This is horrible. If I were suffering, I'd want someone to put me out of my misery. Why is it we afford more care and concern to domestic pets than our own loved ones?

I feel the same way about blocking medical marijuana ...

http://www.angryharry.com/Why-Hurt-People-Who-Are-Sick.htm

> I would be happy to kill you personally
> and watch you bleed

Bitterness ≠ righteousness ≠ insight.

We're on a dark planet, OK? Consider the notation at top right, and remember: Merely unpleasant passage hovers at about 97.962377%, with thoughtful estimates far higher. My favorite aphorism from Hitchens was "This ends badly." He lived to prove it; almost everyone reading (and writing) these words will prove it too, in good time.

My sympathy for this man's father is deep and sincere... Only an inch deeper than for his loving son.

But this globe is better than it used be... This miracle happened to our culture because generations of the smartest and most decent people living in liberty decided not to play word games about what it meant to fight illness.

OK... Sure... There are some miscalibrations at the far end of the project, and they come from policy.

But when you hear demented (and indisputably destructive) chatter from seemingly normal people as we discuss health care in 2013, humility might not encourage impulsive revision to our enduring interpretation of Hippocrates.

I lost both my parents this year to cancer. We had to fight to keep them out of hospice, and the doctors and insurance companies kept trying to withhold treatment.

No idea where Adams lives, but if he'd been in SoCal, his father would've died immediately, if that's what he wanted.

Very clever of the medical lobby. They get to prolong the suffering of someone who has no chance of recovery to soak them dry of every penny, and all in the name of compassion.

Yeah, like Thomas W. noted, the family usually has a choice of treatments. The implication here is that the Adams family is compelled to spend $8000 a month.

I suppose I should get the details before I snark, but I would think there are other options.

My father is 88 and in the early stages of Alzheimer's. I love my father with the same intensity as Mr. Adams loves his. When you love someone, you want what's best for him. And sometime that involves hatred for those who do not want what's best for him. In Mr. Adams' position, I might word my feelings for such heartless policy and people the same way he has, and feel completely justified in doing so.

I also don't know what point is served by trotting out all kinds of statistics on how life expectancy has wonderfully increased over the years. My father, as with Mr. Adams', is not a statistic, he's a living, feeling human being with a sense of dignity. He does not deserve being kept alive, helpless, and in pain, merely to improve life expectancy statistics and in the process to make people in the medical or political fields feel good about themselves and their "service" to society.

If the government fixes this by passing an assisted suicide law, I can guarantee that the side effects and fallout of getting the government even more involved in who lives, and who dies, are going to be worse than the original problem.

Feel badly for those who end up like Dilbert's dad, but recognize as Crid says, "no one gets out of here alive"

The people with really poor endings often get there, one poor decision at a time by themselves or their relatives, and the government isnt going to make it all "better"

At this time last year, my dad was in a rehab facility, we thought waiting to die. We moved him to a different place, and then mom decided to pack up and move to FLA. She and dad were in an assisted living place for 2 months, and then she decided she didn't want to live there, either, and opted to buy a small 2-bedroom house in a gated community down there. Dad, bless his heart, was a trooper through the whole thing, even in his state, and once they moved to the new place, the doctor took him off of some of the meds he was taking. Now, mind you, we thought, truly thought, that he'd be taking "the long dirt nap" pretty soon. Turns out, it was some of the meds he was on that were contributing to his condition. The girls and I went down there for a visit in August, on the occasion of my parents' 58th wedding anniversary. Imagine my surprise, upon seeing my dad, when he said to me, "come 'ere and give your dad a hug!" He recognized me! And my girls! And was teasing my nephew's new wife about making him a great-grandfather before his time!

As badly as I feel for Scott and his dad and family, I was close to where he was last year. Not all the way there, but close. But right now, my dad is coherent, and mobile, and living with my mom, and has a visiting nurse come twice a week to see how they're doing, and for all intents and purposes, they're doing very well. I never would have thought this could have happened. I'm glad we didn't leave him where he was, to be medicated to death.

We are very lucky and blessed. And while I know dad won't be around for too much longer, I'm really grateful that he'll get to meet his great-granddaughter before he goes.

