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From: barryg@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Lee Gold)
Newsgroups: net.suicide
Subject: Re: suicide for an incurable illness?
Message-ID: <1916@sdcrdcf.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 20-Apr-85 01:02:41 EST
Article-I.D.: sdcrdcf.1916
Posted: Sat Apr 20 01:02:41 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 22-Apr-85 00:17:09 EST
References: <3580@alice.UUCP> <112@uw-june>
Reply-To: barryg@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Lee Gold)
Organization: System Development Corp. R+D, Santa Monica
Lines: 50
Summary: 

We all have an incurable disease:  it's called mortality.  It'll kill
all of us one day.

I think Terry's question is really about whether it's ethical for someone
with an incurably *painful* disease to kill himerself.

I think the answer depends on just how much the pain interferes with
one's ability to achieve goals that seem significant/enjoyable.

If I thought that all the remaining days of my life would be spent in a
state of pain so acute that I only had enough concentration to endure the
pain, not enough to spend on doing anything else--yeah, I'd probably think
I had a moral right to commit suicide.

I had a great-aunt by marriage who had lung cancer.  Several times the
doctors chemotherapied it into remission, but it came back.  The last time
it returned, she asked them how much hope they had of another remission.
They told her there was none.  She'd be in extreme pain, partially
controlled by morphine, for the rest of her life.  She told them that in
that case her instructions were that she be kept unconscious until she
died.  And if they weren't prepared to follow those instructions, she'd
check out of the hospital and find a place that would do that for her.
She died about a week later, having been kept virtually unconscious the
whole time.  I think she made a good choice.

BUT...if I had a few months yet to live and enough energy/concentration to
still take on a project, I'd look around for something to do, a last chance
to make my mark on a world I'd soon be leaving.  One of my favorite
prayers asks God to "establish the work of our hands."  I'd look for
something to do that would make people glad I'd been alive and done it.

I had a cousin who got cancer of the pancreas, a condition that normally
kills you in a few acutely painful weeks.  He decided he wanted to put
together a museum showing.  And then, since he was still alive, he took
on another project.  And another.  He ended up dying about a  year after
his doctor gave him the diagnosis.  And his last year was a benefit to
his family and to the community as a whole.  And to himself too.

Eric Berne (_Games_People_Play-) claimed that every psychiatrist shouldc
explain to a patient that no one had the right to commit suicide
	1.  While hiser parents were still alive
	2.  While hiser children were not yet adult
I think I'd go along with that for those not undergoing extreme and
incurable pain--and end one more proviso:
	3.  Tell your friends, lovers, spouses (and ex-spouses) and
children goodbye.  Don't let them find it out the hard way.  And if you
can't face telling them you'e going to kill yourself, don't make them face
the reality of your having done so.

--Lee Gold