conuly

Actually, I'm in favor of infant killing under certain circumstances. The case of Sanne won me over. I forget what rare condition she had, but she couldn't be touched without her skin coming off. Babies need touch to thrive and grow in healthy ways, plus, you can't suspend her in mid-air. Every physical contact appeared to cause her pain. Plus, her chances of survival were extremely low, because of the obvious risks of infections she'd have forever. She seemed to be suffering badly, and her parents couldn't stand it, and they asked for euthanasia. It was denied becuase it was illegal. She went home, and was dead within six months anyway, which wasn't at all surprising. There are other cases where the life expectancy is low and the suffering is high, and I just don't see that killing someone in that situation, preferably in as painless a manner as possible, is a bad thing.

I agree that any form of acceptable killing people can be abused. And careful review should be done. But I just don't think it's always wrong. I mind torture more than death in many cases, and if your life is likely to contain nothing but agony, then I don't think death is a bad alternative. And sometimes there is no way to ask the person in question (if the person can be consulted, then obviously they should be). Yes, sometimes you may misjudge and the person may be happy and want to live, and that is a tragedy. But no matter what we do, we will make mistakes sometimes. And I don't think absolute perfection is required. Yes, it's a huge msitake to kill someone who doesn't want to die, but so is letting people live who are in agony and would prefer it to all be over.

From:

I think it's worse to assume people should die, and kill people who did not want to die, than it is to assume people should live, and have some people live a little longer and more uncomfortably than they might want to. Having been judged in that way, I don't think it is ever a decision a person can make for another person, because you can't know what that person's "normal" is.

From:

Do you know what it's like to live every single moment as torture and pain?

Do you object to euthanizing pets who seem to be suffering?

I consider it humane to kill when there is no hope of a decent life. And yes, that means putting a lot of work into determining both "no hope" and "decent life", but I believe the theory holds, and the rest is arguing about which specific cases warrant it.

You are, of course, free to disagree. But I felt I should voice my opinion in a thread where my opinion seemed to be absent. I consider myself a reasonable and decent person, and I do not hold my opinion based on hatred or some ignorant notion that life with disabilities is not worth living. Nor on some notion that people with disabilities are not worthy of life or do not deserve assistance. I think care and support should be the first thing to try, and the first thought. But I do think there can be extreme circumstances where extreme measures are warranted. Human life is not my highest value. That's a very personal thing, what you hold as most important. And while I view the taking of a human life very seriously, I weigh it in with many other values. And while I'd rather keep someone alive than kill someone who didn't want to be killed, it's not as simple as that. It's a matter of degree of certainty. Because of that preference, I would set the degree of severity of suffering and lack of hope very high. But I do think there is a tipping point where you are causing more harm than good by the false negatives than the small percentage of false positives. And I take that suffering very, very seriously.

My primary value is the twin goals of increasing happiness and decreasing suffering. If a life is likely to be overwhelmingly suffering, then I feel it is often worse than no life. However, I would generally like to give people a decent chance to find happiness of whatever sort suits them, and I don't think most disabilities prevent people from doing that. I do fear slippery slopes, but I also feel you cannot not do something you feel is right just out of fear that it will be used as an excuse to do something wrong. Instead, you must make it very clear why it is right in this case and not in most.

From:

Yes, I've been in that level of pain before, and yes, I've long been dubious about whether euthanizing pets — and the choice of when to do so — is really better for the pet or an elaborate rationalization on the part of the human.

It has nothing to do with what your particular intentions are, I do not think one person can judge another person's suffering in that manner, and what that other person might want. It doesn't matter if you think you're alleviating suffering or if you think you're being ableist. There's a line there that really shouldn't be crossed.

And if you note the posts in

no_pity on this topic, there are people there who are or know people with conditions that would quite possibly be said to warrant euthanasia in infancy (two people with severe epidermolysis bullosa, including one with the most severe form), who are glad they were not euthanized as infants, even though they've spent their entire lives in severe pain. I suspect their experience is commonplace — they'd rather not have the disease, but if it's a choice between death and having it, they'd rather have it.

