(April 9, 2015 at 4:58 pm)abaris Wrote:

(April 9, 2015 at 4:51 pm)Minimalist Wrote: I generally agree that people should have control over their own bodies.

Yeah, they should. But there's a very fine line to walk. We have that unspeakable past where Hitler used the concept of Euthanasia to get rid of mentally ill persons as well as what was called asocial elements.

The checks and balances for Euthanasia have to be tremendous so that no politician or lobbyist can lay their dirty hands on it. I guess for some health insurers it could be a wet dream come true if allowed ot run unchecked.

That is not an apt comparison.  There is a significant difference between someone having control over his or her own body, and someone else deciding to kill the person.  In fact, those are complete opposites.

(April 9, 2015 at 11:28 pm)Pyrrho Wrote:

(April 9, 2015 at 4:58 pm)abaris Wrote: Yeah, they should. But there's a very fine line to walk. We have that unspeakable past where Hitler used the concept of Euthanasia to get rid of mentally ill persons as well as what was called asocial elements.

The checks and balances for Euthanasia have to be tremendous so that no politician or lobbyist can lay their dirty hands on it. I guess for some health insurers it could be a wet dream come true if allowed ot run unchecked.

That is not an apt comparison.  There is a significant difference between someone having control over his or her own body, and someone else deciding to kill the person.  In fact, those are complete opposites.

Indeed, that is one of the critical factors - the sound mind and resolute determination of the individual. What Hitler employed was not euthanasia. It was 'mass fucking murder'.

What about suicide if you have no illness, mental or physical?

The situations aren't exactly the same, of course, but I think the point about the "fine line" still stands, inasmuch as it seems a delicate task to create a legal and practical framework sufficiently robust to provide the rights we want it to but secure enough to resist outside coercive influence.

(April 9, 2015 at 11:43 pm)KUSA Wrote: What about suicide if you have no illness, mental or physical?

Whose life is it?  I think the answer to that question is the same as who should get to decide.  People who want to decide for someone else deserve to have someone else decide for them whether they live or die.

(April 9, 2015 at 11:43 pm)KUSA Wrote: What about suicide if you have no illness, mental or physical?

Choice is what this is all about.  I can think of situations where people without an illness might commit suicide.





They were not drunk, drugged or crazy.

(April 10, 2015 at 12:58 am)Minimalist Wrote:

(April 9, 2015 at 11:43 pm)KUSA Wrote: What about suicide if you have no illness, mental or physical?

Choice is what this is all about.  I can think of situations where people without an illness might commit suicide.





They were not drunk, drugged or crazy.

Fanatical devotion to a nation, cause or cult can be considered a type of mental illness, can it not?

(April 10, 2015 at 1:10 am)Iroscato Wrote:

(April 10, 2015 at 12:58 am)Minimalist Wrote: Choice is what this is all about.  I can think of situations where people without an illness might commit suicide.





They were not drunk, drugged or crazy.

Fanatical devotion to a nation, cause or cult can be considered a type of mental illness, can it not?

That depends on how stretchy your definitions are.

And what of someone who sacrifices their own life for a stranger? That sort of thing happens outside the context of religion or the military fraternity. 

The guy who died in 1982 in the Potomac air crash swimming to save a total stranger -- was that suicide? Or was that altruism?

And even inside the context of military teamwork: the chaplain on the USS Houston gave up his place on a life raft after his ship was sunk, saying to his shipmates "I'm an old guy, you have the rest of your life ahead of you." Was that suicide?

My own opinion is that there is no reason for government to intrude so closely upon the lives of citizens that it should dictate the manner of their deaths. Such a moment is as personal a moment as someone can experience. Exactly what business does the government have dictating when someone may or may not die?

In 1945 Japanese pilots were flying poorly-maintained, obsolete planes with little training and even less air time.  They were opposed by armadas of modern F6F Hellcats and F4U Corsairs with superbly trained pilots who were being churned out by aviation schools in the US and which were radar-controlled to their targets.  In that sense, it did not matter if you were a kamikaze or not.  Virtually every mission was a suicide mission.  They knew their mission was hopeless.  Their odds of hitting an American ship with a torpedo or an aerial bomb were slim.  They were doing what they could secure in the knowledge that they were going to die anyway.

I've lost 40 friends and acquaintances to HIV since 1986.

2 committed suicide after their first serious bout of opportunistic infections, one declined appropriate treatment for a specific opportunistic condition he developed, while allowing treatment for another. (yeah, 12 years later, and I haven't figured that one out yet)

And then there was at least one we don't know what happened.


Anyhow, after all that, I just don't fucking know.