mattsteinglass

The slippery-slope issue is a very important one. There are two important points I'm aware of that argue that it doesn't necessarily take place. The first is the experience in Oregon: physician-assisted death (with the patient taking the meds themself) has been legal there since 1997, but it hasn't led to any further liberalisation into other forms of delivery. The second is more complicated: the fact is that involuntary euthanasia does take place right now, even though it's illegal. Doctors give terminal patients ever-increasing doses of painkillers that speed up death, even without explicit request. In the Netherlands, extensive survey data of doctors starting in 1990 (before legalisation) showed that once voluntary euthanasia was legalised in 2002, explicit voluntary euthanasia essentially replaced cases of euthanasia where the patient hadn't explicitly asked for it, rather than leading to an increase. Involuntary euthanasia has actually declined quite sharply.

My "best argument against" is related to Helen's but a bit different: in the case of psychological suffering rather than physical suffering, there's some concern that it's hard to say whether there's really no hope of treatment, and that the availability of euthanasia as an option may get someone set on that path, rather than continuing to try to struggle with their condition. The response to this is basically that everywhere that euthanasia is legal, requests for it have to be extremely insistent and repeated, and multiple independent physicians must agree that the patient's request for euthanasia is appropriate. Also, the patient has to be in a sound state of mind to make the request; a patient who is really suffering acute depression or schizophrenia is likely to be ruled ineligible to make the request.

Hi, I'm afraid we're not quite sure what you're referring to. Can you explain more fully?

This issue comes up in borderline cases, but as the saying goes, tough cases make bad law. A person who has terminal liver cancer is probably really suffering if they say so. A paraplegic who can't stand their quality of life is probably really suffering if they say so. A person who has a bit of a persistent cough is probably not suffering intolerably; after two weeks they may say they're no longer suffering at all. You want a mechanism to avoid helping someone to commit suicide one day just because they're in a very dark mood that day. The way to do that is to submit the case to review by multiple physicians. If they can't get physicians to believe that they're suffering, they may simply have to end their lives themselves. No one has a right to have a doctor help them end their life, but if you are determined to end your life, it's pretty hard to stop you.

I think the line should be drawn well short of that, and in every country where euthanasia is legal, it would be. The requirement in the Netherlands for example is that the person be experiencing intolerable suffering with no hope of remedy. Breaking up is hard to do, but you eventually get over it.