How would you answer them? "Sorry, just trying to promote the maximal happiness by making sure nobody like you has the chance to get old enough to make a decision on the matter"? "You must be exceptions"? "I'm not talking about you, just about people with the same conditions as you"? Or what?

That's one reason I said I'd never judge for another. I've had my own life judged that way — including in terms of pain and suffering and so forth — and I would never presume to make that judgement for another person. That includes judgements on the basis of what level of pain they'd find intolerable.

I spent the first 20 years of my life in severe pain, of a kind that I've read, when people acquire it later in life, they consider so far beyond ordinary pain that they lack all frame of reference for it and react as if they are torture victims. It wasn't good, and fortunately it turned out to be treatable. But a person reading the description of that particular kind of pain, from the outside, could easily think "I'd rather die than experience that." It was my "normal" to experience this kind of pain — I was certainly suffering because of it, but I didn't know things could be any different. I can imagine, if there were an easy test for it, and no treatment for it, someone easily saying it would be more humane to let a baby die who was known to experience it. And that, and knowing many other people with severe pain conditions of all varieties (including people who were repeatedly operated on without either anesthetic, painkillers, or both), makes me wary of drawing the line for somebody else. Two people can experience the same level of pain very differently, and the human organism has a funny tendency to adapt to even the harshest of conditions. I just plain could never make that decision for another — think it's very wrong to do so, to make those assumptions, even when they seem warranted — and I meant it advisedly, not assuming just non-painful conditions.

From:

I chose not to answer them, because they don't want to hear what I and others have to say. Which is that there are people who wish to be killed if they are in certain situations and there are people who wish they'd never been born.

Both sides exist. And so either choice will sometimes mess up in a horrible, horrible way.

I was losing my mind for a while once. It turned out to be treatable, and slowly fixable. But before I got care, I didn't know that. What I did know was that I was losing my ability to communicate, and worse... inside I was losing my ability to think, remember, and even to be me. The bits that made me me were droping away.

I was dying. My body was living, but I was dying.

And what I was most terrified of was that because I couldn't communicate, I might end up with all of me gone, and my body still living on for years and years, causing tons of unnecessary suffering, contaminating people's memories of who I was, and serving no good whatsoever. They might have foolishly decided, as likely would have been legally required, to keep me alive, even after all of the important bits of me were dead. Afterall, I could eat if given food, drink if given liquid, etc. Plus, I didn't appear to be suffering much. Some small pains I complained about when I tried to do things other than lie down, but mostly, I stayed quiet.

I was undergoing horrible, unspeakable torture. With no way out. All alone, totally alone, except for the knowledge that people I loved were about, but that I couldn't reach them or them me, because of the barriers inside my own head and the knowledge that they would suffer too. Because you're all alone when you can't get any of the little in your head out. And I had no idea if or when it'd stop, and if it'd only stop when I lost too much of myself, and then still go on for others.

I was lucky. My problem was treatable. But these errors cut both ways. And I just don't have a strong taboo against killing newborns. I don't think it's always wrong. I know, I'm weird, I don't view newborns as fully human yet. Newborns still have a lot of development to do to get tot he bits that make humans special and different from other animals. Although I certainly would never approve of torturing them, as I don't approve of torturing any animal. They can feel, and they can tell the difference between tenderness and cruelty. I don't advocate being bad to them. But I don't view some accidental infant euthanasias as all that different from selective abortion. I know, pro-choice types don't want me saying that, because it's a slippery slope they're afraid of. And quite frankly, it's one I don't like either. Which is why I'd only be okay with it in very extreme cases where it is seen as likely also in the best interests of the infant.

But yeah, I'd tell people: It would have been unfortunate had you been killed as a baby. But it'd also have been unfortunate if you'd never been born. Most potential people were never born. It's not a tragedy we routinely cry over. You wouldn't be aware of it. And it's also a tragedy when people are made to suffer who would rather not have. I'm sorry there is no way to be perfectly sure in the world which case you're dealing with.

