Petrarchive – canadian euthanasia

(thanks for the archive link, btw)
Bauman predicted this somehow.
Globalisation is achieved, there is no where anymore to throw society's unwanted rubbish (I mean actual garbage, pollution, and inapt people). Before you could dump unwanted stuff and people in the colonies, then in the third world. We now are living in a closed system. Our rich societies must devise ways to get rid of the unwanted, since the cost of keeping it inside is rising. Hence euthanasia.
A good review from lit.salon that made me want to read another book on the topic (written by of one of the USA supreme court juge) https://www.lit.salon/reviews/OL13667436W/bJ89qo0DmzDo3XsKRPK9/A-comfort-read-for-the-holiday-season

> The law currently states that any sign of refusal “must be respected”; at the same time, if the clinician determines that expressions of resistance are “behavioural symptoms” of a patient’s illness, and not necessarily an actual objection to receiving MAID, the euthanasia can continue anyway.

Like organ donation, a good idea in theory but not one I'm willing to entrust to the current bureaucratic structure

>>7231
Agreed, when MAID, etc first became a mainstream topic (to me, anyway, like 5-10 years ago), I felt like it was should obviously be permitted. I mean, if I was a terminal cancer patient, in the throes of an agonizing death, I would more than likely want to get put down. Going to die anyway.

But, since we are not all model terminal patients (lucid, in pain, imminent death, etc), the obvious complications rerouted the whole idea and spawned state sanctioned class cullings.

The most obvious reason, to me now, to oppose MAID is that suicide is virtually always possible (even in the hospital) and putting the syringe in someone else's hands, especially when that someone else is a nameless, faceless bureaucrat, will inevitably lead to its corruption and hijacking of aims (dignity or easing of pain turns to expediency).

Euthanasia would be justifiable in a genuinely socialist state in which the objectives of the government were aligned with the welfare of the populace. Under capitalism, however, the perverse incentive to kill off unproductive citizens makes it extremely risky.

I feel like this is a return to Roman and Greek morality in a way. Control what you can even unto death.

The colon cancer dude annoys me. I 100% think he was taking the coward's way out. I once attended a medical ethics lecture on an elderly woman with colon cancer. She initially refused treatment for what was a curable cancer, stating that she was willing to accept a painful death. After we debated the issue, it was revealed that the woman had a history of depression. After some electroshock (contrary to what you've seen in media, electroshock is absolutely helpful to some patients) she was mentally well enough that she pursued surgery and was successfully treated.

I think that not probing someone that young is a dereliction of duty. There absolutely needs to be some assessment of mental health before a decision can be made regarding euthanasia.

>>7348 fantastic example of why chronic illness itself is not a definitive reason for euthanasia. concurrent conditions and complications are a major part of the picture, and i find this to be reflective of a medical culture obsessed with treating symptoms rather than a more holistic approach to medicine. there are far too many examples that don't involve euthanasia of medical practitioners harming the patient further through a tunnel vision on the most direct problems instead of investigating the full story. honestly this is pretty common in lots of fields: IT, economics, journalism, yadda yadda

It's called managerialism and it's the ideology of modern states in whatever form they take.
You would be frankly shocked at how many people not even two weeks from death do stupid things like cease taking pain relief because it causes constipation (rather than managing it with laxatives), then find they can't 'cope' with the pain so opt for euthanasia. Of course you want to be put down, you are LARPing as a peasant from the 1500s in a pre-analgesia world. You just need Miralax and to get a grip. Unfortunately, people become more, rather than less, self-indulgent when dying: you would think they attain some clarity over what really matters, but inevitably the very worst aspects of their personalities are accentuated. This is compounded by their family, who likely have the same issues.

>>7350
It is pushed by "patient advocates" and related fuckwits, not doctors.
Most doctors find it disreputable.
Doctors need to be in control again, not administrators, bureaucrats, activists or--sorry to say--patients.

>>7354
>Doctors need to be in control again
Lol no
>Doctor-inflicted pain and infirmity have always been a part of medical practice. Professional callousness, negligence, and sheer incompetence are age-old forms of malpractice. With the transformation of the doctor from an artisan exercising a skill on personally known individuals into a technician applying scientific rules to classes of patients, malpractice acquired an anonymous, almost respectable status. What had formerly been considered an abuse of confidence and a moral fault can now be rationalized into the occasional breakdown of equipment and operators. In a complex technological hospital, negligence becomes "random human error" or "system breakdown," callousness becomes "scientific detachment," and incompetence becomes "a lack of specialized equipment." The depersonalization of diagnosis and therapy has changed malpractice from an ethical into a technical problem.
Illich https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1732343/

>>7354
>muh credential

Doctors are not some priestly caste of higher intelligence and wisdom. The older generations certainly were; I met a doctor in his 80s who, for the first time in my life, gave me the impression that he is someone with profound knowledge and who could be trusted with even the most trivial bit of advice towards anyone.

