Author: darren92341@gmail.com
Note: suicide intention can change over time.
Part I discusses assistance. Part II discusses suicide.
Assisting suicide is not murder. Otherwise if an intelligent person asks someone to get something from their own house, it would be stealing.
Legalization of assisted suicide does not lead down a slippery slope to legalizing murder, any more than suggesting that legalizing self-defence has led to legalizing involuntary murder. Or legalizing organ donation has led to involuntary organ donation. Or legalizing sex has led to rape. People would be in no more danger of being secretly killed than they are now, for example a totalitarian government or a family that:
Assisted suicide legalization does not gives rights for government killing, instead of rights to citizens, otherwise maternity wards should be abolished, because they are really rights for the government and doctors to deliver babies.
Euthanasia promoters that advocate genocide, cleansing of undesirables and so on, are not true euthanasia promoters. This is murder, not a "good death" in a holistic sense, as it is unpleasant to die against one's will.
Assisted suicide does not have to be motivated by cost containment, and a genuine lack of compassion. House building is motivated by profits, it does not mean it is illegal. Anyway, assisted suicide for profit or selfish reasons can remain illegal.
If assisted suicide is legal, it does not have to be an annoying option for everyone. Registering to never be allowed request assisted suicide can be done, or restricted based on a list of conditions.
Assisted suicide does not lead to genocide of minorities by stealth. The messages already being sent to out-groups by society is for them to kill themselves, regardless of whether assistance is legal. A disabled hopelessly-ill old uneducated acned burdensome mentally-ill hungry short smart thin atheist ethnically-different transgendered lesbian might be tempted to easy death rather than living with lack of care, poor accommodation or bullying. If the democratic system is so flawed that no democratic candidate is committed to minorities' causes, there is little evidence that minorities will not try to stand up for their rights in other ways. If this does not work then it is spectacularly evil for them to be doubly condemned, first by status and second by a life sentence. In any case, a person can register their DNA to not be allowed request assisted suicide, so they can have a life sentence if they wish.
Suicide prevention agencies can identify some suicidal individuals that they would not have otherwise, when they request suicide assistance. Assistance is sometimes needed otherwise some people are to be condemned to try to die with extraordinary difficulty. Most attempts at suicide are non-fatal. In the United States at the end of the twentieth century, for every 2 fatal suicide attempts there is another person that is permanently disabled: 19000 permanently disabled each year for 40000 fatal suicides, where disabled means permanently affected in their employment in some way.(2) Here is a list of the ways suicide is attempted:
There are no more important human experiences to worry about, than death to those who want it. Everything experienced in life is a consequence of the decision to consent to life.
Death ought not have to be a painful transition from life, or be painful as a test of seriousness, or as a fitting marker of the great changes that happen. Otherwise marriage, going into the witness box, betting large sums and so on, should be accompanied by a traditional sting from a scorpion.
Suicide by military means, such as gunshot by oneself, does not help create a culture of military ability rather than a country of weaklings. Otherwise abolish luxury consumer goods such as shoes, which protect against thorns.
Suicide as a romantic wondrous testing of whether it is time to go, not something planned and rational, could still be done not that it is to be promoted.
Assisted suicide is not a sugar-coat of killing self, just as shoes are not sugar-coat of walking with feet.
People would not absent-mindedly ask for their own assisted suicide. Restriction of assisted suicide to one location, means that people can just as absent-mindedly roll off a cliff.
Assisted suicide is more civilized, because it allows for a more advanced social structure for suicidal preference.
Assisted suicide is not dehumanizing, by using others as a means to an end. Shopping is not dehumanizing by using others to get food.
Creating the right conditions for assisted suicide may be complicated, but this is not a reason against assistance. Childbirth facilities are also complicated, yet it is not suggested that they should not be available because they are too complicated.
The only legal change that is necessary for suicide assistance to be legal is that suicide assistance is only illegal if the motive for assistance is selfish, such as getting money from the suicide.
Two ways of many to implement this law are listed:
Suicide citzenship is based on the idea that Death can be considered as another country. A Death consulate is then allowed in a small geographic region that is difficult to get to.
