I 100% want a right to suicide if I need it. But I’m extremely wary of the consequences of such a right. I suspect the best course of action is to keep the “official” rules saying “automatically commit people who attempt to kill themselves”, but give some behind-the-scenes leeway to doctors who help patients who really need it.
Your proposed policy has some significant problems in practice, since doctors are not automatically good at being unbiased judges of who ‘really needs’ to be allowed to commit suicide vs. who should be given other kinds of support. That kind of policy is also very hard to implement without giving doctors enough leeway to actively or passively kill people who actively do not want to die—often people who are disabled or very old, and who society says ‘should’ want to die, but who in practice do not.
This is, in fact, an actual issue in society right now: I actually know someone who has narrowly avoided being killed more than once because of it.
She doesn’t blog about the personal instances often, but a brief account of one is in the 7th paragraph here and another mention is in the 6th paragraph here. Searching her blog for the word murder brings up entries about the general phenomenon by medical caregivers and parents.
I’ve been thinking about this, in the context of having worked in a nursing home for four years. I came to two conclusions: One, her experiences don’t actually surprise me all that much; two, it seems quite reasonable to me to estimate that there were probably between one and three murders or attempted murders (using a definition that includes intentional negligence but does not include legally-actionable accidents) per year in the 200-some-bed facility where I worked—and the place where I worked was not actually bad as nursing homes go.
Institutions suck in general, and it seems to me that there might be some low-hanging fruit to be picked in terms of figuring out what it is about them that tends to make peoples’ moral systems break down. (And I’m speaking from experience there, too. :( )
I 100% want a right to suicide if I need it. But I’m extremely wary of the consequences of such a right. I suspect the best course of action is to keep the “official” rules saying “automatically commit people who attempt to kill themselves”, but give some behind-the-scenes leeway to doctors who help patients who really need it.
Your proposed policy has some significant problems in practice, since doctors are not automatically good at being unbiased judges of who ‘really needs’ to be allowed to commit suicide vs. who should be given other kinds of support. That kind of policy is also very hard to implement without giving doctors enough leeway to actively or passively kill people who actively do not want to die—often people who are disabled or very old, and who society says ‘should’ want to die, but who in practice do not.
This is, in fact, an actual issue in society right now: I actually know someone who has narrowly avoided being killed more than once because of it.
I’d like to know more.
She doesn’t blog about the personal instances often, but a brief account of one is in the 7th paragraph here and another mention is in the 6th paragraph here. Searching her blog for the word murder brings up entries about the general phenomenon by medical caregivers and parents.
Those incidents are scary. Particularly the one involving blackmail (we’ll keep doing the lethal thing unless you accede to our wishes elsewhere.)
How can you prevent that sort of thing without removing leeway and installing cameras in every room?
A’yup.
I’ve been thinking about this, in the context of having worked in a nursing home for four years. I came to two conclusions: One, her experiences don’t actually surprise me all that much; two, it seems quite reasonable to me to estimate that there were probably between one and three murders or attempted murders (using a definition that includes intentional negligence but does not include legally-actionable accidents) per year in the 200-some-bed facility where I worked—and the place where I worked was not actually bad as nursing homes go.
Institutions suck in general, and it seems to me that there might be some low-hanging fruit to be picked in terms of figuring out what it is about them that tends to make peoples’ moral systems break down. (And I’m speaking from experience there, too. :( )