Voluntary euthanasia or is this subject taboo?

It might be timely to bear in mind that Hitler went unchallenged for a considerable time because he was so obviously preposterous that the constitutional establishment assumed that the angry and frightened electorate would come to its senses. Oops.

Moral: before you vote, check what you're voting for.

Slightly more undemocratic than that Damocles. He laid the 'Reichstag fire' at the doors of the communist and it was only much later that it was discovered that this was in all probability not t the case - the poor man who was accredited as the fire starter was Dutch, linked to communists but probably paid for by the Nazis. In fact Goerring did such a great job of propaganda it was amazing Goebbels eventually got the job of minister for propaganda. AND Hitler's timing was perfect ...just before the elections .... oooh and he 'luckily' had a whole host of people that could suppress the imminent 'Civil War' the Bolsheviks were 'planning' but this whole thread is not about Nazism OR SHOULDN'T BE

We have to be mindful ...absolutely ....I will always be profoundly supportive of the lest we ever forget ideology for it could happen again - lets be very clear about that. One only has to look at Rwanda, Cambodia, Kosovo to see that man can still enact atrocities against man.

But that wasn't what was asked and it was why I said it MUST NEVER become a political football, it should NEVER be cemented into a policy, It must sit within the protection of the Human Rights of the individual....a right to choose at what point one's life ends is not unreasonable AS LONG AS YOUR options are not unreasonable. If for example you want to to be able to die at a specific point then that is fine (in my opinion (ONLY MY OPINION) the choice of how you die is likely to become critical though. Starvation of all nutrients is fastest yes but not without issues. SO even if they allow us to choose when we de they will still get hung up on the how.

Hitler was democratically elected in a country with a constitution. That's what is scary. - End of quote
Hitler was not democratically elected.
His "Brown Shirted" troopers took over the Chancery.
There was nothing the truly elected government could do about it.

And I have a parent who suffered a dread disease for almost 10 yrs, and I did visit them in lousy NH, it was no fun but yes I'm glad they were in a facility (and it cost then a fortune that I could have inherited if they had done "Medicaid Planning Secrets"). - End of quote

Now, what'll happen if your "fortune" runs out?
Have them dumped onto the streets?

I hope we can just all respect each other's rights and responsibilities, which of course would include the rights of LDS, non-extrene Muslims, Catholics, Maronites, Evangelicals, Mennonites, Amish, and a host of minority ethnic/religious groups who are horrified by the way the world is becoming so anti-Orthodox.

Gershun hun no offence taken at al me dear just explaining my rationale for joining in. Mallory couldn't agree more - thats why I don't want it to be part of any policy - individuality seems to be the only thing we have left. Or do we?!!!!

I've been on Medical Assistance and my kids have been on food stamps. So does that make me more qualified to offer my opinion, I don't think so. Maybe the fact that I was able by my own initiative should matter more (and no, givernment did not build my success, they were content to keep me down). I've also been suicidal and rushed to emergency room. And I have a parent who suffered a dread disease for almost 10 yrs, and I did visit them in lousy NH, it was no fun but yes I'm glad they were in a facility (and it cost then a fortune that I could have inherited if they had done "Medicaid Planning Secrets"). And guess what my parent ' s uncle was imprisoned in a concentration camp by the Nazi "democracy" and tortured. Iraq, Afghanistan and much of Africa are primarily Islamic peoples, so it's no wonder "democracy" was a farce with basically religious men being elected. There are way too many variables to consider, so if you want to kill yourself go ahead, it's not that hard (just stop eating). But the minute it becomes the preferred way to die, look out, the political geniuses that brought folks like Hitler to power, will size the opportunity to advance their evil agendas.

Sue the hot air balloon manufacturer, the mooring mfr, the park where the mooring stood, the rope mfr, and your knot-tyer instructor. THEN let go.

Yes. And suicide is legal, of course, which makes it much simpler for everyone.

But it's like hanging on to the guy rope of a hot air balloon that's slipped its moorings. At what point do you let go? I assume the extreme difficulty of picking your moment is the main reason there isn't a great deal more of it about.

It's very well to read about the very caring people contributing articles here about the high quality of care they showered on their kin.
Not only that they are caring but they must also be financially well off or have other means to sustain this care.
Now, I believe that the vast majority may not be that lucky.
And it's no walk in the park if one is elderly, immobile, sickly and needs constant care 24/7, especially if the condition is permanent - there's no quality of life, is there?
This is so even if one is staying with one's own kin because nowadays, everybody has to work to have enough to live by.
So, who will stay in the house to look after the elderly, sick and immobile?
It's also a well known fact such folks who ended up in facilities like elderly care homes were often badly neglected or even abused.
Even in the UK or the USA.
So, for many folks that choice is very stark although it's a fact of life.
I also understand that there are many in the US who feel happy that they have with them a ready supply of sleeping pills so that when their time comes, they have a choice.

