Well, I support killing the chronically ill (mentally or physical) and euthanizing anyone who gets past, say, 70-80 years old, plus I believe that humans that aren't self-aware or able to become quickly self-aware (think infants and fetuses) are not people either.
That should answer if I consider them to be society's concern. Yes, but not in the way you think. (I'd rather not back up those claims here because it's a rather long essay)
OoOoo. That's controversial haha.
Personally I don't believe age has anything to do with our final years. You will get 60 year olds who spend the final 5 years (arbitrary length of time) of their life with severe disease and you will get 90 year olds who spend the final 5 years of their life with severe disease. Being old does not necessitate morbidity. Just to throw an example out there: my grandad is an 83 year old Harvard graduate. He still runs a HIV/leprosy hospital, continues to facilitate and publish research and treats several patients. He is **** good at his job. His hospital used to be the largest centre for leprosy in the world. I assure you he has many years left in him and it would be a great loss to society as a whole if he were to die right now (prematurely). He is fit and well.
As for the idea of killing those that are chronically ill, I guess it's best to leave that for another topic lol. If you don't want to go further on this point I'll stop here. Although I feel it's integral to why I believe it's wrong to allow a mentally ill person kill themselves.
Can you treat schizophrenia?
Absolutely. The positive symptoms (ie. psychosis, delusions, paranoia etc) will nearly always be controlled by medication. The negative symptoms are more difficult. however there's been some great advances in recent years in and the treatment, management and prognosis of schizophrenia
will improve (as it has continued to do so since 1900's).
http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/reprint/160/12/2202.pdf. Manfred Bleuler's original study in 1972 estimated a rule of thirds - 1/3 recover, 1/3 have an undulating course, 1/3 suffer a chronic disease. Modern psychiatrists would regard this pessimistic. Perhaps ~20% suffer a chronic course. The prognosis will likely improve in the next few decades.
TBH I'm kind of revising my stance on this thing to "permissible once a more or less sane mental state is present".
In that case I think the discussion turns to where Succumbio has already taken it
My personal take, though, is society should still do its best to prevent such occurrences. Even if these people may be ''morally correct''. Suicide
is damaging and it hurts you too, even if you do not realise it. Perhaps the man who delivers your paper lost their son and will no longer work. Perhaps a good friend of yours will suffer a bout of depression when their father dies and subsequently drop out of school. Perhaps the person that died could have acheived something great and now you will never know.
To put forward a more emotional arguement, too, I just think it is sad when somebody feels such little hope in their life that they must remove themselves from this planet. I can't help but feel that we, as a society, have failed that person. That their death is a symptom of a much greater problem.
You could punish the guilty party's family, similar to how the burden of paying back any kind of loan is often shifted their loved ones. It would seem unjust, but it may make the person contemplating suicide reconsider.
Rather than working with perceived benefits that incur dubious legal repercussions (such a law would be literally impossible to implement for so many reasons), we can study the aetiology behind suicide and take evidence-based measures.
http://www.dh.gov.uk/prod_consum_dh...@dh/@en/documents/digitalasset/dh_4019548.pdf. Current efforts in the UK include:
-focusing effort on identified high-risk groups
-promoting the understanding of mental health in the general population, and therefore reducing discrimination
-promoting the mental health of people who suffer such disorders
-reducing availability of lethal suicidal methods
-promoting further research on suicide and suicide prevention
-improving the media's understanding and reporting of suicide
EDIT: this is going pretty off topic, but since old age was mentioned and I replied, I may as well provide evidence for my claims.
http://www.ageing.ox.ac.uk/files/workingpaper_206.pdf
There's a few theories about increasing life expectancy and its associated morbidity and as things currently stand, there isn't enough evidence to support one view over annother. The theory you've implied is the ''expansion of morbidity'' - old people are inherently ill and therefore a drain. That modern medicine only prevents the outcome of death in these people who are ill, that we merely prolong the course of chronic disease and therefore disability. Such a theory falls flat for a few reasons. You assume modern medicine only prevents fatality and does nothing more. Evidence-based medicine shows us the wide and varied effects of secondary prevention and our ability to slow down progression of many diseases and ward off their subsequent disabilities. It is also well understood that environmental factors play a huge role; like my grandfather shows, it is not inevitable to suffer degenerative conditions by a certain age. If we understand the aetiology behind conditions such as COPD and stroke, we can work to extend time to development of such conditions. Finally, it's believed that relatively few people will have a life of severe disability prolonged. If there is an expansion in morbidity for these people, it is of relatively little consequence.
However your references to those with chronic diseases may ring true though in terms of the burden they lay.
It is, however, seriously questionable whether the data are good enough to support
any kind of coherent story about current trends in health expectancies – and the
expansion or contraction of morbidity in later life. The essential problem lies in the
relationship between chronic disease, functional impairment and disability.
Disability is a ‘social construct’ in the sense that it refers to an individual’s capacity to
function or carry out a role in a given social and environmental context. The extent to
which individuals are disabled as a result of functional impairment (e.g. mobility
impairment) depends on this context – and in recent years it has changed enormously.
It is vitally important, in other words, to be able to ‘factor out’ the contextual and
attitudinal elements in measures that purport to tell us about real changes over time
(as well differences between different countries) in the ‘intrinsic’ health status of the
older population – and a great deal of the available evidence on health expectancies is
vulnerable to precisely this kind of criticism.
Where does this leave us? It means that the kind of evidence that is needed to support
solid conclusions about the expansion or contraction of morbidity is simply not
available for most countries in the developed world (including the United Kingdom).
This is not to say of course that the evidence contained in a time-series such as the
General Household Survey can be ignored or discounted. It certainly looks as though
total life expectancy in the UK is increasing faster than either the expectation of life
in good health or the expectation of life ‘without limiting longstanding illness’ (see
figure 2). But in the absence of more detailed information about changes in physical
and mental functioning, it would be premature to declare that we are at the beginning
of ‘an epidemic of frailty’ or a significant expansion of the period of ill-health and
disability at the end of life.