I also disagree with the comment in no_pity about babies crying over any suffering and there being no way to judge suffering. In my experience, babies do make levels of suffering reasonably clear. Different babies will cry to different extents for the same stimuli, but there's a decent chance that they actually feel it differently. Yes, some might just be more prone toward crying, but it's still data that will likely correlate fairly strongly with suffering, if a baby is capable of crying. I've seen utterly miserable babies, happy ones, and ones somewhere in-between, and really - they don't look at all alike.

From:

Well, the thing is, I've never denied that some people feel differently. It's a matter of, in policy, which views take precedence. I happen to think that killing (or "allowing someone to die") someone who might want to live is a far worse crime than letting someone live who might want to die. It's not that I think that other people's opinions exist, it's that I think they should carry less weight in policy about newborns and other people who can't speak about it, because the potential consequences are worse.

As far as the other goes -- I've experienced several levels and kinds of consciousness, including the sense of being barely aware of things and trapped. The difference is that I don't hold my identity, as a person or as a human, in only the parts of me that are conscious in a certain particular way that qualifies in yours and probably Singer's definition of consciousness. So I don't think I'd be "not me" if those parts were not there (as they at times have been fully or partially), because I don't hold the rather ridiculous notion that the only thing that makes me particularly "me" is what I hold a certain very particular kind of awareness of. I'm quite aware some people are strange like that with identity, but I again think because of the potential ramifications of those opinions, they shouldn't hold much weight in policy about people who can't fight such dehumanizing rhetoric aimed at them. Benefit of the doubt should always to go the personhood of the person in question, otherwise we'll have a really bad situation on our hands, and I for one don't ever want to be the casualty of such foolishness.

From:

This is why I say it comes down to a fundamental disagreement of values. You hold life as vitally important a value and believe that an error that destroys a life is one of the absolute worst kinds. I don't agree. I believe that happiness and a lack of torture is even more important than life, and a mistake that leads to a life of torture is worse than a mistake that leads to a lack of life.

That's not a disagreement where anyone can be right or wrong. It comes down to fundamental values - axioms. We hold different ones. I don't expect you to ever change yours.

I also obviously hold a different opinion about what makes me me. I think the fact that I breathe and excrete and otherwise have the very basic acts of life is totally irrelevant to who I am. If I could survive in a purely mental way with no physical body, I would still be just as much me. But if I were lobotomized to an extent where the only brain processes going on were those of basic life maintenance, I would consider myself to be dead, and only a body to remain. I view myself as far, far more than just a physical body. My body is just what I need to wear to exist. And if I'm gone, I don't care about the clothes.

From:

deceptica

I just wanted to say that I always love reading your comments. They are very well thought-out and sensible, and most of the time I completely agree with them too. *admiration*

From:

Thank you, if you indeed meant to comment to me... I wasn't expecting a comment like this in response to anything I said in this thread. :)

From:

deceptica

It was meant for you, and particularly in a thread like this. :-)

From:

Doctors: let us kill disabled babies (actual title!)

Well, of course it is. Who would get up in arms about an article titled "Doctors: Ethics committee should debate euthanasia"?

From:

... Despite the fact that "Ethics committee should debate euthanasia" is much, much, much closer to what the doctors are actually saying than "Let us kill disabled babies" is.

From:

conuly

Well, I would.

From:

Why? I don't know if Stephen Hopkins actually said this or if the writers of 1776 put words in his mouth, but "I've never seen, smelled, nor heard an issue that was so dangerous it couldn't be talked about. Hell yes, I'm for debating anything!"

From:

adina77.livejournal.com

I'm not even going to comment because I Know I'll get my head cut off. As someone with a disability, I can't believe they would write such a thing. I think all humans are precious like everything else. Grrr. I'm going to keep my mouth shut for the rest of this.

From:

raleighj.livejournal.com

Wow...I guess it was kinda inevitable, though. We can keep more people alive, and treat more conditions, and prolong life, much better than we used to be able to...I'm assuming that babies with the conditions they mention would have shortly died, in the past. It seems in large part a question of, "Just because we CAN save and prolong a life, SHOULD we?"