Poor old democracy - we do expect an awful lot of it. Afghanistan is a democracy. So is Iraq. In Algeria, about twenty years ago, after years of horrible internal conflict, the UN moved heaven and earth to get a democratic election set up and then was so horrified by the outcome that they cancelled that one and told the people if they were going to be silly they'd have to do it again. As the African nations moved over to the system there was a standing joke in diplomatic circles that democracy was defined as 'one man, one vote, once.' And even in its modern home town, so to speak: my son did his degree thesis on democracy in America, and his (American) cousin asked drily "Did he find any?"

There still isn't a better system, it's just that people aren't reliably good at using it; and to be fair that's usually because they have more pressing matters on their minds than politics - such as feeding their families that day, or not getting blown up. We could do with a neutral authority with global reach and the powers to step in and bang heads together. Don't think we'll find one this century, or next.

Hitler was democratically elected in a country with a constitution. That's what is scary.

I understand that Falcon and thats why I prefaced my remark with "No offense"
I also feel that people should have a choice but I get irritated whenever this subject comes up and certain people go off the deep end about it.

Hitler was insane. I hate it when we are having a conversation about the here and now and how we would like things to change and people start comparing doctors giving morphine to sick, elderly people who have no hope of coming out of their condition to the nazi's trying to wipe out a race. It just aggravates me.

Well said, Falcon. I also think it should be an individual choice.

Gershun I guess I feel strongly about this particular topic because a) my natural mum was a German Jewess and b) I taught the holocaust and all its issues including the issues of a country being 'ready' for dramatic change after the crippling reparations after WW1 (not forgetting that about 3/4 million died from flu and starvation) and the vast use of propaganda that existed and to some extent still exists around the issue. AND GA thanks for the Lebensborn yes he used that and it was shameful to both mother and to child who had to live with the stigma of their parenthood later.

All I want is that people can, while they are able make decisions about their end of life care and their choice of death in the event their circumstances are such that THEY no longer want to continue, even though at that stage they may not be able to articulate that.

I sure as heck don't want someone else telling my family they can make that decision on my behalf and I sure as heck don't want decisions about end of life care being generalised within a policy. For me one's end of life choice are as personal and individual as the person who holds them and they should stay that way. I just want them honoured.

In the U.S.A., what you say can and will be used against you.

I hate myself. Who's lost cognition. Who's lost it. I shall go and write them out 100 times each.

It wouldn't be. But it could be offered as an increasingly common care-planning choice to people who don't yet know what their overall quality of life will be like when they become more frail.

To take one aspect, the usual dread (who doesn't dread it?) is the butt-wiping stage. Nobody whoops for joy at the prospect of being dependent on others for basic hygiene, the idea is revolting. But where's the cut-off point for quality of life? Is it impossible to enjoy any quality of life if you're unable to take care of your own continence? Are you going to tell that to people with severe cerebral palsy? Quadriplegic patients? People with MND who, for some reason in their own heads, still hang on in spite of knowing that at some stage they won't be able to breathe on their own let alone wipe their backsides?

Or the point where you can't recognise your own child. Dismal, and tragic - but tragic for the child, not for the person whose lost cognition. The person whose lost it may be perfectly content, having lost also all memory of her self as she used to be. If her family doesn't abandon her altogether then they will have to endure all of the sadness of that long drawn out loss; and her former self would be horrified at her condition. But her present self isn't. Her present self may be quite happy in her own little infantile world, away with the fairies. And if that person is suffering countless daily indignities - and worse, and I agree with Gershun that there is far too much of this going on now, today - then the problem is quality of care, because God knows that needs work. But, so, work on the quality of care, not on making it easier to bump off the victims of poor standards.

Cwillie is quite right about me - if my loved one were suffering agonies from metastatic bone cancer, asked me for help and we were cursed with an obdurate or 'fraidy-cat doctor, then I'd be first in line with the pillow. Actually, I suspect I'd have got rid of that doctor some time before; but just supposing. But I would also expect to have to defend that action, pleading duress and having witnesses to the patient's clear instruction, and be prepared to take the consequences. The pressure to change the law comes from people who want to end lives but are not prepared to be tried for it; and the trouble is that among that group, besides the people whose motives are pure, could be people whose motives and actions are much more dubious.

The Director of Public Prosecutions in the UK was explaining a while ago that policy at the moment is that family members who 'switch off' - he didn't put it like that, but that's the gist - their suffering loved ones will generally not be charged: not because a prosecution wouldn't succeed, but because it is not considered to be in the public interest to be bring them to trial. Heigh ho, the Great British Compromise comes to the rescue once more; and I agree that it isn't satisfactory to say we're leaving the law as it is but we probably won't use it. On the other hand, if the law retains the option of prosecution, and if the end of the line is a jury's verdict, those are safeguards that I'm happier with than nothing at all.