PS - Good to see your posts again, Crid. I seriously missed you.

"Right to Die." As a very Libertarian minded person, I agree. Wholeheartedly. If I'm ready to go, you have no right to stop me, or penalize my estate or survivors if I decide to go. But moving from there to Doctor Assisted Suicide is a greater leap than people think. Its distance is in inverse proportion to that between "Right to Die" and "Duty to Die Grandpa you are using up resources and life is for the living." Of course, you will never say that about your Grandpa. Other people will say that about your Grandpa. And the Government will helpfully set up a panel of experts to make that decision for you. Its best for all involved, you know.
Hard cases make excruciatingly bad law, and who cannot sympathize with what this man is experiencing. I've been there myself, and can fully understand his frustration. So, once again, once...tediously...again, emotion will trump reason and Doctor Assisted Suicide is an historical inevitability. And it will end very, very badly.
Those who wish can and will disagree with me, but I won't argue. All I have to do to prove my point is wait.

Neither can his doctors

And that's a good thing. While doctors may not willfully kill you, they also can not force you to accept treatment. So take your father home, and he can die in peace there. Hell, I doubt anyone would look twice if you slipped him a bit of hemlock tea. Who would order an autopsy on an already dying man?

But to put that call into the hands of others invites disaster. Wait till government technocrats and bean counters tell you that it's your patriotic duty to drink the hemlock.

Because they've done the calculation and decided that your continued existence is a net drain on the economy. That's coming.

The Dilbert cartoon has touched on similar topics. The Pointy Haired Boss said that the company's approach to the asbestos issue was "attrition".

In a cartoon, that's a dark funny. But the reality is that government technocrats are no better that a company's technocrats, and maybe worse, since they act under the color law.

This is a similar issue that northern tier emergency rooms have to deal with. If a body is found out in the cold. Until the body is warm and dead, the person isn't necessarily dead.

There are any number of conditions and drugs that can cause dementia. But if you remove or remediate most of them and it is still there, then that is the diagnosis.

I don't want to sit around in a nursing home not knowing who I am. And I don't want family members or friends to have to debate over it. Take me out.

I wish the same end on people who voted for Obama. It's not nice to kick stage 5 cancer patients out of their hospitals, and that's precisely what they voted for.

Does he not realize that he DOES in fact, have a choice? He can have him transferred to hospice. He can remove him from the hospital and take him home for palliative care. I don't know where this man lives or what hospital he's at, but this story sounds really, really fishy to me. Maybe he isn't allowed to legally make decisions for his dad. And if not, that ability may well have been removed for a very good reason. He doesn't come across as logical here, for sure. Not once does he say what his DAD would want, for example. I'm very clear on when my mom wants to check out, and I'll make it happen.

I've had more than a handful of extended family die of cancer in the last decade, and all did so at home under hospice care, and none were rich.

They can't KEEP you in the hospital without an injunction. Few judges would grant one, he's that old and terminal.

Thank you to those of you who have stated (far better than I could) in that the author DOES have a choice - hospice.

Several times we, as a family, have brought loved ones home to die or have them moved to hospice or palliative care. (I cannot say thank you enough to the dedicated staff I have met working in those units of the hospital; they are concerned, not with ending life, but concerned with making the "passage" easy without killing)

While I get what those who support the "right to die" are saying; I think they are getting too emotional about it. They are not seeing what the end-result could be if doctors get to choose to end life. It will not be pretty; and it certainly won't be the "blessing" that they imagine it to be.

Thank you to those of you who have stated (far better than I could) in that the author DOES have a choice - hospice. -- Charles at November 27, 2013 11:20 AM

The problem is that his father is not suffering from cancer or a linearly progressive disease such as ALS. Those are appropriate for hospice. Hospice is expecting the patient to die within six months.

His father is suffering from Alzheimer's. That means that it goes in fits and starts until it finally shuts down the medulla oblongata that controls breathing, heart rate and other autonomic functions.

As stated here:

When Jicha and colleagues scrutinized the records of nearly 1,300 men and women who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's at their institution, they found patients lived anywhere from one to 26 years from when they first started losing their memory.

There are some that stay relatively cogent until the last few months. Then there are those that live another three years in effectively a vegetative status.