But you? You are an administrative cog and nothing more, especially if you are American, which the tone of your comment implies. Anyone with a chronic condition has been through the song and dance of knowing more about their own condition than the doctor they are visiting-- and having to perform, literally, the right moves to get the medicine they need, explaining to the "specialist" details about their sickness that the doctor did not know previously. You are nothing more than a tool to maneuver around the insurance-medical complex, benign and superficial at best, and actively harmful at worst. Yeah, I trust you over my own intellect after a 5-minute visit in which you spend 4:30 tapping away at your laptop and the other 30 seconds reading the thermometer and blood pump the fat Latina "nurse" reads to you. Such genius!

Are you that one doc who's always bitching about his patients and fellow nurses on r/redscarepod, by the way? I don't blame you for your worldview in the least considering the system you inhabit and the people you must deal with every day. If I had to deal with the American populace I would also be an authoritarian over their health issues, but I am a free person, and put my own interests over yours.

>>7359
Illich argued that childbirth shouldn't be 'medicalized', and if his advice were followed, the consequences in terms of lost mothers and babies would be enormous. I am not particularly interested in what he thinks.
What I have said is unfortunately true: repeated polls (but also the general vibes) tell me that euthanasia is a project of neurotic old people and women--the same sort of people who get chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, long COVID and so on, you know the sort--who want to be 'in control' of their lives, uncomprehending that even when they were healthy they weren't in control of their lives, because they are mentally ill and often have personality disorders.
If doctors wrenched control from administrator types, sociologist types, 'patient advocates', lawyers, and so on, many many things would change, I can tell you that, but specifically, there would be no euthanasia. I hear doctors who get involved in euthanasia being shunned and being called 'butcher' and so on.
Illich (although he was a priest) would probably say something like: this dislike of euthanasia on doctors' part shows their desire to retain control, etc, but it's just that there aren't really any actual cases where pain can't be controlled by analgesia. Euthanasia isn't even needed on its own terms, which is avoiding an agonizing death. It's just like suicide and it's done for all the normal reasons suicide is done: emotional problems, feelings of burdensomeness, narcissistic emptiness, etc.

>7365
What is your chronic illness? Is it POTS, EDS, CFS, or suchlike?
If you know better than doctors, don't see them, save yourself the effort.

>>7366
>What is your chronic illness? Is it POTS, EDS, CFS, or suchlike?

I have a real condition, but I do appreciate you being butthurt by this affront to your authority. Is that specific phrasing "chronic illness" that led you to believe I have one of those acronym diseases? In any event, I have never thought of them as truly fake. Just by looking at their bodies and overall lowered rate of physical verve in these women who claim POTS or whatever, you can clearly tell they are "sick". It doesn't matter what ill-informed name they try to put onto it, or if it isn't an ""actual disease""; they look like crap, they can't move, they are slow in thinking and wit -- yes, there is something un-well about that. So these women are not quite faking that unwellness, they are reporting accurately what they feel. The inaccuracy comes with describing and codifying it to others, and then facing that huge leviathan of medical bureaucracy. Everyone is wrong, from their friends online and off who build up their fandom world to the execs who can construct an economy out of their issues. Everything in the American environment drags people down, physically, medically, and at some point this crosses into "disease" territory by particularly, let's say, sensitive groups more quickly than others. There is a general un-wellness.

>If you know better than doctors, don't see them, save yourself the effort.

You should know this already -- you cannot access modern medicine beyond buying multivitamins without interfacing with the industrial-bureaucratic medical complex. If I wanted a blood test or scan or if I wanted to buy medicine, if I wanted to be seen by a specialist, I must go to a doctor first[1]. This is why medical tourism from the US (and Canada and the UK etc) to Thailand, Mexico, and Turkey is so common: not just because it's cheaper, but that it's an option in the first place. In any event, I do not visit doctors very much these days, as you have guessed, because I have already managed to get my life under control (and I have returned from my time in the US), but it did not come easy from you and your cohort.


[1]You would be tickled to know, probably, that this is already well underway in the naturopathic/homeopathic spheres as well, as there are a lot of supplements and medicine you cannot buy directly. Websites will purport to sell the items but only allow it from "registered licensed user accounts". Medical bureaucracy is such an intriguing, horrid beast.

>>7394
>Just by looking at their bodies and overall lowered rate of physical verve in these women who claim POTS or whatever, you can clearly tell they are "sick". It doesn't matter what ill-informed name they try to put onto it, or if it isn't an ""actual disease""; they look like crap, they can't move, they are slow in thinking and wit -- yes, there is something un-well about that.