I mostly found it ironic that it's usually the anti-abortion people saying stuff like this, with the opposite intent: “We can terminate for serious foetal abnormality up to term but cannot kill a newborn. What do people think has happened in the passage down the birth canal to make it okay to kill the foetus at one end of the birth canal but not at the other?”

From:

erinlin.livejournal.com

... I don't freaking *believe* this

From:

conuly

Oh, I do. I don't like it, but I sure do believe it.

From:

ciara-belle.livejournal.com

That is absolutely sickening.

From:

conuly

Word.

And on that note, I have laundry to do and a toilet to clean. Excuse me.

From:

kibbles.livejournal.com

First one, bizarre. I have the same fears with Ted but never would I think to keep him SMALL. And the second? If the kid is that bad, DNR is ok with me, I guess, but to actively kill? A disabled kid = disabled family? I can't speak.

From:

Actually, I'm in favor of infant killing under certain circumstances. The case of Sanne won me over. I forget what rare condition she had, but she couldn't be touched without her skin coming off. Babies need touch to thrive and grow in healthy ways, plus, you can't suspend her in mid-air. Every physical contact appeared to cause her pain. Plus, her chances of survival were extremely low, because of the obvious risks of infections she'd have forever. She seemed to be suffering badly, and her parents couldn't stand it, and they asked for euthanasia. It was denied becuase it was illegal. She went home, and was dead within six months anyway, which wasn't at all surprising. There are other cases where the life expectancy is low and the suffering is high, and I just don't see that killing someone in that situation, preferably in as painless a manner as possible, is a bad thing.

I agree that any form of acceptable killing people can be abused. And careful review should be done. But I just don't think it's always wrong. I mind torture more than death in many cases, and if your life is likely to contain nothing but agony, then I don't think death is a bad alternative. And sometimes there is no way to ask the person in question (if the person can be consulted, then obviously they should be). Yes, sometimes you may misjudge and the person may be happy and want to live, and that is a tragedy. But no matter what we do, we will make mistakes sometimes. And I don't think absolute perfection is required. Yes, it's a huge msitake to kill someone who doesn't want to die, but so is letting people live who are in agony and would prefer it to all be over.

From:

I think it's worse to assume people should die, and kill people who did not want to die, than it is to assume people should live, and have some people live a little longer and more uncomfortably than they might want to. Having been judged in that way, I don't think it is ever a decision a person can make for another person, because you can't know what that person's "normal" is.

From:

Do you know what it's like to live every single moment as torture and pain?

Do you object to euthanizing pets who seem to be suffering?

I consider it humane to kill when there is no hope of a decent life. And yes, that means putting a lot of work into determining both "no hope" and "decent life", but I believe the theory holds, and the rest is arguing about which specific cases warrant it.

You are, of course, free to disagree. But I felt I should voice my opinion in a thread where my opinion seemed to be absent. I consider myself a reasonable and decent person, and I do not hold my opinion based on hatred or some ignorant notion that life with disabilities is not worth living. Nor on some notion that people with disabilities are not worthy of life or do not deserve assistance. I think care and support should be the first thing to try, and the first thought. But I do think there can be extreme circumstances where extreme measures are warranted. Human life is not my highest value. That's a very personal thing, what you hold as most important. And while I view the taking of a human life very seriously, I weigh it in with many other values. And while I'd rather keep someone alive than kill someone who didn't want to be killed, it's not as simple as that. It's a matter of degree of certainty. Because of that preference, I would set the degree of severity of suffering and lack of hope very high. But I do think there is a tipping point where you are causing more harm than good by the false negatives than the small percentage of false positives. And I take that suffering very, very seriously.

My primary value is the twin goals of increasing happiness and decreasing suffering. If a life is likely to be overwhelmingly suffering, then I feel it is often worse than no life. However, I would generally like to give people a decent chance to find happiness of whatever sort suits them, and I don't think most disabilities prevent people from doing that. I do fear slippery slopes, but I also feel you cannot not do something you feel is right just out of fear that it will be used as an excuse to do something wrong. Instead, you must make it very clear why it is right in this case and not in most.