So yes, if you have a medical power of attorney, you can probably have food and or water withdrawn. I consider that cruel. Why not just give an overdose of some drug?

Thank goodness we now have the Affordable Care Act. Dads like Scott's can suffer for free.

Ah yes, the affordable care act, which I can see having a very real affect on this discussion. When the government pays the medical bills, will they have decision making powers with regard to care choices in another ten years? Why are we giving the biggest behemoth on the planet the means by which to make our most intimate decisions? At what point will they be saying, "actuarially, this man is on his way out in three months, so we won't continue to spend money on him."? I don't see that being a long way off ... who else remembers Obama making statements about how we'll all need to understand when our time is up, or something to that effect? I am firmly in the camp of allowing people to decide when it's time to check out, but I want to be the one to make my decision. I don't want the government doing it for me.

Get government out of the business of comprehensive health care and health insurance, and I'll consider supporting this. For under Obamacare and the other programs, the right to die will most certainly become a duty to die.

I have to wonder if there is not more to this story, because the facts as stated don't make sense. Or maybe there's less. Who is forcing him to spend $8,000 per month on medical treatment? What are they doing to keep him alive?

My father died earlier this year. He spent years on dialysis and other fairly intensive medical treatments. But then he reached a point where he didn't want to do it anymore. So they sent him home with a supply of morphine and instructions to use it when the pain got to great. One night he woke up in pain, my mother gave him the morphine, and we died quietly in his sleep before morning.

The only sense I can make of this is that Mr Adams doesn't want to "allow his father to die naturally". He wants to deliberately kill him. And excuse me, but I do not accept that those are "just about the same thing".

"I have to wonder if there is not more to this story, because the facts as stated don't make sense. Or maybe there's less. Who is forcing him to spend $8,000 per month on medical treatment? What are they doing to keep him alive?"

This is the average cost of a private nursing home. If any of you actually think you could stay in a hospital for only 8k a month, you have been living under a bridge for the last 20 years.

Under no circumstances should the government, especially the Obama regime, be allowed to speak for the aged and dying. "If you like your life, you can keep it. Period" That is, until a death panel decides that you've had enough life. then it's Soylent Green time.
When my time comes, I want the freedom to choose to hang in there until the bitter end or get behind the wheel of an old Chrysler and go introduce it to a bridge abutment. Once you open the doors to government intervention into your final months or hours, mass murder will become the norm. And once mass murder becomes the norm, it doesn't just stop with the old farts.

I'm okay with any citizen who opposes doctor-assisted suicide on moral or practical grounds. But if you have acted on that thought, such as basing a vote on it, I would like you to die a slow, horrible death too. ~ Scott Adams

So, he's okay with people having a conscience, just not with them acting on it when it goes against his wishes?

I'm not sure I understand why you would want to keep someone out of hospice, unless your intention is to continue to seek curative treatment, which is not allowed in conjunction with hospice. Ironically, we often see what is known as the "Hospice Bounce", where our patients benefit so much from our care that they recover enough from their illnesses to not qualify for hospice anymore. We're seeing this more often because the system is giving up on patients and they come to us in hospice, where we don't give up, despite common misconceptions.

Okay, here's a hard question: just how much federal money should you be allowed to command to support a loved one who's suffering?

Why would you imagine that you have control of the situation when someone else is paying?

Do you imagine that the existence of some federal health care system would actually make everything alright in your life?

"So, he's okay with people having a conscience, just not with them acting on it when it goes against his wishes?"

No, their so-called morals or conscience are simply wishes. By their voting against assisted suicide they have imposed their wishes on another person, they took his choice away when it had no effect on them whatsoever.

There is no reason your wish to keep me alive at 110 years old in a vat of goo to satisfy your "moral need" to keep me alive just because you can should impede my wish to die when I am nothing more than a social and financial drain.

I'm not sure I understand why you would want to keep someone out of hospice, unless your intention is to continue to seek curative treatment, which is not allowed in conjunction with hospice. -- Juliana at November 27, 2013 4:23 PM

Are you referring to my post?

