Is Tim Worstall weird?
Thursday, October 01, 2009
I realise that I’m weird about this.
Tim Worstall articulates my concern about this case very well. That doctors should let a depressed woman die for fear of being struck off if they contradicted her "living will" is appalling. A physically healthy 26 year old who chooses to die is, by definition, unfit to make a rational decision to do so.
If Tim is weird about this, so am I. This young woman was perfectly able to administer the fatal poison herself. She summoned an ambulance and put others in this horrible moral dilemma only because "she did not want to die alone and in pain."
So which is it? Was she was mentally-ill and legally-incapable of making her choices or was she a selfish coward?
I really find that most bizarre. Not only the woman's actions of course but the medical personnels' too.
I could be wrong, but I would think that here they would do everything to try to save her and argue later if she was in her right mind about the living will. After all she was depressed. No doubt clinically. Was she capable of making that decision when she wrote it?
However it was a terrible thing to put on the shoulders of those people. One wonders if she really wanted them to save her or did she just crave attention for her last moments.
Posted by: JMB | Sunday, October 04, 2009 at 08:36 PM
A rational suicide should have the courage to die alone. Placing the medical staff in this ethical dilemma and subjecting them to the horror of watching a healthy woman die needlessly was either evidence of her lack of legal capacity to decide to die or simply evil.
If she was worthy of sympathy, she should have been saved. To argue she was making a rational choice is to say she is unworthy of sympathy. If so, expressions of sadness are misplaced because her death is no loss.
Posted by: Tom | Sunday, October 04, 2009 at 10:47 AM
It is often a selfish act to kill yourself. They know people will miss them, they know someone will have to clear up any mess they leave. At least she didn't jump under a train. Maybe sometimes it is selfish to hold on to someone who wants to go too.
I don't think any of us would want to die alone and in pain.
I would dispute that she was unfit to make a rational decision. I find it difficult to think what her reasons might have been, clearly she thought she had reasons. We don't know what her reasons were really.
It seems a sad and terrible waste of life to me.
Posted by: Moggsy | Thursday, October 01, 2009 at 05:50 PM
She's a selfish coward in some ways, but I utterly dispute this proposition:
A physically healthy 26 year old who chooses to die is, by definition, unfit to make a rational decision to do so.
As Doug Stanhope said, "life just isn't for everyone"
Posted by: Al Jahom | Thursday, October 01, 2009 at 05:11 PM