Minnesota State Senator Chris Eaton wants to start a discussion (h/t MPR Radio), leading to a bill, on the subject of Right to Die:
“My mom used to beg us to take her to the vet because they would treat her better than what she was being treated, the amount of pain she was in and the lack of quality of life,” Eaton said. “You know it’s, people reach the point where they’ve had enough.”
Is pain a good enough excuse to commit suicide? Medically speaking, we are not very good at treating pain, despite the efforts of many fine institutes, such as MAPS; we simply do not know enough about all the causes. For example, neuropathy (damage or disease affecting nerves) has several causes, and it can be idiopathic, i.e., no known cause. My mother had a neuropathy which manifested as severe pain in her rectum, brought about by a bout of viral meningitis where the germ involved was the shingles virus. She endured the pain, multiple treatment types ranging from standard drugs to experimental surgeries to acupuncture and hypnosis: none of them worked over the long term. She’d occasionally get a little relief from this or that, but in the end, after enduring fourteen years of agony, she passed away.
Mom never talked about suicide with me. As long as Dad was around, she was determined to be there; and, I suspect, suicide was not really thinkable for her. But without Dad, she may have chosen it since there did not seem to be any workable approach. She didn’t have a quality of life, just hope that gradually faded over the years.
I don’t know if the pain had become an illness in itself, as is noted in this article from WebMD. In her case, it was so hard to tell as she developed a host of other problems over the years, no doubt from the inactivity caused by the pain and spinal problems she developed during treatment for the meningitis.
Back to the Right to Die issue, there are concerns about individuals not fitting the expected profile of the acceptable users of such a program. This may indeed be happening in Oregon, where the Death With Dignity Act has been in effect for 16 years. NewScientist (28 February 2015) covers the issue here (paywall):
Diane Coleman, head of advocacy group Not Dead Yet, which opposes assisted suicide, says the Oregon Health Authority’s annual reports on the practice show the law there isn’t working as intended. She points to the motives people gave for choosing this option. According to the latest figures, released on 12 February, only a third of people who took a prescribed lethal dose of medication in 2014 cited pain or fear of pain as one of the reasons for doing so.
Supporters of assisted suicide often cite pain as a primary reason why people should have the legal right to die. But the state’s report showed that people’s concerns tended toward loss of autonomy (91 per cent), loss of dignity (71 per cent) or being a burden on their family (40 per cent). Coleman is particularly concerned that people are choosing assisted suicide because they feel they are a burden. “To me that feels more like a duty to die than a choice to die,” she says.
Unlike some issues, this is certainly an issue where all sides have a point, and if I think about it, it tends to tear at me. Shouldn’t adults be able to make decisions about end of life? But if one has a mental illness, particularly a treatable illness, then they may make a decision which they might not otherwise make. Yet again, if they have been given a terminal prognosis, like Brittany Maynard, then why not permit them to terminate a life when it’s clearly become untenable and has no hope (outside of unpredictable spontaneous remissions)?
The bill under development by Senator Eaton is targeted for introduction at the next legislative session, not the current session.
