Dementia and "Duty to Die"

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Old people with dementia have a duty to die and should be pushed towards death, says Baroness Warnock | Mail Online


Well, my father lived with dementia for nine years and he was still a human being. If people allow humanity to be degraded, then they can have no complaint when the eugenics people come to their door and say that they aren't in the latest round of IQ or physical health status.

Thoughts of others?

[ygolo]

That seems awfully cruel. I would not want my relatives to dies simply because they were a "burden."

[iwakar]

Originally Posted by heart

Old people with dementia have a duty to die and should be pushed towards death, says Baroness Warnock | Mail Online


Well, my father lived with dementia for nine years and he was still a human being. If people allow humanity to be degraded, then they can have no complaint when the eugenics people come to their door and say that they aren't in the latest round of IQ or physical health status.

Thoughts of others?

I'm supportive of a person's "right to die" not "duty to die." As with many things, a firm distinction should be made. I'd hate to see the latter eclipse the first. Think "Logan's Run" people...

*shudders*

[proteanmix]

Hmmm, interesting.

Aside from my gut reaction of NO! I think when Warnock says

'If you are demented, you are wasting people's lives, your family's lives, and you are wasting the resources of the National Health Service.'

we should probably think about how this plays out. The way she says it is a harsh but it's kind of true.

Do you know how many elderly citizens spend the rest of their years wasting away in retirement homes because no one in their family wants/has time to care for them? What kind of life is that? Who takes care of them? Who will give up their life in order to care for the elderly person?

I've had two experiences recently that has made me think about this a little harder. I was talking to a young woman who basically is about to give up going to graduate school to take care of the grandmother who raised her. The grandmother isn't near death but she has a illness that requires nearly 24/7 monitoring and attention. Can't afford a home and the grandma has still got a decade of life. But this woman is the one most available to take care of her grandmother in this situation. What are they to do? Would anyone be willing to give up the time that it takes to achieve their life successes in order to care for an aging relative? It's not an easy decision to make, which may be what Warnock is getting at.

[Jennifer]

Originally Posted by proteanmix

Hmmm, interesting. Aside from my gut reaction of NO! I think when Warnock says we should probably think about how this plays out. The way she says it is a harsh but it's kind of true.

I didn't read the article; but yes, I agree that creating a "duty to die" is a bit ridiculous and just a bad precedent, and yet PM's points here are very valid.

Do you know how many elderly citizens spend the rest of their years wasting away in retirement homes because no one in their family wants/has time to care for them? What kind of life is that? Who takes care of them? Who will give up their life in order to care for the elderly person?

That's the thing. Families don't live together more. And people are living far longer than they used to. Hence we get a lot of elderly people surviving ailments that would have killed them young, when they were still self-sufficient, and this places new burdens on the young and old alike.

MY grandparents hated being in a home, and my grandmother was mobile so she took care of my grandfather when the help at the facility was bad... but then she died and he had to struggle on two more years, unable to see, unable to walk on his own, dress himself, or even go the bathroom alone, doing nothing but listening to the radio all day long until his strong heart finally gave out. He was even a man of very strong conservative faith, but he was complaining all the time about why God was letting him live, he didn't see the point in it. Just very sad.

And yet with the geography the way it was, no one lived nearby and no one had the time to be there all the time -- my uncle was there during the week when he could, and my mom made the four-hour one-way trip every other weekend when she could get off work.

I've had two experiences recently that has made me think about this a little harder. I was talking to a young woman who basically is about to give up going to graduate school to take care of the grandmother who raised her. The grandmother isn't near death but she has a illness that requires nearly 24/7 monitoring and attention. Can't afford a home and the grandma has still got a decade of life. But this woman is the one most available to take care of her grandmother in this situation. What are they to do? Would anyone be willing to give up the time that it takes to achieve their life successes in order to care for an aging relative? It's not an easy decision to make, which may be what Warnock is getting at.

Exactly it. There is no easy answer to it.

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If we start viewing the elderly like the PM suggests, we'll lose our humanity. My father spent nine years of his life with mild dementia but he still knew joy, still had a heart, it was part of his life and the people around him.

[Anja]

Ack. We just can't apply our personal standards onto others' situations even though we see what seems right to us.

It's unfortunate to watch some of the elderly who have lost their sense of purpose and wish to make an exit. I sometimes think there are ways, with a little effort from others in their live,s that they could regain some zest for life.

I'm veering some from the OP to say that modern medicine has proven to be a mixed blessing.

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Anyone who has had close experience with people with even mild dementia know how indecisive, confused and depressed they can get.

How anyone could believe that a person in that position could come to a decision to be put down like a unwanted dog in any reliable fashion that they weren't making a guilt based decision or being initmidated into it I just do not understand.

Healthcare POA already allow a family member to make judicious decisions about which heroic lifesaving measures are valid based on medical advice. This seems enough to me.

[Giggly]

I didn't read the article but I remember discussing this with a friend once and the conversation went something like this.... Remove your emotions for a minute and imagine that there is a group of 10 people made up of 5 males and 5 females ranging in ages from birth to age 75. And the particular circumstances of this scenario call for a downsizing of the group by 2 through extermination. Who should the 2 who are exterminated be?

[heart]

^Why should anyone have the right to decide if someone else is killed? This whole topic is on the level eugenics or genocide type thinking. Once that's out of the bag, who is to say where it should stop?