The mind can be gone way before the body goes. Look at coma patients. This is the same sort of issue. The mind isn't there but the body is perfectly fine. Putting them in hospice as opposed to some sort of skilled nursing facility is not going to make a difference. They don't need painkillers. They just need to be taken care of. There is no curative treatment available, but with Alzheimer's you have no 3-4 months to live prognosis.

Think of Karen Ann Quinlan or Terri Schiavo. The lights are on but no one is home.

It would be even easier to get him out of a private nursing facility. Take him home to die. Or take him to hospice. Neither choice is what he seems to want-which is a Dr to inject the dad and kill him immediately, some time ago-but both are valid choices that are better that what he is presenting as his only option right now.

I can guarantee that the side effects and fallout of getting the government even more involved in who lives, and who dies, are going to be worse than the original problem.

The government is already fully involved. Who do you think forbids doctor-assisted suicide now, the Great Pumpkin?

I'd never want assisted suicide mandated by the government ("duty to die"), but it should be allowed if requested by the patient, or if (s)he is incapable of choosing, by unanimous consent of the immediate family.

"No, their so-called morals or conscience are simply wishes. By their voting against assisted suicide they have imposed their wishes on another person, they took his choice away when it had no effect on them whatsoever."

But when you vote in favor of doctor assisted suicide aren't you asking the state to impose your personal wishes on doctors, and hospitals?

You can vote in favor and win an election with 99 percent of the vote, but getting a doctor to do what the state law allows, is another thing entirely.

Little known fact, there are a number of states and towns where it is impossible to get an abortion. No doctors in those locations will do them. Legal permission does not always grat you access to what you think you have a right to, especially when it involves the morals and values of someone
else whose cooperation you need.

"It would be even easier to get him out of a private nursing facility. Take him home to die. Or take him to hospice. Neither choice is what he seems to want-which is a Dr to inject the dad and kill him immediately, some time ago-but both are valid choices that are better that what he is presenting as his only option right now.

Posted by: momof4 at November 27, 2013 7:44 PM

I agree.

But that would be messy and inconvenient, and Scott Adams clearly thinks that either the state or the Medical profession should be forced to do the dirty work for him.

It sounds much like my now long passed Grandfather's situation. The mind was almost completely gone - for example he kept telling us nuns had came and taken him at gun point to Montana but he wouldn't tell them what they wanted so they brought him back. Though he was in reasonable health all things considered. If you fed him and gave him water he would continue to live....and he did. Cancer eventually came and finished him off. By his living will or whatever you call it - as long as there was money to pay he had to keep be kept in the nursing home. No my father didn't have pay...the estate, insurance and some government program.

I doubt my grandfather wanted to be alive like that...it was clear he never envisioned it. He figured he could reasonable do for himself and have a OK life or have major medical issues and die. Per the living will if he had a heart attack they were not to try and bring him back.

But when you vote in favor of doctor assisted suicide aren't you asking the state to impose your personal wishes on doctors, and hospitals?

No, you're asking the state not to get in the way of doctors and hospitals who are willing to comply with your wishes. I would be against any proposal to force doctors to assist a suicide, and I think Adams would too.

Isab, you mentioned that there are places where abortion is legal, but no doctor will do one because it would be against their beliefs. That's as it should be. My brother is a doctor, and he won't even do amniocentesis because the primary reason for it is to find reasons to abort.

"No, you're asking the state not to get in the way of doctors and hospitals who are willing to comply with your wishes. I would be against any proposal to force doctors to assist a suicide, and I think Adams would too."

i don't believe in having more unenforceable laws on the books.

When you put your elderly relatives in a nursing home, and they have assets, it becomes the facility's goal to keep collecting that 8k a month for as long as possible regardless of the quality of life.
This is also a state issue and not a federal one.

For every person whose mind goes before their body, there are at least ten with a good mind, but a failing body.

A constitutional assisted suicide law, would never let you terminate elderly Alzheimer's patients anyway. They lack the ability to give consent, and a vote by the closest relatives would not meet any kind of valid legal test.

So disagreement is now grounds for wishing a painful death on people? Sorry, but there are lines you don't cross. I'm sorry about his dad, but I could not care less about Mr Scott Adams.