A waiting period before travel to country Death is required for a minimum of five years, with a request to be made at least once each year during the waiting period. DNA testing, or other newer technology, is used for identification.
Suicide prevention agencies can use the Death consulate to identify suicidal individuals. Referrals can be made to psychiatric help, neuropsychologists, palliative care physicians or general practitioners. Death is preceded by a gradual, non-lethal sleeping dose to ensure no intentional changes at the final moment.
Nobody can use the Death consulate from absent-mindedness any more than they can roll off a cliff from absent-mindedness. It is not located in an area that is easy to get to. It is separated from hospitals.
Dying will be as painless as possible.
Donation of organs by the applicant is more possible.
The applicant cannot have previously registered to never be allowed to apply for assisted suicide. If the applicant has previously registered a list of conditions under which they may receive assisted suicide, then this list is verified.
Legal duties are checked, for example financial debt, guardianship, court judgments. In addition, police are informed about who is requesting suicide. They may wish to monitor the applicant during the final weeks before suicide, for example electronic tagging and movement restriction, to prevent murder by the applicant. Alternatively the Death consulate can also act as a hotel for the final weeks.
There is public witness of written desire to suicide.
Death is already available by the Biblically recommended method of being tied to an underwater object:
"But whoso shall cause one of these little ones that believe on me to stumble, it is profitable for him that a great millstone should be hanged about his neck, and [that] he should be sunk in the depth of the sea." (Malachi 18:6)
An analogue of this would be for a suicide centre to be available. It would have warnings on the outside like an electricity station. Anyone who entered would die pleasantly and without exception. They would also have to bring a key from another electricity station and match it with the key at the second station.
Most suicidal people change their mind and few people are suicidal anyway. Countries that force everyone into 100 years of life, can have the lowest birth rate and suicide slowly by population depletion. Countries with life expectancy of 30 years, or low life expectancy such as before the twentieth century, can have booming birth rates. A long life sentence is not necessary for a booming population.
Duty can still be done by suicides, for example "win win" by helping other people (not necessarily in help to die) for years before killing self. Everyone wins.
Cost to government of suicide is paid for, for example the food that the suicide eats and the transport they consume in childhood are generally paid by the suicide's parents, while raising the suicide. Costs to government such as road building may be considered from a pay-per-use perspective, for example the suicide is not driving cars when they are dead. The education that is free in some countries is hardly a valid reason to make someone into an economic slave for 50 years. Police investigation costs, emergency hospital services and rehabilitation of suicide attempt injuries are partly due to suicide's illegality in the first place. Many suicidal people have serious health problems that are expensive to fix, not that this is a reason they should automatically be given a right to suicide!
The ethics codes listed below are for completeness not because they are to be promoted. They list approval for right to die assuming adequate safeguards against other concerns such as murder, abandonment, crime:
Suicide does not shamefully reject others and everything others offer such as love, family, belonging, identity, learning, progress, creativity, leisure, pleasure and a belief in a future: not being in a tennis community is not illegal and tennis players do not consider it a shameful rejection of what they can offer by way of being a tennis partner.
Suicide is not always avoiding duty to be part of medical experiments: some physically diseased people can be encouraged to be part of medical experiments, but that does not mean it is always needed for all suicidal people.
Suicide is not unique in hurting emotions of others. Others think painful thoughts when someone chooses to live in another country, or refuses to comply with gangbangers, or wins the lottery, or separates. Checks for legal duties such as not abandoning children, debt repayment, and court judgements can be made before allowing assisted suicide.
Just as giving something away is not stealing from self.
There is little evidence that people who kill themselves are usually insane.
Mental illness does not make suicide silly. A great many suicide attempters are mentally ill, but being mentally ill does not always mean a person does not understand what they are doing, indeed the reason the person may want to die is often because of the unnumbable pain and poor quality of life from the mental illness.
The dying process is not cut short: suicides have a greater opportunity to tie up loose ends than for unknown death time, for example to grieve their own death, or to reconcile with relatives.