From:

Yes, I've been in that level of pain before, and yes, I've long been dubious about whether euthanizing pets — and the choice of when to do so — is really better for the pet or an elaborate rationalization on the part of the human.

It has nothing to do with what your particular intentions are, I do not think one person can judge another person's suffering in that manner, and what that other person might want. It doesn't matter if you think you're alleviating suffering or if you think you're being ableist. There's a line there that really shouldn't be crossed.

And if you note the posts in

no_pity on this topic, there are people there who are or know people with conditions that would quite possibly be said to warrant euthanasia in infancy (two people with severe epidermolysis bullosa, including one with the most severe form), who are glad they were not euthanized as infants, even though they've spent their entire lives in severe pain. I suspect their experience is commonplace — they'd rather not have the disease, but if it's a choice between death and having it, they'd rather have it.

How would you answer them? "Sorry, just trying to promote the maximal happiness by making sure nobody like you has the chance to get old enough to make a decision on the matter"? "You must be exceptions"? "I'm not talking about you, just about people with the same conditions as you"? Or what?

That's one reason I said I'd never judge for another. I've had my own life judged that way — including in terms of pain and suffering and so forth — and I would never presume to make that judgement for another person. That includes judgements on the basis of what level of pain they'd find intolerable.

I spent the first 20 years of my life in severe pain, of a kind that I've read, when people acquire it later in life, they consider so far beyond ordinary pain that they lack all frame of reference for it and react as if they are torture victims. It wasn't good, and fortunately it turned out to be treatable. But a person reading the description of that particular kind of pain, from the outside, could easily think "I'd rather die than experience that." It was my "normal" to experience this kind of pain — I was certainly suffering because of it, but I didn't know things could be any different. I can imagine, if there were an easy test for it, and no treatment for it, someone easily saying it would be more humane to let a baby die who was known to experience it. And that, and knowing many other people with severe pain conditions of all varieties (including people who were repeatedly operated on without either anesthetic, painkillers, or both), makes me wary of drawing the line for somebody else. Two people can experience the same level of pain very differently, and the human organism has a funny tendency to adapt to even the harshest of conditions. I just plain could never make that decision for another — think it's very wrong to do so, to make those assumptions, even when they seem warranted — and I meant it advisedly, not assuming just non-painful conditions.

From:

I chose not to answer them, because they don't want to hear what I and others have to say. Which is that there are people who wish to be killed if they are in certain situations and there are people who wish they'd never been born.

Both sides exist. And so either choice will sometimes mess up in a horrible, horrible way.

I was losing my mind for a while once. It turned out to be treatable, and slowly fixable. But before I got care, I didn't know that. What I did know was that I was losing my ability to communicate, and worse... inside I was losing my ability to think, remember, and even to be me. The bits that made me me were droping away.

I was dying. My body was living, but I was dying.

And what I was most terrified of was that because I couldn't communicate, I might end up with all of me gone, and my body still living on for years and years, causing tons of unnecessary suffering, contaminating people's memories of who I was, and serving no good whatsoever. They might have foolishly decided, as likely would have been legally required, to keep me alive, even after all of the important bits of me were dead. Afterall, I could eat if given food, drink if given liquid, etc. Plus, I didn't appear to be suffering much. Some small pains I complained about when I tried to do things other than lie down, but mostly, I stayed quiet.

I was undergoing horrible, unspeakable torture. With no way out. All alone, totally alone, except for the knowledge that people I loved were about, but that I couldn't reach them or them me, because of the barriers inside my own head and the knowledge that they would suffer too. Because you're all alone when you can't get any of the little in your head out. And I had no idea if or when it'd stop, and if it'd only stop when I lost too much of myself, and then still go on for others.

