in great detail).
Re:Suicide (Score:3, Interesting)
For all of its failings, in the United States a hospital is required to do anything within their power short of "experimental procedures" to stabilize a person, regardless of their ability to pay, legal status, race, gender, or status as a wanted criminal. This doesn't help with things like cancer or such, as treatments for the cause are all experimental, and the treatments for the symptoms are superficial.
But if you are say, in a car crash and suffer nerve damage, the ER will attempt to save your nerves before they check your insurance. Basically, in the United States, you cannot be denied treatment for conditions for which we understand the root cause because of your ability to pay. And this fact has actually caused ERs in some parts of the country to shut down occasionally, as illegal aliens sometimes bring come in to the ER for things like an ear infection because they cannot be denied treatment, and without any sort of paper trail they also cannot be billed.
Re:Last Wishes (Score:5, Interesting)
I heard an interview with Pratchett on the radio (Ireland). He stated that the singular tragedy was this: The guy in this film had to cut short his life while he could still enjoy it, for this very reason.
He had to travel, and to end his existence, while still lucid and still capable.
All for fear he would reach a point of no return, and no hope of exit.
Re:Every person's right (Score:5, Interesting)
How to Die in Oregon [imdb.com].
Very Very depressing (but good) movie. Don't expect to come out of it in a good mood.
From its opening scene, where a terminally ill cancer patient takes a lethal dose of Seconal and literally dies on camera, it becomes shockingly clear that How to Die in Oregon is a special film. In 1994, Oregon became the first state to legalize physician-assisted suicide. As a result, any individual whom two physicians diagnose as having less than six months to live can lawfully request a fatal dose of barbiturate to end his or her life. Since 1994, more than 500 Oregonians have taken their mortality into their own hands.
In How to Die in Oregon, filmmaker Peter Richardson (Clear Cut: The Story of Philomath, Oregon screened at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival) gently enters the lives of the terminally ill as they consider whether—and when—to end their lives by lethal overdose. Richardson examines both sides of this complex, emotionally charged issue. What emerges is a life-affirming, staggeringly powerful portrait of what it means to die with dignity.
Re:Well shit (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm actually citing my late father's research papers on the subject. And, yes, he did have considerable expertise on the subject and taught me about the various mechanisms and transport modes involved -- long before Wikipedia existed, I should add. I also attended a number of the conference talks he gave on the subject and helped develop software for distinguishing isotopes that gave similar AMS results that required high levels of expertise (not something doctors usually have) to tell apart.
So, yes, I do know what I'm talking about. I've been studying those lab notes and papers of his, together with the rival research and the findings by geneticists, for 15 years - 15 years more than you have studied the subject, I might add. I may not be the top expert in the field, but I'm probably the closest to an expert a layman could ever hope to be.
Alzheimer's is horrifying (Score:5, Interesting)
In more ways than the obvious ones. My mother has it, so I've had no choice but to learn about it. She can't really do chores any more though she still tries. She confuses clean and dirty dishes. She puts them in the wrong cupboards. She can't operate the washing machines any more, but she can and does still open the doors, stopping them. So we've had to either stand guard, or wash by hand, or use them at night when she is asleep. She's always thinking that people are coming over, or that we have to hurry up and go somewhere to meet people. She's beginning to have trouble remembering people. She really took to email, and was our family's big communicator. But about 2 years ago she stopped using it. Now she can't write anything but the most banal fluff. They say an early warning sign is difficulty with finances, and it was about 3 years ago we had to take over all the bill payments. The trigger was being 3 days late with a credit card payment. First time that ever happened, and the credit card company (Chase) wouldn't give an inch. I suppose the crisis made them hard ass. I paid the late fees and interest, and the entire bill, then I cancelled that credit card. A year later I finished cutting all ties with Chase, and closed my savings account with them.
How and when do you take the car keys away? We saw suspicious paint marks on the bumpers and doors, and knew we couldn't let her drive much longer. Dreaded having an ugly scene where we forcibly took her driver's license away. Making it harder was that her daily trips to the mall got her out of our hair so we could work. But we found a neat way around it. She was always misplacing her purse, with keys, credit cards, and all. In March last year, she got paranoid that thieves might break in, and hid her purse. Took us a week to find it that time. We used that to end her driving. Told her she couldn't drive until she found her license and car keys, and she didn't blow up and come down hard on us as it was obvious to her that it was her fault she'd lost her purse. We did not tell her when we finally found it.