Why do you think this would be offered as a choice to a vulnerable adult who hadn't already voiced the desire for that option?

would this be a choice, or a recommendation. and to offer this choice.... to a vulnerable adult? then to me, and my silly brains, my apologies, but to me it becomes more like a recommendation.

Imagine if you will,being able to tell your elderly mother who can't wipe her own bum anymore and has to be spoon fed and suffer countless number of indignities everyday that she finally has a choice. She can continue suffering until she has even forgotten her own name and who she once was or have a choice to end her suffering in her own time and on her own terms. Now wouldn't that be great.

Correction, slavery has been around for eons (at least as long as female subjugation or longer....who knows ).

Imagine for a moment, the hypothectical Year 2032: Assisted suicide has become the "way to go" for almost a million Americans every year. However, an increasingly less-able to speak, elderly Catholic/LDS/ Orthodox Jew/ Amish/ Mennonite/ fill in the blank....none of whom would vote for politicians who supported assisted suicide, is watching this horrifying transition from how things were when they were young. But these minorities will be suppressed by the majority voters who will decide their fate, because assisted suicide has become so popular. There are the "8 Stages of Genocide" and I suppose in the year 2176 they will finally write the "8 Stages of State-sponsored Euthanasia." Past history can be helpful to learn the broader lessons of human behavior (and mis-behavior) but the problem is, it takes a few hundred years to see what is actually happening. By then it is far too late to correct the sins of the fathers. Just look at a few centuries of slavery or a world history of female subjugation to males.

No offense to Falcon, Babalou or Garden Artist, while your knowledge of the topic is impressive, we can all pull out our history books. Thus the reason this topic becomes tedious.............

Falcon, in defense of Babalou, she used the term "euthanasia" in quotes, so I think she was attempting to relate the Nazi exterminations to the poster's original question as well as Mallory's posts, kind of short circuiting to the issues raised by Mallory. (But I know you know that!)

Falcon, just a comment on the Nazi tactics....and BTW thanks for an insightful historical perspective on the issue, as well as its American applications. I had forgotten about the issues you raised.

It wasn't only extermination that the Nazis planned to create the "perfect Aryan Nation"...it was also by forced breeding of SS troops with women who were literally conscripted into being forced to produce more little Aryans. The Lebensborn program was horrifying and resembled something more like science fiction than reality.

Mallory as Babalou pointed out, there are vast differences between the genocides and the so-called "death panels" that were allegedly created in the Affordable Care Act.

If you do some legitimate historical research, you'll learn not only what Babalou wrote but that there were issues which do not exist in the US that are specific to some of those genocides.

The attempted extermination of the Jews and others deemed undesirable by the Germans arose not just from a psychopathic maniac named Hilter, but also from what the Germans perceived as humiliation after WWI. In a nutshell, based on what I learned in college, that predisposed them to be susceptible to someone who promised them redemption on the world venue.

Armenia, which by the way was the first country to become Christian, was unfortunately subject to the bigotry, hostility and enmity of the ruling Turks at that time, and religious friction played a role as well. (My grandparents were some of the fortunate few who escaped.)

The "conditions" that were and may be "favorable" to genocide in various countries were political, nationalistic, arising from monarchical domination, lack of stable democratic governments, lack of infrastructure including means to educate the citizens,

The horrors initiated by the Russian Revolution and the ensuing Stalinist and Leninist atrocities arose from the monarchical situation. The monarchy (as well as similar monarchies in other countries) was able to live in lavish splendor while ordinary people were living in poverty. They were primed for revolution, and Stalin and Lenin took advantage of it to grasp control.

Even though there wasn't necessarily a genocide in France, the French Revolution arose from similar political conditions arising from centuries old monarchical domination.

As to other ethnicities you mentioned, read up on their pre-genocide history and you'll find commonalities, i.e., factors that predisposed the nation to persecution of minorities.

What you won't find is a government elected by the people and governed by laws, with political balance as was created in our Constitution, not that it's perfect by any means but it is better than a monarchy or rule by a despot.

Another example is persecution of certain minority religious groups in the Middle East. Some of those countries have been so suppressed for decades that the people can easily be lead to believe that it's the big bad America or Israel that's the cause. Rhetoric stirs the hostility of people with nothing and who've been brainwashed and threatened not to question the then existing despot.

The tragedies in Africa are especially egregious, but again, read their history and you'll discover the weaknesses, disenfranchisement, instability and other factors that were unable to prevent exploitation by specific aggressive groups.

One of the other common factors is hostility toward women, ethnic and religious groups, which if anything is more controlled by a country with a viable legal system. It's far from perfect, but it's a better, more logical and practical method of attempting to create legal balance.

