SomewhatLoved
Bringing out the Dead and Searching for the Living
- Apr 12, 2023
- 216
I work in healthcare. Throughout my schooling and practice, everyone I know has told me that MAID (medical assistance in dying) is extremely peaceful. All the nurses, doctors, paramedics, and social workers I know surrounding it agree that euthanasia is easily the most peaceful way to die and the least traumatic for family and friends. When you control how you die, it takes the anxiety, anticipation, and fear out of it. I think people tend to fear what they cannot control. In MAID, you get to plan a last day, be surrounded by loved ones, and you are given medications which take away any/all pain. If someone is accessing MAID due to physical illness their death may actually be more physically comfortable than their life, as they are given pain medications which will stop their ailment from harming them.
My point here is that anyone I know who is around MAID in a professional setting agrees that it is beneficial. This is including healthcare workers both on the conservative and liberal side politically. Like many things, I think the hatred towards MAID is based out of a lack of understanding. People don't know how it works, what medications are used in it, or even sometimes what it really is. They just imagine a doctor killing people and think that sounds wrong. In medicine there are 5 ethical "pillars" - three of them are patient autonomy, benevolence (doing good), and non-maleficence (not doing harm). I would argue that if someone is living in pain (whether physically, mentally, emotionally, or spiritually) and wants to die, by assisting them in that you are respecting their autonomy, doing good, and not harming them. Harming them would be insisting that they keep living even when they don't want to.
People will hopefully realize this eventually. Medicine is about evidence and doing what is proven to be best for people, and a lot of the time that is letting them die. It's already commonplace for people to make decisions regarding what type of care they want ("advanced directives", "goals of care" etc), and euthanasia is the next step in that development. If it's ok for people to opt out of CPR or for a doctor to stand by and watch a patient die when they may be able to prolong their life, then how is a doctor helping someone rest when they are suffering seen as so evil.
If you look at history progress has always been resisted. Minimum wages, worker's rights, democracy, gay marriage, affirmative medicine for transgender people were all fought against (and in some cases still are). However, I don't doubt eventually they will be accepted. MAID, euthanasia, assisted dying, or whatever you would like to call it is in the early stage of being legally adopted, but it's there. Canada, Switzerland, Belgium have it - even if only in certain circumstances. I know it will spread eventually though, and I think eventually pretty much everyone will have it beyond those who die as a result of physical injury, accidents, or people in certain religious sects who are forbidden to die by suicide by their faith.
My point here is that anyone I know who is around MAID in a professional setting agrees that it is beneficial. This is including healthcare workers both on the conservative and liberal side politically. Like many things, I think the hatred towards MAID is based out of a lack of understanding. People don't know how it works, what medications are used in it, or even sometimes what it really is. They just imagine a doctor killing people and think that sounds wrong. In medicine there are 5 ethical "pillars" - three of them are patient autonomy, benevolence (doing good), and non-maleficence (not doing harm). I would argue that if someone is living in pain (whether physically, mentally, emotionally, or spiritually) and wants to die, by assisting them in that you are respecting their autonomy, doing good, and not harming them. Harming them would be insisting that they keep living even when they don't want to.
People will hopefully realize this eventually. Medicine is about evidence and doing what is proven to be best for people, and a lot of the time that is letting them die. It's already commonplace for people to make decisions regarding what type of care they want ("advanced directives", "goals of care" etc), and euthanasia is the next step in that development. If it's ok for people to opt out of CPR or for a doctor to stand by and watch a patient die when they may be able to prolong their life, then how is a doctor helping someone rest when they are suffering seen as so evil.
If you look at history progress has always been resisted. Minimum wages, worker's rights, democracy, gay marriage, affirmative medicine for transgender people were all fought against (and in some cases still are). However, I don't doubt eventually they will be accepted. MAID, euthanasia, assisted dying, or whatever you would like to call it is in the early stage of being legally adopted, but it's there. Canada, Switzerland, Belgium have it - even if only in certain circumstances. I know it will spread eventually though, and I think eventually pretty much everyone will have it beyond those who die as a result of physical injury, accidents, or people in certain religious sects who are forbidden to die by suicide by their faith.
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