Suicide can be a permanent solution to a permanent problem. Some old people are unhappy they lived a lifetime. Sometimes the causes of suicide will not be surmountable in the natural lifetime of the suicide. Having said that, suicide is often where the person would not want to die, after therapy, assuming the therapy works. In one sample divided evenly into those who had died by suicide and those of other causes:
The causes were in order of importance:
These causes are adjusted for sex, age, location of residence, and research site.(1)
Desire for suicide may still continue after pain, including depression, is controlled. No drug has been made that stops all pain, unless the person can afford to be artificially kept in a continuous coma for life. Having said that, desire for suicide might be less after chemicals for pain are introduced into the body, or problems are worked through. But rare diseases are not ignored just because they are rare, and not everyone wants chemical side effects or the possibility of having to find solutions to desiring suicide at unknown future dates.
Secondly, suicide is not always being a desire to kill someone else, or neurotic and childish overestimation of life problems, or selfish, or narcissistic, or self-hating and so on. Theories such as these have not been shown to be statistically true for all cases.
Disease can be fun for some, for example epinosis, chronic mild mania, interesting hallucinogenic experience from fever. So even if suicide is considered a disease, rather than simply a behavior, that is not a reason to prohibit it.
Rather than being irrational, suicide can be categorised as hyper-rational, for example from a materialist viewpoint, life is an unending series of varying degrees of pain whereas death is a cessation of all pain, where the person does not even mourn they are missing out because they do not exist to mourn.
A suicide decision contemplates at least three outcomes: bodily death, life as normal, and life as changed from brain damage or even economic help from the government. If it is calculated that the statistical likelihood of achieving aims is greater by attempting suicide, then it is not any more irrational than deciding that eating a burger is statistically likely to achieve an aim of hunger reduction despite the risk of mad cow disease. Suicides can understand the finality of suicide, for example knowledge of the risk that a decade later they are being happy they did not kill themselves.
Perception may be subjective, but that is not a reason against suicide, otherwise all other decisions should be illegal for example eating icecream should be illegal in case the person did not want to eat sugar, but is unaware that the icecream contains sugar. Still, before assisted suicide, efforts can be made to make a suicide more aware, for example an old person's DNA might subjectively make death seem like a good option in order to lessen the burden on DNA-related kin. Thinking may be affected by affective disorder, defensive mechanisms including denial of the wish to live, drug abuse, exhaustion, illness, feelings of ineffability, medication clouding, mental illness, pain, personality traits, retardation, stupidity, unempirical rationalizations, young age and so on. Information from other people may be fallible and self-serving. A medical prognosis may not be accurate or honest. Or others may suggest wrongly that the suicide is a burden.
It can be, but being ironic, if it is always so then a person should attach a scorpion to the neck for the rest of life. Then maybe that person can learn about the universe in some magical way, if they are still able to concentrate.
Life does not have to be painful for a reason, like punishment for hurting others. Bad things can happen to people who have the best of intentions. Even if the bad things are magically created because of hurting others in past lives, and there is little evidence, allowing others to continue a painful life without consent is hurting others in itself.
Most people would do anything to live, and dying is the ultimate price, but this does not make suicide bad. Great for them. Also, just because a person cannot control their bladder and bowels, does not mean they have no dignity and should die.
Most non-fatal suicide attempters stop trying after a few years but this does not mean suicide is bad. A person can accept the risk that they might have changed their mind if they were to live, and can wait before suiciding to be more sure.
Suicide might not be predictable but this does not make it bad. When someone eats ripple ice cream is not exactly predictable but it is still legal. Here are some of the more obscure findings that describe the end of the twentieth century and may not be applicable to every time period or geographical region:
Suicide is not a claim of right to destroy the life from which all rights flow: it is not illegal to end these rights in other ways, for example giving up the right of free speech by deciding to be irreversibly quiet until death.
If suicide is treating oneself like an object, to be bought, sold, and disposed, it does not make it bad. Otherwise a person cannot allow themself to be employed for a price, because they are treating themself as an object.
Books and films that bring fantastic feelings about being anti-suicide, and that show how suicide is against a reason a person becomes alive, and against a supernatural plan that actually makes really good sense, do not make suicide bad. The book might imply suicides:
These might happen for conflicting times:
In response to these, it could equally be said that those who try to cheat death:
In short, feeling fantastic is not the same as the truth. Thinking of winning a million feels fantastic but a person really, really knows they do not know the future.