They lack the ability to give consent, and a vote by the closest relatives would not meet any kind of valid legal test. -- Isab at November 28, 2013 3:30 AM

Actually this has already been handled. Most hospitals have set up policies on how to handle patients that come in, usually via the ER, that are not conscious and are not expected to recover. Usually it is the spouse. If there is no spouse then the children. Then it goes to brothers and sisters and then parents. If there are multiple parties the hospital usually asks them to designate one of them as the "speaker" for the rest of the family.

There is a reason why the Terri Schiavo case went the way it did. And another reason why gay marriage should be allowed.

I have heard many stories over the years where an estranged brother or sister has come in during the last moments to insist on making the end-of-life decisions. Meanwhile they haven't talked for over five years before then.

"Actually this has already been handled"

Not in the case of actively ending someone's life. This is a distinction with a very real difference.

You can make all sorts of medical decisions for someone, including withdrawal of life support, but when you want to actively terminate, it is a different level of constitutional issue, and a decision by the next of kin, will not be legally sufficient especially if there is even one relative who disagrees, and I am telling you now, unless the person in question only has one relative, there will always be a split opinion.

In the Schiavo case, they withdrew life support, and she kept on breathing. The next fight was over withdrawing food and water.

"When you put your elderly relatives in a nursing home, and they have assets, it becomes the facility's goal to keep collecting that 8k a month for as long as possible regardless of the quality of life. "

As a nurse who works in long term care, that is such an insult. I deal with patients and families in all stages at the end of life and NEVER and I mean EVER has money for the facility come up. What does the patient want, and if the patient can no longer decide, what does the family want. How to treat the patient with respect at what ever stage of life he or she is in, to care with compassion. Is it fair? heck no. I have seen people die slowly, even my own family members. But I don't think it is right to take them behind the barn and shoot them, so why should I expect my doctor to do it? A little less graphic, but basically the same thing, ending someones life. I do everything I can to keep that person comfortable, not press for life saving measures, but it is NOT my decision when someone dies.

You can make all sorts of medical decisions for someone, including withdrawal of life support, but when you want to actively terminate, it is a different level of constitutional issue, and a decision by the next of kin, will not be legally sufficient especially if there is even one relative who disagrees, and I am telling you now, unless the person in question only has one relative, there will always be a split opinion. -- Isab at November 28, 2013 8:35 AM

I know of a situation where the semi-estranged father of four children was living in south Florida, the son was in the panhandle and the other kids were in Ohio. The kids elected the son as the POA. The 10 plus year missing aunt/sister was told of her brothers aneurysm. The aunt showed up and was trying to interject in the situation. The hospital respected the wishes of the son and banned the aunt from the premises. They pulled life support.

As far as the Schiavo case -- having to withdraw food and water to end it I still consider cruel. Would you do that to a dog or cat? Could you be accused of animal cruelty? Then why isn't cruel to do to a human no matter how incapacitated?

Pets, not being able to speak, are protected by us. Remember Amy's dear Lucy? Why can't we do the same for aunt Lucy?

So disagreement is now grounds for wishing a painful death on people?

No, voting for laws which force a painful death on people is grounds for wishing those people to suffer what they forced on others

No, their so-called morals or conscience are simply wishes. By their voting against assisted suicide they have imposed their wishes on another person, they took his choice away when it had no effect on them whatsoever.

We elect legislators to vote their consciences and to defend the interests of their constituents. Collectively, we expect them to come to a compromise that works. We impose Constitutional limits to ensure the majority does not trample the rights of the minority.

If we wanted them to vote with the majority every time, we'd just have a national plebiscite and not a Congress.

And before you say what a great idea a national plebiscite is, let me refer you to California where all manner of ill-conceived and poorly thought out laws get passed by popular referendum - then endlessly litigated in court.

In a country with as many diverse viewpoints as this one has, imposing a collective morality on the populace is what a legislature does when making the laws by which citizens must live ... by default.

I feel for Mr. Adams and for his father. My mother-in-law spent years taking care of her mother with Alzheimers, so I had a front-row seat to the heartache and challenge that imposes.

But we risk venturing into dangerous and uncharted territory when we legalize assisted suicide. And those still raw from watching a loved one suffer are not always the best guides.

Pets, not being able to speak, are protected by us. Remember Amy's dear Lucy? Why can't we do the same for aunt Lucy?