The "death panels" as explained by Babalou are not the ridiculously promulgated notion by right wing extremists, many of whom I suspect are really racists who oppose a black president.

As to even the concept of genocide in contemporary America, think of the political issues that would arise from this. Politicians WANT support, and some will liberally stretch the truth to get it and stay in power. They WANT voters alive, and voting for them, not massacred by some fictitious and Orwellian society. Some politicians though, are fortunately intelligent and mature.

But the ones spreading the concept of the Nazi death squads are not in the latter category. People who fall into the trap of believing this disgusting rhetoric are exactly what fanatics want - easy followers, gullible people.

Ask yourself why any politician would support legislation, i.e., the Affordable Care Act, that would dispatch any voting constituency, any potential fundraising source. Why would they? They want to increase their base of support, which for some of them is by pandering to factions then not supportive of them. Look at Romney, Trump, Huckabee and others. They've flip flopped and changed positions so many times it's hard to know what they really believe, other than they're generally conservatives.

Intolerlance has existed for thousands of years, unfortunate as that is.

It's up to each of us to educate ourselves so we can make intelligent decisions in elections, as well as to "put our money where our mouths are" to support legitimate causes and not fall into the trap of being lured by silver tonged radicals.

That also applies to choices of religion.

NO NO NO Babalou sorry but i have to take issue here not because you are totally wrong ... you aren't by any means .....but this was never euthanasia it was NEGATIVE eugenics and genocide (wholesale murder is the phrase I would use) pure and simple. There was no decision making about those in a coma or terminally ill - this was purely to create a superior and 'pure' society and to this end all others had to be removed - either from having children via a sterilisation programme or through genocide - and anyone who tried to get in the way of that fell into the category of being part of the problem.

Add to that the hierarchy's total hatred of Jews especially Hitler who was born into a particularly antisemitic area of Austria then it is clear that the targeted individuals who in his mind could in the first instance move him up the ladder.

Pogroms had been in existence 100 years earlier and came to the fore with the May laws introduced after Tsar Alexander III blamed Jews for the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in the mid 19th century

Eugenics in its positive format was as your own Teddy Roosevelt identified a means of promoting healthy people to having more children to increase 'the quality of the gene pool'

In its negative format it removes the 'less than' FROM the gene pool via sterilisation programmes - used in the USA in the early 20th century before the Virginia Sterilization Act and Racial Integrity Act of the 1920s was enacted in the early 1920 and remained in place in one form or another until as late as 1967 and I think most of us remember the transition from segregation to integration.

During slavery and those very dark days it was quite common for slave 'owners' to breed lightness into their slave or to breed strength using the same methods that farmers use to breed animals.....they thought nothing of culling 'those who did not meet their needs' - lives were cheap

It was on these two ideas that Hitler based most of his strategies for removing the 'socialy unacceptable' completely as he revealed in Mein Kampf

I am absolutely with you though Babalou on the risk factors.I will never accept that anyone should be persecuted for their beliefs or the colour of their skin or their social capacity. I have beliefs that I rarely expound and my natural mother was a German Jewess but I was adopted into a Christian family for some very obvious reasons (if you knew the facts). In every case where there is persecution however it is always a minority who is put at risk, even more so as the movements gain momentum.

My feelings are that we should as a society who is supposed to be civilised respect others for their convictions AS LONG AS THEIR BEHAVIOUR DOES NOT NEGATIVELY IMPACT ON OTHERS.

My children know my wishes and accept them but they are MY WISHES. they are not anyone else's and I would not want them to be

Mallory, the Nazis used "euthenasia" supported by the false science of eugenics to exterminate people that they deemed "subhuman"; Jews, Poles, Romany (Gypsies", , Homosexuals and Jews. And anyone who stood up for any of the above groups, including priests and nuns.

As a Jew, I am acutely aware when political candidates blame the state of the economy on particular ethnic groups, as that is a technique that was used not only by the Nazis, but in all the other genocides you mention.

I am always less worried when progressives use political power to protect the rights of religious and ethnic minorities, and when the rights of the incurable ill to die as they wish are carved out.

The "death panels" that were fear mongered about in a previous election are just what the Federal Government intended them to be, that is, payment for doctors to have serious conversations with their patients about what the real options were for end of life care.

History tells us that what seems the "progressive" or even radical stance in this country is the norm in a generation. The abolishing of child labor, rights for minorities, and 8 hour work day and voting rights for women were all unspeakably radical ideas in my grandmother ' s day.

It is beyond my abilities to describe fully about what is coming, but if you want to learn the many connections between suicide, euthanasia, and singling out certain minority groups for extermination, search on "genocide". Lots of info abounds....not just the Israelis, but Russians, Armenians, Poles, Rwandians, the list is immense, and troubling. Do we want to make conditions favorable for more.genocide?