That’s just called ‘obesity’.

>>7460
I understand that, the point here is terminological/ontological -- obesity is an "actual disease" recognized by professionals, while the acronym nu-diseases aren't, and are routinely mocked by medical professionals and skeptics alike. What I am claiming is that the diseases as described by those acronyms is "true" in that it is a series of experiences and symptoms that these people are accurately reporting when they ascertain their daily life.

So, why do these people, again, often women, claim these acronym diseases instead of just simply describing themselves as "obese"? They do not get any material gain out of it, as the penetration of these conditions into the medical bureaucracy such as insurance isn't very deep. They have a self-reinforcing community online but so does everything else. The answer that they are vain and wish to hide their obesity as an unsightly medical condition behind a more educated-sounding phrasing of medical terminology only covers part of what's going on here.

There is obviously some interplay between subjective experience and objective institutional rule-making. Maybe this has been true in one way or another since the dawn of civilization and human medicine and healing practices. But repeating back to me that it's "just obesity" is trying to one-up me for no particular gain other than to throw your two cents into the bucket, without adding any new information, and effectively shutting down the topic from any further analysis. It is exactly the kind of mind-numbing "gotcha" I have come to dearly despise from the internet.

>>7464
They aren’t vain. They’re just trying to portray themselves as tragic maidens with a mysterious illness because it lets them avoid the realisation that they’re just fat and neurotic and that others expect them to change. That’s despite the fact that neuroticism and a proneness to overeating are also traits that are not entirely within an individual’s control, but no one gets sympathy for that.
POTS, CFS, and recently “EDS” types are usually very childish and expect others to care for them, choosing the sick role allows them to never develop into complete adults.

>>7466
I just think it's more interesting to examine the phenomenon from a wider phenomenological lens instead of beating the same dead horse about how Le Dumb Wammen have bad personality traits or whatever

>>7464
>They do not get any material gain out of it,
Of course they do. They get "secondary profits", one of them you've named: community. You can add identity. But mainly, it's a socially acceptable way to be weak in a society that demands efficiency. It's hipsters on foodstamps all over again. We can't accept UBI, but we rage and accept hipsters on foodstamps. Same here : we can't accept that weakness, so we dress it up and we rage about it, but we let it be.
>>7468 is right, it is a sociological phenomenon, and traditional misogyny disguised as psychology won't cut it, >>7466.
This article discusses this very issue at length:https://thepointmag.com/examined-life/among-the-post-feminists/
>Let us examine a trick I pull each time I board an airplane. How I pretend to struggle with my suitcase in the aisle when I’ve already picked out the man who will lift it for me. We’ve already made eye contact, he and I, the guy in the blue sweatshirt. His body tenses in advance of exertion; he even shifts his briefcase from his lap. Still we go through the pantomime, of hoisting my suitcase high in the air, of grunting and flailing, until he stands to save me. Neither of us is allowed to assume a woman is weak; I must perform my weakness as some kind of personal defect and then sit for ten hours with a pain in my side. Yet I am of average height and strength, I have no physical defects, only emotional ones. The overhead bin is too tall for most women by design.
>Some women have found a way to abandon such pretexts without being bad feminists at all.
>A vast number of my friends are on sick leave. They introduce themselves with their diagnoses first. They’re former girlbosses, good capitalists, whose only excuse not to work had for years been the personal day. Many of their conditions are real, testable, medical in the classic sense. Others fall somewhere on a spectrum of factual to factitious, where rare becomes common, the enlightened self-diagnosed, and diagnoses of exclusion, nearly impossible to prove, are treated like bulletproof license to adopt a new label
I'd add that the suitcase test is pretty good one to see where people (because it's not only women, although they are the majority here) fall on this spectrum of admitting one's weakness to the world.

>Before you could dump unwanted stuff and people in the colonies
Always knew I was meant to be a pukka sahib

>>7230
On the one hand, putting down depressed people who change their minds seems like a bad idea. On the other hand, if I were a demented, bed-ridden invalid, I would like you to go ahead with putting me down, even if "I" decide I don't want it anymore

>>7551
Which "you" has the right of way? It's always the current one. Present beats past and future, always, except in the case of a testament, and only because there is a certainty that there won't be any present you anymore.
There are too many contradictions in one human life. If you take away the precedence of the present as the place of decision, the past or the future can be made to mean anything. That is the same reasoning used by medical doctors refusing vasectomies (future you might want children), or by overbearing parents in sunk cost fallacy (but you worked so hard to learn violin, you used to love it, keep at it, I am sure you will recover your love for it).