Posted by: Jim P. at November 28, 2013 11:23 AM

Of course we can, it has worked well in any number of totalitarian dictatorships, But the reason, I don't want to see it here is because of mission creep, which was a historical reality. First it is the terminally ill, and then soon, it is people that don't have "quality of life". The next group targeted is the unproductive, or inconvenient.

"Life, unworthy of life". Sound familiar?

Oh and in your anecdotal situation with the guy with the aneurism, Withdrawing life support is still contentious. You can bar a distant aunt from the hospital. A close relative who objects is a different matter, and you still don't want to admit that actively killing someone is a totally different level of responsibility from merely withdrawing life support.

No doctor or hospital is going to open themselves up to the kind of litigation they would face for actively killing comatose or terminal patients.

I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Scott Adams has been estranged from his father a/o that there is some overriding reason that he can't affect this situation.

Wanting to see millions of people suffer and die because you can't euthanize your father is deranged. There's probably some history here that he's not revealing.

"Life, unworthy of life". Sound familiar? -- Isab at November 28, 2013 1:33 PM

Actually I hadn't.

But somehow we are jumping from the children and/or family members desiring to end the life of a totally incapacitated member of their family to the National Socialist movement that caused the Holocaust.

As it stands now the only solution is to withdraw food and water from the person that is in essentially a vegetative state.

There are other ways that are not painful or drawn out. As it stands now, the politicians have voted against even letting family members do it directly.

Yes, there will be abuses. But that exists in any system. I would rather have my sister inject me with an overdose of morphine and get my house, car and whatever funds exist rather than being kept in a facility when I don't even know what is going on.

Do you want to be kept alive for no reason Isab?

Do you want to be kept alive for no reason Isab?

Posted by: Jim P. at November 28, 2013 7:42 PM

No, But I don't worry much about what happens to me when I am brain dead or so incapacitated that I don't recognize my family. I will be beyond caring.

My father in law, had terminal cancer last spring. He stopped eating when he could no longer digest his food, and checked into a hospice when he knew he was too weak to care for himself. He was gone within a week.

I have a living will, and my children are not irrational clingers. And neither is my husband. They will do what is within the law when the time comes.
I have made my wishes clear, but a lot of people don't. Their relatives should never have the responsibility of deciding to proactively kill them. I don't want that responsibility, and it would be unfair of me to put the burden of that sort of choice on my loved ones.

I have made my wishes clear, but a lot of people don't. Their relatives should never have the responsibility of deciding to proactively kill them. I don't want that responsibility, and it would be unfair of me to put the burden of that sort of choice on my loved ones. -- Isab at November 28, 2013 8:57 PM

I admit I am at fault for not getting a living will. But I have talked to my sister about it.

But your idea of "Their relatives should never have the responsibility of deciding to proactively kill them. is currently precluded by law. Or in other words "YOU CAN'T DO IT" quickly with a simple, legal, overdose of a drug.

You can have them withdraw food and water support. And then you get a corpse that is not suitable for an open casket burial.

But that is your viewpoint. I can appreciate it, but you 63 year aunt that weighs 200 pounds is going to take a while to waste away.

"I hate your fucking guts and I would like you to die a long, horrible death. I would be happy to kill you personally and watch you bleed out."

Scott Adams, Internet Tough Guy

Okay, here's a hard question: just how much federal money should you be allowed to command to support a loved one who's suffering?

No one has really answered Radwaste's question.

My thought is that after another decade or two of government borrowing, which is the only way all this can be paid for, the question becomes moot.

People my age and younger will most likely have to off ourselves when we get to that point.

"Okay, here's a hard question: just how much federal money should you be allowed to command to support a loved one who's suffering?"

A very good question but just as relevant is how often this is actually an issue. I am almost 50 and have yet to have had a relative linger for years or even months. I am not saying it never happens. Just that maybe it isn't that common and in the long run the cost isn't that exorbitant for most and that it isn't a huge burden on the state.

"I admit I am at fault for not getting a living will. But I have talked to my sister about it."

Is that enough, Jim? Is your Sister going to make your end of life decisions? Maybe you should get that living will thing taken care of? Or maybe this really isn't that important to you?