Discussion If there was a MAiD pilot program, would that be the gateway to legalizing voluntary euthanasia?

[TAW122]

I have an idea where if there was a pilot program for something similar to MAiD for those who wish to CTB, they would sign up for that and with strict criteria, they get their wish at the end. The criteria would be that people would of course be 18 years or older (basically the legal age as an adult, age of majority), be able to give consent (may have to sign consent forms, give verbal and written consent, as well as video consent, both at the beginning of intake, and all the way up to the end of the process), be willing to try some treatment and therapies during the duration of the study (counseling and medication), and they can, at anytime choose to decline the option to voluntarily pass with peace and dignity. If they do that then they will be removed from the program and continue to live (aka refusing the option of voluntary euthanasia) as normal. In other words, when a participant signs up, he/she is giving a waiting period and during this waiting period, he/she would go through counseling, treatments, and evaluation for sound of mind, and after the waiting period, they are guaranteed it.

Background and current reality:
In our current world right now (speaking for the US of course as I'm based in the US), there are only a few countries around the world with lax and permissive right to die, death with dignity, assisted suicide laws (Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Canada to name a few), and while in the US there are a few states that allow death with dignity, it is very difficult to access and one would need to meet a narrow criteria to even be 'eligible' for it. These states and territories (as of 2023, the writing of this thread) are: Maine, New Jersey, Montana (by court decision), Washington D.C. (not a state), California, Oregon, Washington (state), New Mexico, Hawaii, Vermont, and Colorado. Even in the most lax state, Oregon to be exact, it has only dropped it's residency requirement not too long ago, but still all other criteria applies and is very difficult (and narrow) to be eligible for it.

Here are some example scenarios to describe what I mean and put into context.

Scenario A:
Person 'A' is 18 years of age and A is physically healthy, but doesn't wish to live for decades. Without overcomplicating things A just wants to ensure that A has the ability to go on A's own terms. A signs up for the pilot program and is given a waiting period, and for this scenario, we will assume 4 years. During the interim of 4 years, A has the ability to change A's mind at any given time, thus removing A from the program and A would then be on A's own. Alternatively, A would be required to go through several treatments, seek multiple counseling and therapies, and again, for this example, A will seek several medications (3-4 different drugs), one or two treatments during the 4 year wait period, and at least two mental health professionals, then after the 4 year mark, if A still consents and confirms, A gets a 100% guaranteed voluntary euthanasia, peacefully and with dignity. In this case, A reaches the four year mark, and then after the 4 years of waiting, A changes A's mind and decides to continue living because A knows that the option to die was granted and was given, thus giving A renewed comfort knowing that A will get it whenever A wishes.

Scenario B:
Person 'C' is about 30 years of age and is relatively healthy, maybe minor neurological issues, but otherwise does not impact C's life drastically. Similar to the example in Scenario A, C is given a waiting period, say 3 years for instance, and similarly gives consent, goes through treatment, counseling, therapies, and of course, at the end, if C still wishes to die with dignity, C's wish will be granted, 100% no questions asks (no ifs, ands, or buts). Of course, if C refuses after or anytime during the 3 year wait period C, of course, like everyone else a part of the program will be removed from it and resume things as is. In this example, after 3 years of waiting, C is given the option to voluntarily choose to exit on C's own terms, with peace and dignity. C accepts and chooses to exit suffering gracefully. C is then given a peaceful, dignified exit without harm to others and avoids future potential suffering.

Numbers and stats for consideration:
Using the 2020 statistics alone:

Suicide statistics

Learn the latest statistics on suicide. Data on suicide are taken from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Data & Statistics Fatal Injury Report for 2018, as of March 1, 2020. Suicide rates listed are Age-Adjusted Rates.

afsp.org

Suppose there are 45,979 successful CTB's per year in the US, and with 1.2 million attempts to CTB. Then suppose there are 20,000 participants in this right to die pilot program. For the sake of discussion, let's say about 5,000 of those people went on to CTB but with death with dignity, but then 15,000 continued to live and either die of natural causes or any other cause than CTB.

Also, this is the economic cost of CTB in the US:

Suicide Prevention | Health Topics | Polaris | ADP for Policy and Strategy

The Office of the Associate Director for Policy and Strategy's (OADPS) mission is to identify and advance opportunities to use policy, leverage health system transformation and engage other sectors to improve the public’s health.

www.cdc.gov

That is a whopping amount of money, $70 billion, which is almost 8% of the US department of defense spending on the military!

With that said, that is:

Facts and numbers:

• 15,000 less people who CTB, thus reducing the amount of deaths by CTB by almost 33%! This isn't even considering the amount of people who go out through gruesome methods, and that is at least 20,000 people who didn't go through barbaric means and cause collateral damage!
  
  
• Then there are people who don't attempt CTB (even if they are not enrolled nor a part of the pilot program) because they know people (one of their friends or a loved one is in the pilot program) who are in the program will eventually led to expansion and legalization of the right to die. So we will put the figure for attempted CTB's (non-successful ones) at about 600,000 instead of 1.2 million. That is about a 50% reduction in attempted CTB's! Which means not only are there fewer attempts, but also fewer barbaric and gruesome attempts too!
  
  
• Since the cost of CTB costs the government $70 billion to clean up and process, and assuming almost 46,000 CTB's in 2020 alone (not even including inflation and other factors), that is about $1.5 million in damages per person who CTB'd. So given our figure of 15,000 less people who CTB'd and continued living otherwise, that is $22.8 billion saved from having to clean up CTB's! Imagine what you can do with $22.8 billion extra in the economy!