Suicide is, for practical purposes, illegal. Legal ways of suicide tend to be like torture such as rope, water, metal even resulting in handicaps.(2) The reasons against suicide are (partly) sexually motivated, where sex is defined as activity relating to reproduction: parents feel pain in the chest area when their existing children die, just as the pain in the genital area from not having sex makes them want to act in ways that create new children. Kin of the suicidal children have similar DNA too, and enjoy the gangbang.
If suicide is not understood, this does not make it bad. Suicide is understood for many cases. It is essentially, in sane people, a choice, often to avoid future pain where pain is defined in it's widest sense. Most people are potential suicides. It may not be perfectly understood why some people do not like ripple flavor ice cream but like banana flavor. It does not mean that refusing to eat ripple flavor ice cream is illegal. An example of difficulty in understanding suicide is the question of why survivors of wars might wait until after the war to suicide. There are many reasons to wait: genetic kin to protect during the war, high adrenalin gives a pleasurable feeling, less time and resources during the war to learn about suicide, possibility of spoils, more friendliness from others in the same team against the enemy, empathy with those under attack, morbid curiosity, curiosity about the fate of others, adventure, travel, hope, immoral satisfaction of seeing enemies hurt, not wanting enemy to get satisfaction of seeing oneself doing the killing for them, possibility of hiding one's history because it has been destroyed by the war, possibility of greater status such as less workers and less male lovers to compete with as well as erased debts, possibility of being transformed into a life lover by the war, feelings of obedience to the ruler who is allowed more power by the people when they are under attack, greater status during the war as rich people are hurt too, possibility of being shot in action or at least suiciding due to war injury rather than having to explain suicide righteousness to relatives, possibility of murderous and rapist desires being immorally actualized, anti-suicide measures imposed by the military brass and so on.
Suicide is not always against evolution, for example some animals will put themselves in mortal danger to safeguard their young or to mate successfully. Many life forms die by design, for example to feed their children or after a predetermined lifespan. Even bacteria, a simple form of life, is often genetically designed in it's own DNA to stop living at a certain age. Sometimes bacteria die before this, for example infected e-coli bacteria altruistically die to protect neighboring e-coli bacteria.(14,15) Animals with more than one cell generally have programmed cell death where their own cells die during their own lifetime. This process is controlled by other cells in the same animal.(16)
Even if it is against evolution, it can be argued that evolution conflicts with choices and thus need not be followed: people can love each other and themselves, not always what their DNA "wants". DNA that generally:
Sometimes DNA "wants" a person to die if being a burden on kin, but again can be denied by living.
Life does not have sanctity, and suicide does not make it cheap. If life has absolute sanctity, then here are some ironical comments:
Unnatural desire for suicide does not make it bad. Natural desire is often for life, but cars are unnatural yet can be desired.
Fatal suicide is difficult to achieve, but this does not make it bad. Transport is difficult, but car engines that were difficult to achieve are not objected to. Similarily euthanasia, an easy suicide, is good.
Suicide may be a waste of talent but this is not bad. Not running all the time on a treadmill is a waste of the ability to run.
Suicide can be lazy but that does not make it bad. Cars could be considered lazy but are not illegal.
Suicide does not repudiate the meaningfulness and worth of the life of others. Otherwise a person who eats cakes is repudiating the life of others who do not eat cake.
Cars, cement and medicines are not traditional but can be OK.
If someone talks about suicide they may use the phrase "committed" suicide, but suicide can still be right. They can say "died by suicide" or "suicided" instead.
Suicide and euthanasia remind of death, life cut short, death merchants, murderers, skulls, bones, rotting flesh, death angels but this does not make suicide bad. Going to the toilet reminds of poo, diarrhea, and stench but this does not make toilet bad.
If a person reads "evil" backwards it says "live", but there is no evidence that this is for a reason. "God" backwards is "dog", but few think that poodles are all demons. Another example is "Life is to be lived", but this only sounds right. Otherwise, rapists are there to rape, and so on.
(1) Phillips MR, Yang G, Zhang Y, Wang L, Ji H, Zhou M. Risk factors for suicide in China: a national case-control psychological autopsy study. Lancet. 2002 Nov 30;360(9347):1728-36.
