Tue 3 Jun 2008
You discover you have a disease which will eventually kill you if it is left untreated. It could take weeks or years. There are a few treatment options available.
The cost of the treatment is not a factor - you have great health insurance.
The treatments offered to you may have serious side effects, but they could alleviate your symptoms and make you feel a lot better.
While treating your disease is not a guarantee, there is a very good chance it could cure the disease, or significantly extend your lifespan. (This extension of your lifespan would not involve a decrease in the quality of your life.)
If you choose not to treat the disease (not for any moral or religious reasons - simply because you don’t care if you live or die) is it suicide? Please elaborate on your answer.
(I’m not sick, it’s just a discussion I was having with someone.)
Posted by IndigoRain
No, letting nature run its course is not suicide. I think there are plenty of valid reasons to allow our bodies to deteriorate in their own unique ways without medical intervention, but then again, I think “the culture of life” is an outright Orwellian delusion.
Knowledge of imminent death is something many people experience without reacting, from patients with DNR orders to Kamikaze fighters, to shocked drivers staring down an oncoming bus, indulging in a moment of self-reflection rather than swerving out of harm’s way. Failing to actively protect your life in every possible moment can’t be ruled suicide, or a very extreme dystopian value set is the result. I’m trying to think of some Handmaid’s Tale/Logan’s Run sf premise akin to this, but I’m drawing a blank.
I wonder if you’re looking for an emotional response? Something along the lines of “the word ’suicide’ gives me a bad feeling, but I don’t think letting-nature-take-its-course is bad. So this isn’t suicide.”
If so, my answer won’t interest you.
I define “suicide” as allowing yourself to die (when there are options you could take which would keep you alive).
So my answer — without any emotional baggage connected to it — is “yes,” It’s suicide.
Which isn’t to say I wouldn’t have an emotional response to a specific suicide. But to me, the word itself isn’t emotional. It’s just descriptive.
Failing to actively protect your life in every possible moment can’t be ruled suicide, or a very extreme dystopian value set is the result.
This sentence confuses me, because you use passive voice. WHO can’t define suicide as “failing to actively protect your life”? Are you talking about legal definitions? That’s a whole other ball of wax. If I (personally) define suicide that way, I promise you we won’t drift into a dystopia. I don’t have that kind of power.
By the way, I DON’T define suicide as “Failing to actively protect your life in every possible moment.” That’s a little different from your thought experiment. For instance, I don’t think that skydivers are necessarily committing suicide. Sure, the run a risk of dying by skydiving, but it’s far from inevitable that they will die.
Someone who is committing suicide has to BELIEVE that his action (or inaction) will definitely lead to his death (or that it’s highly highly unlikely that he’ll survive).
I wouldn’t categorize this as “suicide”, but I think it’s suicide-ish. And definitely more like suicide than like euthanasia by the terminally ill or terminally in-pain.
I think the effect of this type of death on the deceased’s friends and family would be similar to suicide and for that reason I’d condemn this as well. But my reaction to this situation is directly a result of my biases: I’m pro-Western medicine (in general) and I reject any sort of notion that natural processes, per se, are morally superior or otherwise preferable.
If someone were to fall on a grenade to protect the people around him be considered an act of suicide?
Most life insurance policies do not cover suicide, would this act affect his benefits?
If it was neglecting to take care of a disease, would this affect benefits? Any insurance experts out there care to comment?
Drewbody - how would not treating a disease protect the people around “you” (the ill person in the question)? The friends and family would still watch the person get more and more ill.
I was not considering life insurance as pertinent to the question… but if someone thinks they have an answer to that, be my guest.
I do have a disease that will kill me if I don’t treat it - diabetes. If I decided to quit taking drugs and insulin to keep my blood sugars down, I’d consider myself to be committing suicide. It may take longer than other methods, but the final result is death.
The fact is, barring accidents, I will most likely die from heart disease (most diabetics die from heart disease) or complications from diabetes. Maybe I’m luckier than most in knowing what I’ll die from, if not when I’ll die.
I think this question is basically if using a critical illness as a means of suicide is a way of achieving “allowable” suicide. I have to say yes because I believe in the right of a person to choose suicide. But, that is another discussion.
Now, there is the moral dilemma of creating pain and suffering for those who love the person. I believe that causing pain for others should be avoided whenever possible. This scenario provides mitigation for that issue because the person choosing to death is “allowing” it to happen naturally instead of undertaking some toxic treatments that may or may not eliminate the disease/condition. Plus, it allows the person and loved ones time to reach understanding if they know that death is inevitable. (Death is inevitable for all of us, we just don’t know when, you know.) Undeniably, it’s always painful to loose someone you love.
Another point is the right of a person to choose which medical treatments are worth the risk. A patient should always have that right. Nobody can know the outcome of any medicine/treatment. We try to make informed decisions, but it’s all based on probabilities and past outcomes. Each body reacts differently at different times to medicines (even vitamins, herbs, food, etc.), and we are making educated prognostications about the effects.
So, for me: it’s OK to not treat something. It’s OK to choose to die.