Doctors, curse their greedy hides, are unable to do anything constructive about it. All they do is profit off our problems by selling us expensive prescriptions that may do nothing whatever. Aricept is a waste.
All that is pretty typical. It will get worse. I read that in the advanced stages, victims no longer have enough of a brain to coordinate walking, even if their bodies can still do it. So they have to use wheelchairs. We may ultimately have to put her in a nursing home. But I haven't yet told of a less obvious horror.
What I didn't know is how happy Alzheimer's victims are. She was always a moody person, prone to rampages over essentially trivial faults. She's a "sundowner", meaning that late afternoon is her triple witching hour so to speak. Her blood sugar bottoms out, and she becomes a hell of a grouch, more ready than usual to explode at any provocation whatever, and so ready to see provocation where there wasn't any. Got to feed her to calm her down and get her back to being just merely touchy and thin skinned. And then around 10 years ago, that changed. She became a much more pleasant, happy person. I took it as the wisdom of age. Thought she'd resolved to turn over a new leaf, and was succeeding. Everyone who met her told me how cool she was. And it gave me hope that people really can change, that genetics and formative events in our childhoods don't have to be our destinies. Now I understand that was the beginning of Alzheimer's. How can I express it? Horrifying to see that these improvements were thanks to irreversable brain damage, and that achieving happiness in life is perhaps not a worthy goal and not a real improvement.
Suffering to others (Score:4, Interesting)
It is often the case that those who suffer from Alzheimer's Disease live a happy life. My wife has recently been accepted in a home and for most of the time she seems quite happy with the life that she is living there. As a patient of Alzheimer's Disease you realize less and less what is going on when the disease progresses. But depressions and periodes of anxiety do occur. But it is often the people around the patient that suffer far more than the patient her/himself. I can testify this from first hand experience with respect to me, my children and our friends. In case I would be diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease that would be a reason for me to want to terminate my life and sparing the people around me the prolonged sufferings of having me see go backwards.
I think it should be possible to state that you want your life to be terminated when the disease has been progressed to a certain spcified level. There are some 'objective' milestones in the progress of the disease. Already dementia is one of the most expensive diseases in the western world, and especially in Europe, where the population is no longer growing, these costs are going to get much higher in the coming decades. Especially the last years are very expensive. That too would be a reason for me to consider early termination of my life, not wanting to put an unnecessary burden to society as a whole. But I also feel that people who do not want to terminate their life early, should get the best possible care.
Re:Well shit (Score:4, Interesting)
Part of the answer may be immune system triggers caused by food intolerances (believe it or not). I have Celiac Disease, and it's amazing the array of symptoms that gluten intolerance causes. Not just the commonly known symptom of the immune system attacking the intestines, but it also causes Dermatitis Herpetiformis, which is similar to psoriasis. It actually started me wondering -- if your immune system can attack your intestines, and your skin, why can't it attack any organ in the body, including your brain?
Sure enough, check out this study from the Mayo Clinic [sciencedaily.com]. Celiac may be linked to Alzheimer's.
I suspect that food intolerance that cause immune system disease will eventually be linked to other brain issues (that I won't mention, because I don't want to make a controversial point the focus of this post).
Alzheimer's Terminal? (Score:4, Interesting)
First, I am in full support of a person's right to choose their time and place of death when confronted with certain death anyway (I voted for Oregon's "Death with Dignity" law - both times it came up.)
Second, I fully understand the debilitating effects of Alzheimer's, having multiple relatives who have succumb to it late in life.
However, since when is Alzheimer's itself "Terminal"? I have yet to have a relative die "because of Alzheimer's".
According to the latest statistics (http://public.health.oregon.gov/ProviderPartnerResources/EvaluationResearch/DeathwithDignityAct/Documents/yr13-tbl-1.pdf ,) the most common underlying illness that has prompted people to take advantage of Oregon's law is, by far, cancer. (Or, "Malignant neoplasms" as it is phrased in the report.) 80.8%. Next is ALS (aka "Lou Gehrig's Disease",) with 8%. Next Chronic lower respiratory disease (which covers lots of lung issues other than cancer,) with 3.8%, then AIDS at 1.5%, and "Other" rounding out the rest. They detail "Other" in the footnotes, and no Alzheimer's.
So, while I fully understand the desire of someone who is used to major functionality not wanting to succumb to the depths of Alzheimer's, to call it a Terminal Illness is lying to yourself.