(2) Stone Geo. Suicide and Attempted Suicide: Methods and Consequences. Carroll and Graf. 1999 Feb.
(3) Cohen DA, Mason K, Bedimo A, Scribner R, Basolo V, Farley TA. Neighborhood physical conditions and health. Am J Public Health. 2003 Mar;93(3):467-71.
(4) Balazic J, Marusic A. Apparent higher brain weight in suicide victims: possible reasons. Psychol Rep. 2002 Feb;90(1):236-8.
(5) Page A, Morrell S, Taylor R. Suicide and political regime in New South Wales and Australia during the 20th century. J Epidemiol Community Health. 2002 Oct;56(10):766-72.
(6) Charlton J. Trends and patterns in suicide in England and Wales. Int J Epidemiol. 1995;24 Suppl 1:S45-52.
(7) Tunyi I, Tesarova O. [Suicide and geomagnetic activity] [Article in Slovak] Soud Lek. 1991 Mar;36(1-2):1-11.
(8) Walters RM. Suicidal behaviour in severely mentally handicapped patients. Med Hypotheses. 1990 Mar;31(3):197-9.
(9) Stack S. The effect of publicized mass murders and murder-suicides on lethal violence, 1968-1980. A research note. Soc Psychiatry Psychiatr Epidemiol. 1989 Jul;24(4):202-8.
(10) Jobes DA, Berman AL, O'Carroll PW, Eastgard S, Knickmeyer S. The Kurt Cobain suicide crisis: perspectives from research, public health, and the news media. Suicide Life Threat Behav. 1996 Fall;26(3):260-69; discussion 269-71.
(11) Preti A, De Biasi F, Miotto P. Musical creativity and suicide. Psychol Rep. 2001 Dec;89(3):719-27.
(12) Smith DH, Hackathorn L. Some social and psychological factors related to suicide in primitive societies: a cross-cultural comparative study. Suicide Life Threat Behav. 1982 Winter;12(4):195-211.
(13) Feskanich D, Hastrup JL, Marshall JR, Colditz GA, Stampfer MJ, Willett WC, Kawachi I. Stress and suicide in the Nurses' Health Study. J Epidemiol Community Health. 2002 Feb;56(2):95-8.
(14) Hochman A. Programmed cell death in prokaryotes. Crit Rev Microbiol. 1997;23(3):207-14.
(15) Skulachev VP. Phenoptosis: programmed death of an organism. Biochemistry (Mosc). 1999 Dec;64(12):1418-26.
(16) Ameisen JC. On the origin, evolution, and nature of programmed cell death: a timeline of four billion years. Cell Death and Differentiation. 2002; 9, 367-393.
(17) Hawton K, Clements A, Simkin S, Malmberg A. Doctors who kill themselves: a study of the methods used for suicide. QJM. 2000 Jun;93(6):351-7.
(18) Aasland OG, Ekeberg O, Schweder T. Suicide rates from 1960 to 1989 in Norwegian physicians compared with other educational groups. Soc Sci Med. 2001 Jan;52(2):259-65.
(19) Brown VL, Espinosa J. Near-hanging injury: two case studies and an overview. J Emerg Nurs. 1991 Dec;17(6):386-9.
(20) McHugh TP, Stout M. Near-hanging injury. Ann Emerg Med. 1983 Dec;12(12):774-6.
(21) Vander Krol L, Wolfe R. The emergency department management of near-hanging victims. J Emerg Med. 1994 May-Jun;12(3):285-92.
(22) White RA, Scher LA, Samson RH, Veith FJ. Peripheral vascular injuries associated with falls from heights. J Trauma. 1987 Apr;27(4):411-4.
(23) Bostman OM. Suicidal attempts by jumping from heights. A three-year prospective study of patients admitted to an urban university accident department. Scand J Soc Med. 1987;15(3):119-203.
(23) Kenneth J. Mukamal, MD, MPH, MA; Ichiro Kawachi, MD, PhD; Matthew Miller, MD, MPH, ScD; Eric B. Rimm, ScD. Body Mass Index and Risk of Suicide Among Men. Arch Intern Med. 2007;167:468-475.