Topic: 'Best solution’: Elderly Belgium couple plan joint euthanasia (Read 1772 times)

Good for these folks, cool way to go...together. And it should be their call. By the way, not so sure this is some nefarious prelude to Soylent Green. In that movie, the bodies of the deceased were turned into little green crackers and fed to the public. And I hear they were very tasty.

You're right.  He says that he's not certain how he's going to feel when older, but rationally calculating, this is the age he puts as representing the last vigorous or creative years.  Qualifies with recognition there are outliers, the centenarian marathon runner, etc.  Linking with soylent green was misleading though not deliberately so, still, the drift, the general tone seems somehow resonant.  Or maybe it is I think the discourse will encourage a sort of life-negating climate.   

That is the architect of Obamcare and it is no secret the model works best when folks don't live much longer than that.   Perhaps this opinion is personal (as of now) or perhaps it is political.  But the general tone of the piece is actually much the same as how I feel, and what I tell my family/friends to the same response he gets.  In short, he is NOT a supporter of euthanasia (nor am I) but rather he intends to not engage in life extending treatments (or preventative screenings) past a certain point and just intends to die of whatever takes him. 


As for the OP link....it's creepy that a couple is giddy planning their deaths.   And it also talks about [already legal] euthanasia for chronically ill children.  Welcome to the slippery slope.

Well I don't find anything strange here. My own personal opinion is that you cannot give life with the expectation that your children will take care of you until you die. I find that decidedly selfish. You've lived your life the way you wanted and now you want your children to live their lives the way you want them to. So really, it's all about what you want. 10,000 years ago, a couple committing assisted suicide together would've been out of place. These are different times. As for the 'cold and calculated son's response', well that will be his own burden to bear.

It is purely a personal choice, If I ever became just a lump of flesh that couldn't even shit properly without assistance I'd want to end it there and then rather than be a burden on society and be in pain for so long, it's another classic case of particularly religious people trying to subvert the law in order to enforce their own personal beliefs on other people. It's the same type of thing where if I was in a fight or flight situation and surrounded by enemies, I'd want to go down fighting rather than give up and get tortured or anything else for that matter, you wouldn't want to let yourself get captured by people like ISIS for example.

Fact is, it's all consented and they're incredibly old and sick so they wouldn't have made this solution lightly, should have seen this poor terminally ill guy who wanted to commit suicide when we were having this debate in the UK, he ended up crying when it was announced the law couldn't let him die, frankly I consider it also a form of torture to keep someone that long beyond their life when their body naturally wants to let go.

Once I get past 60 or 70 as long as I am happy I will want to live on. Its all about quality of life not quantity.

As long as intellect is lively, I want to hang around to increase understanding of the world, existence, humankinds relationship to it.  To see what happens next.  When curiosity and life of the mind is no longer possible then I would want to take that last great adventure.  Read something recently by MC Beaton, into her '80s still writing mystery novels on her approach to life.  It was "Stop projecting. Tomorrow is a mystery.  Life is not a rehearsal.  I am on stage today'. Memorized it, a good daily reminder.

I comfort myself with denial, "Old" is always 10 years older than you are.  :-)
 
When young, I was always conscious that one day, barring accident or fatal illness, I would get old too, and be so for a good portion of life.  Also aware, increasingly so in '30s that the way I regarded old people, the stereotypes I held, would form my own self image. All the "you old bag/hag," all the jokes about senility, all the patronizing, would inform personal identity, how I thought about myself.  Accordingly I looked for the role models in good, the wise, the still-engaged, the strong in adversity.  The Georgia O'Keefes, Beatrice Woods, Mother Theresas.  Even aesthetically, finding a beauty in weathered and 'craggy' (as males are often called, insteady of crone-like, wrinkly or wizened). 

Are there cranky, nasty, greedy elderly?  Well of course and in plentiful, cantakerous supply.  I maintain the vast majority of these were always nasty and greedy, perhaps less inhibited and better able to camouflage their natures.  Less attractively, according to youthful standards, packaged. 

Ageism, unlike other prejudices, will be its own punishment in the end.

I think that mental preparation has paid off.  Luck and genes has something to do with it too.  I seriously don't feel whatever I thought this age would 'feel like'.  If health were poor, sight were dim and step weren't sure, it might. 

When I was 25, I didn't envision myself living past sixty;  now that I'm 47; my outlook has changed.  I think I'm rather typical, when you are young, the future seems to stretch on forever---  the older you get-- the quicker time passes,  and your remaining years seem pitiful short.  I hope that couple didn't leave anything to their wonderful children.

I'm telling you, soylent green may not have been as much of a dystopian future fantasy as we might like to think.
 
Recently read in the Atlantic the 58 year old man whose name I've forgotten an essay on why he doesn't want to live longer than 75 - or, put another way, sees no reason to prolong life much beyond that.  The obvious response is to say "we'll check in with you on that at age 74...".  Lol. 

Ed - link to article above http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/09/why-i-hope-to-die-at-75/379329/

I think this is not the best choice. What if the cure to aging will be discovered next year. They could be at least preserved their bodies in case the cure will discovered in the future.

I have always thought euthanasia a personal option, a Constitutional right emphasized in the 10th Amendment, not to be infringed upon by the well meaning, but not in my shoes people who oppose it.

Many questions arise, even here where the couple has decided for themselves, about the beneficiaries.....cold and calculated son's response "best solution".   Yikes, hope my children keep that opine to themselves.

An octogenarian Belgian couple has chosen to end their lives through assisted suicide rather than risk the chance of dying alone. Their children have reportedly backed their decision.


http://rt.com/news/191280-assisted-suicide-belgium-couple/


 Francis, 89, and Anne, 86, neither of whom are terminally ill, have received the full support of their three adult children, who say they would be unable to care for either parent if they were to be widowed, the Daily Mail reports.