Physician Assisted Suicide

I guess if they want to pay the doctor to truck out to the person's home. Then again, the Netherlands is a fairly tiny place compared to the US.

I believe it was initially conceived as a sort of MacGuffin, to get people to discuss the Right to Die.

Oh, I see what you mean by "supervised."

You don't insist that people are prohibited from owning Rat Poison in their homes, now are you? There's plenty of ways of poisoning yourself PAINFULLY. So why not a way of poisoning one's self reliably and relatively painlessly?

I prefer that it's done in a hospital, so as to minimize the "fuck up" probability.

Seems like needless bureaucracy to me!

Well, there's all kinds of risks with letting them do it at home, from botching it to having someone else accidentally ingest it, such as a child or pet.

I'd rather have a doctor present for it.

Oh very well

I can't see a pharmacy stocking suicide pills, there's no opportunity for repeat purchases.

Besides, there's the cleaning products isle.

Big Pharma! \*shakesfist\*

You know I keep reading this a psychic assisted suicide.

In my town, there are laws against owning Rat Poison.

Then how do you kill rats?

Exterminators, who likely got said law put in place in conjunction, I imagine, with some case of somebody killing somebody else by rat poison.

~shrug~

I wouldn't want to commit suicide with poison anyhow. Painful and inefficient.

Well, not that kind of poison anyway <shudders>

There's a story behind that, but that would derail the thread. Suffice to say that you're expected to hire someone to put out poison containers that are designed to not be accessible by anyone but the exterminator.

On the question of physicians putting pressure on people to kill themselves, I don't think that would be as much a problem as some suspect. Doctors don't really pressure people today anyway. They present the facts of your condition, give their recommendation, and tell you the likely result of treatment vs. no treatment.

Of course, there are exceptions, and doctors can try to dissuade you against a course of action they know or believe to be too risky. They do that in part because doctors need to be sure that the patient has been fully informed of the risks and is making their decision based on full understanding of the facts. Doctors also can and do refuse to give treatment that they believe is not appropriate.

So, with PAS, the patient could ask for suicide. The doctor could simply say, "No, I do not agree that you are a viable candidate and will not assist you." I highly doubt that a doctor would visit a patient every day and say, "Are you sure you want to go on living? After all, the Brewers didn't make it to the World Series. What more do you have to live for? I have the shot right here."

You're more likely to see medical staff "miss" a Living Will or a DNR than have them try and convince you to self-destruct.