Compassion or Financial Opportunity?

[blue-mangos.livejournal.com]

A 91 year old woman is being investigated by the FBI for selling suicide kits.

She claims her kits, which include a bag and tubing to connect to a helium tank with instructions and sell for $60, offer an easy, peaceful death to those who wish to end their lives. She has been criticized for not doing due diligence as to whether her customers need these kits as a compassionate measure or if they are underage or mentally unstable.

While I am in favour of assisted suicide on compassionate grounds, I do share the same concerns voiced by her critics. As well, it seems very wrong to me for someone to profit off of someone's pain and suffering. While I am not convinced she should be jailed for her actions, I do think her business should be shut down. Those who wish to commit suicide can always find a way to do so, either alone or with help without someone profiting off the act.

My questions to you:

1. Do you feel she should be prosecuted for this?

2. If not, should she be able to continue selling the kits?

3. Should the families of those who committed suicide using her kits be able to sue?

Comments

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

My thought experiment here might be flawed, but it just popped in my head:

Suppose I'm driving along a road and someone steps deliberately in front of my car, rather like Bill Murray in "Groundhog Day". He's clearly trying to kill himself.

Now in this case, I've got plenty of time to stop. He's maybe 300 feet in front of me...well within my car's ability to brake.

Instead of braking, I gun the engine and mow him right down, like he was hoping I'd do. Afterward, they even find a note pinned to his coat reading "Please thank the driver who ended my shitty life" for good measure.

I'm thinking I still deserve to go to jail.

[dreadfulpenny81.livejournal.com]

This was covered on an episode of CSI. One man hit another with his car. Instead of reporting it to the police, he left the guy wedged in his windshield while his car sat in his garage. The guy who was hit bled-out and died. They later found a suicide note, which meant the guy was trying to get hit, but because the guy who hit him didn't report it, he ended up going to jail.

[soliloquy76.livejournal.com]

Not only was this covered on CSI, this happened in real life as well.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

The real life one wasn't a suicide, as far as I can recall.

[dreadfulpenny81.livejournal.com]

No, the real life one wasn't a suicide.

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

The generally ironic thing is that I am disposed to assisted suicide being legal, but lack the imaginationvto conceive of a framework for it that would be able to curtail truly grotesque abuses of the most vulnerable in society. People may ask what harm this women is causing and I would argue that we and she have NO idea because she has no credible way of knowing if her customers are making sounds judgement or if they are people who would make an attempt as a way to cry for help but her apparatus is too efficient...the list goes on.

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

Referral from the doctor treating the terminal illness, from the psychiatrist who can say the person is of sound mind and from the person's own GP would not be sufficient checks and balances to ensure that the person really does want to die?

Now, I'm sure there could be some nefariousness and it could be abused, but that happens now under the term "pain management"; because euthanasia is already underground it makes abuses all the more harder to find.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

More like living in massive pain for years and cancer is eating you away, and even if you do beat the cancer, your body has only pain to offer after recovery and so you want to die. Or your loved one does. Then the doctor has a some chemicals that will end the life quietly, with dignity and less pain.

Cept you must suffer cause society doesn't feel good about it.

We treat our pets better.

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

I'm in favor of assisted suicide.

I am not in favor of marketting suicide kits with no safeguards as for who obtains and uses one. This is a device that is by definition marketed at a population that contains a large percentage of extremely vulnerable people.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

Ah, sorry. I didn't catch that and kinda presumed otherwise. I agree with some reasonable regulation of suicide kits. Not the kind of thing you want easily accessible.

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

Probably, you didn't know he wanted to die, so you've killed someone, not assisted with a suicide.

On the other hand, if it was your partner, who had gone to shrinks, been evaluated as sane, and had expressed a desire to be killed by you, by your car, to end their suffering (and lets go so far as to say that your partner is bed ridden, 2 months to live that will be spent in horrendous agony sick), then the morality of your thought experiment becomes far more ambiguous.

Hell, let's just legalise Nembutal, available only with multiple referrals from GPs, specialists and psychiatrists and say it's still not OK to hit someone with your car. I'm struggling to see the moral ambiguity there, unless you're a crank who takes things in the bible, as interpreted by your personal minister and the tradition in which they were trained, as the word of god or some crap