I was lucky. My problem was treatable. But these errors cut both ways. And I just don't have a strong taboo against killing newborns. I don't think it's always wrong. I know, I'm weird, I don't view newborns as fully human yet. Newborns still have a lot of development to do to get tot he bits that make humans special and different from other animals. Although I certainly would never approve of torturing them, as I don't approve of torturing any animal. They can feel, and they can tell the difference between tenderness and cruelty. I don't advocate being bad to them. But I don't view some accidental infant euthanasias as all that different from selective abortion. I know, pro-choice types don't want me saying that, because it's a slippery slope they're afraid of. And quite frankly, it's one I don't like either. Which is why I'd only be okay with it in very extreme cases where it is seen as likely also in the best interests of the infant.

But yeah, I'd tell people: It would have been unfortunate had you been killed as a baby. But it'd also have been unfortunate if you'd never been born. Most potential people were never born. It's not a tragedy we routinely cry over. You wouldn't be aware of it. And it's also a tragedy when people are made to suffer who would rather not have. I'm sorry there is no way to be perfectly sure in the world which case you're dealing with.

I also disagree with the comment in no_pity about babies crying over any suffering and there being no way to judge suffering. In my experience, babies do make levels of suffering reasonably clear. Different babies will cry to different extents for the same stimuli, but there's a decent chance that they actually feel it differently. Yes, some might just be more prone toward crying, but it's still data that will likely correlate fairly strongly with suffering, if a baby is capable of crying. I've seen utterly miserable babies, happy ones, and ones somewhere in-between, and really - they don't look at all alike.

From:

Well, the thing is, I've never denied that some people feel differently. It's a matter of, in policy, which views take precedence. I happen to think that killing (or "allowing someone to die") someone who might want to live is a far worse crime than letting someone live who might want to die. It's not that I think that other people's opinions exist, it's that I think they should carry less weight in policy about newborns and other people who can't speak about it, because the potential consequences are worse.

As far as the other goes -- I've experienced several levels and kinds of consciousness, including the sense of being barely aware of things and trapped. The difference is that I don't hold my identity, as a person or as a human, in only the parts of me that are conscious in a certain particular way that qualifies in yours and probably Singer's definition of consciousness. So I don't think I'd be "not me" if those parts were not there (as they at times have been fully or partially), because I don't hold the rather ridiculous notion that the only thing that makes me particularly "me" is what I hold a certain very particular kind of awareness of. I'm quite aware some people are strange like that with identity, but I again think because of the potential ramifications of those opinions, they shouldn't hold much weight in policy about people who can't fight such dehumanizing rhetoric aimed at them. Benefit of the doubt should always to go the personhood of the person in question, otherwise we'll have a really bad situation on our hands, and I for one don't ever want to be the casualty of such foolishness.

From:

This is why I say it comes down to a fundamental disagreement of values. You hold life as vitally important a value and believe that an error that destroys a life is one of the absolute worst kinds. I don't agree. I believe that happiness and a lack of torture is even more important than life, and a mistake that leads to a life of torture is worse than a mistake that leads to a lack of life.

That's not a disagreement where anyone can be right or wrong. It comes down to fundamental values - axioms. We hold different ones. I don't expect you to ever change yours.

I also obviously hold a different opinion about what makes me me. I think the fact that I breathe and excrete and otherwise have the very basic acts of life is totally irrelevant to who I am. If I could survive in a purely mental way with no physical body, I would still be just as much me. But if I were lobotomized to an extent where the only brain processes going on were those of basic life maintenance, I would consider myself to be dead, and only a body to remain. I view myself as far, far more than just a physical body. My body is just what I need to wear to exist. And if I'm gone, I don't care about the clothes.

From:

deceptica

I just wanted to say that I always love reading your comments. They are very well thought-out and sensible, and most of the time I completely agree with them too. *admiration*

From:

Thank you, if you indeed meant to comment to me... I wasn't expecting a comment like this in response to anything I said in this thread. :)

From:

deceptica

It was meant for you, and particularly in a thread like this. :-)

From:

Doctors: let us kill disabled babies (actual title!)

Well, of course it is. Who would get up in arms about an article titled "Doctors: Ethics committee should debate euthanasia"?

From:

... Despite the fact that "Ethics committee should debate euthanasia" is much, much, much closer to what the doctors are actually saying than "Let us kill disabled babies" is.

From:

conuly

Well, I would.

From: