Palliative Care and Me

Quote: kenarman

There were 10,064 assisted suicides in Canada in 2021 and they are increasing every year since being legalized in 2016. I would expect at least some of the cases you described were AS. I believe any adult has the right to have an AS if he no longer has the mental and/or physical strength to carry on with living.

A dirty little secret that I expect that SOOPOO can confirm is that when patients are truly at the end of life and were being given morphine to "make them comfortable" that the amount of morphine they were being given was slowly being increased to shorten their time in what is little more than a vegetative state. I also don't have any problem with that process. My Mom, Dad and Mother-in-law all had that happen at the end of life and I spent several days with each of them during the process even though they were non-responsive.

the controversial aspect of palliative care involves "palliative sedation" ... you can google "palliative sedation controversy" and get a bunch of stuff. What they mean is really knocking them out with morphine, making them unconscious. This can really be what you want if the pain is bad enough, I guess, but there is controversy.

some examples,

"Continuous deep sedation is controversial because it ends a person's 'biographical life' (the ability to interact meaningfully with other people) and shortens 'biological life'. Ethically, continuous deep sedation is an exceptional last resort measure.Jan 27, 2019"

"Palliative sedation (PS), the medical act of decreasing a patient's awareness to relieve otherwise intractable suffering, is considered by some commentators to be controversial because of its consequences on residual survival and/or quality of life, and to be inappropriate for treating pure existential suffering."

you can find the links by googling the words 'palliative sedation controversy' [I'm being lazy]

Generally it's hard to find someone who doesn't finally side with using PS in these articles. I am not an advocate of keeping people alive by artificial means. By knocking them off with PS , well, that's another thing. I am quite sure the people doing this would be quite offended by my statement, btw.

My concern is why I am noticing so much fast dispatch of somewhat 'able' people just prior ... maybe it is in fact small sample size error. You guys can start paying attention and tell me what you are noticing.