Result and outcomes:
As a result of this program, I do believe that it will make the current suicide rate and numbers drop as that will give people the freedom to be able to not only feel like life is mandatory but that they have a real choice between living or not and those who otherwise may have CTB'd due to lack of choice, may even have a renewed lease on life (recovery for them, I suppose). For those who really want to exit, they would be able to exit peacefully, with dignity, and limit the amount of trauma as well as collateral damage caused to unwilling participants. Obviously, this isn't a perfect system, but it is partly modeled by MAiD and other current existing right to die policies, but the general idea is the same, giving people an option to die on their own terms, and some may even try to live especially knowing that they are choosing to live rather than being forced to live (make living voluntary rather than compulsive).

What do you guys think? Do you think that perhaps this may change how society sees human life and maybe one possible gateway towards legislation that will legalize the right to die in more states, and perhaps even expand it further to include not only those who are severely ill, chronically ill, or terminally ill, but to those who are suffering greatly or even wish to go on their own terms?

 

[Shadowlord900]

It's definitely a massive improvement on how the system currently works in most places. Probably even all places, since even the most pro-choice of places like Pegasos in Switzerland expect you to pay up a hefty sum and are not really true to their word when they say they'll accept anyone who's sound mind and over the age of 18.

The only part of your system that I think needs expanding upon, but something that's not easy for all people to agree on is determining the wait period one must wait for before they get assistance with CTBing. Obviously for someone who is physically healthy and has no financial issues, they shouldn't have any problem waiting for 3-4 years to get their wish (providing that their circumstances don't drastically change during that period). But for someone who has a very debilitating illness that severely impacts their quality of life, it would be cruel to make them wait 3-4 years before they can get assistance with CTBing.

I think the length of the waiting period should definitely be adjustable depending on the individual's physical fitness, mental health and financial stability (yes I think fiances should also play a factor into the waiting period). Admittedly I think that may have been something you was already going for, considering the scenarios you gave have people with different ages, conditions and waiting periods, just the extra clarification would be appreciated.

In terms of how easily society will accept it? Well like with everything suicide related, there definitely will be some big pushback to begin with. I think the biggest issue is the current middle aged demographic (and some older aged demographics) who still think in the old ways influenced by various religions that forbid suicide. Maybe hopefully some decades latter when that generation has passed away, the newer generations that are less influenced by religion will be more acceptable of voluntary euthanasia and less afraid of anything related to suicide or death.

 

[TAW122]

It's definitely a massive improvement on how the system currently works in most places. Probably even all places, since even the most pro-choice of places like Pegasos in Switzerland expect you to pay up a hefty sum and are not really true to their word when they say they'll accept anyone who's sound mind and over the age of 18.

The only part of your system that I think needs expanding upon, but something that's not easy for all people to agree on is determining the wait period one must wait for before they get assistance with CTBing. Obviously for someone who is physically healthy and has no financial issues, they shouldn't have any problem waiting for 3-4 years to get their wish (providing that their circumstances don't drastically change during that period). But for someone who has a very debilitating illness that severely impacts their quality of life, it would be cruel to make them wait 3-4 years before they can get assistance with CTBing.

I think the length of the waiting period should definitely be adjustable depending on the individual's physical fitness, mental health and financial stability (yes I think fiances should also play a factor into the waiting period). Admittedly I think that may have been something you was already going for, considering the scenarios you gave have people with different ages, conditions and waiting periods, just the extra clarification would be appreciated.

In terms of how easily society will accept it? Well like with everything suicide related, there definitely will be some big pushback to begin with. I think the biggest issue is the current middle aged demographic (and some older aged demographics) who still think in the old ways influenced by various religions that forbid suicide. Maybe hopefully some decades latter when that generation has passed away, the newer generations that are less influenced by religion will be more acceptable of voluntary euthanasia and less afraid of anything related to suicide or death.

Thanks for reading through my article, and yes, I put quite a bit of time and effort into writing it. As for determining the wait period, yes it can vary between case by case, depending on one's circumstances, so as usual, if someone is terminally ill with less than 6 months to live, the wait period would be much shorter than 3-4 years (perhaps equal or shorter than the current death with dignity laws, meaning they get access to voluntary euthanasia, dignified death much sooner). For those with debilitating chronic conditions, but not terminally ill, perhaps maybe 1-2 years at the maximum (more likely just about a year or so). The 3-4 years wait period was just something that I found and predicted to be reasonable for the average, healthy adult (which I believe that most normies and the masses fall into). I could have picked 1 year as the norm, but then that would be too short, but 5+ years is way too long as that is too many years (half a decade to be exact..). So 3-4 is kind of a balance, at least for everyday people.

All in all, the wait period could be determined on a case-by-case basis, terminally ill gets much shorter wait periods, severely chronically ill and debilitating illnesses get a longer wait period than those terminally ill, but not prohibitively long (about a year or just slightly more but not much more). In other words, it's hard to find a perfect balance (and perhaps there isn't one), but at least that's a starting benchmark which can be tweaked based on circumstances.

Finally, yes, religion and the older generations before us (Generation X, Baby-Boomers, and the Silent Generation) certainly still have a stronghold on public policy as well as how things are in society. I think that even if there wasn't an ideal no questions asked "right to die" situation like we would imagine (futurama-esque suicide booths or similar to that), at least we could have a legalized and standardized right to die process that all citizens who want it can access. I just believe that even if we couldn't get the exact, ideal right, at the least we can have a better system than the one we have in our current day, whether it be years, or decades down the road.