I want the Soylent Green option. Make me comfortable, surround me with my favorite colors, music and images while I die, then process me and feed me to the unsuspecting masses! Mmmwhahahahahah!

Time for more coffee.

Don't need government's permission:
done when i am done; you will never find my body.

I've worked in a hospital, and I have no desire to be one of those poor souls who comes in terminally ill with bed sores so deep you could thrust your entire fist into it.

I don't remember much of the movie, but if they covered organ donation in Soylent Green I suppose they sold off the useable bits to the highest bidder before they made their special protein bars.

Waste not, want not, as Gramma used to say.

"I want the morphine overdose, and then you can
parcel out my organs to the unsuspecting masses, but preferably not for their next meal"

Is Gregg OK with that? Maybe he'd rather have you pickled naked in alcohol & displayed in an aquarium in his living room.

I've been to the Mutter! Christ on a cracker is that place creepy. And neat, 'cause I'm ghoulish that way. I don't recall seeing grownups in jars, but they do have jars of every kind of conjoined twin fetus.

> Make me comfortable, surround me with my favorite
> colors, music and images while I die, then
> process me and feed me to the unsuspecting
> masses!

Yeah, that death was the most memorable part of the movie.

I've always worried that someone will pooch the paperwork and I'll expire to the vocal stylings of Olivia Newton-John... And there have already been a couple close calls.

Seriously, a beloved senior in my family passed away from senile dementia a few year years ago. When the people in the care facility gathered for songs in the Big Room, they all remembered the same ones from childhood in the 1920's and 30's.

This will not work for people from the internet age, who have ferociously individual tastes. The allegiances and resentments from hair metal vs. grunge vs. Randy Travis-era Nashville enthusiasts are going to make for a lot of fisticuffs between old folks who can't even remember their own names.

I'll expire to the vocal stylings of Olivia Newton-John...
______________________________________

How fortuitous. The radio station I listen to just favored me with "Sam, Sam, you know where I am..."

Oh god it gets in your head..........

As a doctor I firmly believe that doctors shouldn't be in the business of killing people, even people who want to die. It will inevitably degrade the profession and damage the patient-doctor relationship. If doctors are killers how can we be truly trusted?

> As a doctor I firmly believe that doctors
> shouldn't be in the business of killing

I can dig it... We love that about you. But while the competitive model for medical education and performance handles most of our needs perfectly, some matters require a different skillset... Including that most certain matter, whether for a life well lived or for any other.

When the aforementioned relative fell ill towards that certain outcome, I was AMAZED at the frankness, clarity and compassion supplied by the whole of the medical community –including and perhaps especially CATHOLICS– in a number of different organizations and contexts. But the relative had prepared well, and was able to afford a good standard of care from a higher tier of providers.

Not all of us will be so prepared or so fortunate.

Just as an example: I will be screwed.

Drmaturin brings a thought: do we opt for an Angel of Death specialist, who does nothing else, or empower the family doctor to push you on out of here?

A hundred years ago, Nana would have been helped on her way when it became obvious she couldn't recover. Now, since everyone else has made it their business what someone else's doctor does, nothing of the sort happens. Right?

Because doctors are strangers now. Their clinics are profit centers for insurance and government shell games.

Do we really have to watch medical science advance to the point where near-cadaverous people are kept alive as long as medically possible? Looks like hell to me!

If I know I'm going -- I'm going to get my hands on some sufentanil (5 to 10 times more potent than fentanyl) and a vial of insulin. Between the two, I'll go peacefully.

But DrMaturin may be onto something. Maybe there needs to be death management clinics, just like there are pain management clinics.

No matter what -- I want to go like my grandfather, peacefullly, in my sleep. Not screaming like his passengers. ;-)

Ah, the future:

http://www.comedycentral.com/videos/index.jhtml?title=suicide-booth&videoId=136575

> Not screaming like his passengers. ;-)

Yeah yeah yeah, ya joker... Like we used to say in 7th grade, 'I want to die at age 90 by the hand of a jealous husband'.

I was kinda trying to tickle Maturin in the earlier comment... But the truth is, there's a lot to be said for a medical culture that has as its unofficial obsession (if not as its Hippocratic motto) "Defeat the fucking disease". Medicine is like other achievements: The only way to win is to be hyper-focused and crazy-stubborn. Not taking no for an answer has brought a lot of people from illness back to health.

Now, people who don't take no for an answer can be a pain in the ass. But while our society is not very good about expressing gratitude, there are a lot of us walking around today who wouldn't be if someone –in our own life or in our great-grandmamma's life or somewhere back down the family tree– hadn't decided to be stubborn about some medical problem... Simply as a sporting proposition, as an ego challenge.

We don't want to discourage those assholes from doing their asshole best. Murray, on TV last week, is the exception... Most of these people are fantastic. They aren't paid what they're worth, no matter how offended you might be by your insurance premiums.

The kind of death management clinics you describe are probably a good idea. I know we already have hospices, but maybe there needs to be more than that. What happened with the relative I mentioned in the earlier comments was that the people and facilities who were providing care to her –at considerable profit to themselves , remember– knew exactly where to draw the line between worthwhile struggles and worthless ones. Nonetheless, the relative and I were counting on the goodness of unaccountable strangers.

You'll never understand how grateful I am to them.

Maybe you and and I are wrong. But even if we don't need a revolution in end-of-life care, we need to have a calmer, more stoic, more conversational, more matter-of-fact recognition of this truth in our daily lives... With the woman behind the counter at the coffee shop, with our boss in the workshop or the boardroom, with our students in the classroom and with our TSA agent at the gate:

Eventually, nature wins. No matter what.

InCridable:

the people and facilities who were providing care to her –at considerable profit to themselves

Well, no - they could always make more money by curtailing services.

And under socialized medicine, there will always be that pressure.

Not a great recipe for a death management bureaucracy - we've already seen the British NHS stop performing cataracts on people over 70 because they're no longer paying in/costs too much. Which are not exactly moral arguments.

I'm with the only real doctor who seems to have posted on this thread: there must be a bright line between letting nature take its course and active murder of ailing patients.

Yes, murder.
That's what it is.

You missed the point.