Especially as a human can normally consent to death but a pet can’t
Because we value humans much higher than animals.
^* human life, not humans. Being confined like a potted plant is considered acceptable for a person in a coma or with a severe disabilities, but not for a pet.
Uh the number of people crating their pets seems to disagree with this assertion.
People who do crating don’t think they’re confining anything or doing anything bad tho
yeah exactly. The person above said that “Being confined like a potted plant is considered acceptable for a person in a coma or with a severe disabilities, but not for a pet.” but it sure seems to me like people think that it’s fine to confine pets as well.
That’s why there are no homeless, unfed, untreated medical conditions, and slave labor! 🌈🌞🦄
Well, I just said “higher” not “above all else” and the animal bar isn’t that high to begin with.
Money > humans > pets > wildlife > farm animals
Because you need to control humans, but there is no need for pets.
In fact, it seems that euthanasia and abortion are more difficult where religion is stronger.
Religion.
Historically the primary reason that euthanasia is repeatedly challenged / legally blocked worldwide.
Religions and doctors “vowing to protect life.” Especially religious doctors “vowing to protect life” even when the life means just pain and suffering that can’t be properly eased with pain meds either, because you know, the dying person might get addicted to the meds. That’s obviously worse.
In my country, when an elder person is too sick and “ready to be euthanized”, they just stop giving them water and let them dry to death. It can take weeks. They do give some pain medication, but there is no way of knowing what amount is enough. You’d imagine that dying that way is pretty damn painful yet they don’t have a way of communicating that. But if they OD’ed, it would be murder so better let them suffer!
But also, euthanizing animals is becoming more taboo too. Many pets live in pain, relying in “pet mobility carts” and medications. Antidepressants for cats, epilepsy meds for dogs… Vets prolong the suffering for money, for people who can’t accept facts and do the kind and right thing. Animals have no way of communicating about side-effects from medications. Endless rehoming is thought to be better than letting go.
My grandfather got that treatment. Fuck religions.
I am indeed sorry that Doctors who misunderstood the Bible did that to your grandfather.
To artificially prolong life in pain and suffering is extremely immoral
the Wise know that sometimes, their time has come whatever was created must either perish or have eternal life
To add to the comments; many people and laws still view animals as objects, to do with as one pleases. I still hear americans -i’m from europe- talking about animals as ‘it’.
Edit; typo
Part of Me calls animals “it” because it’s kinda messed up to force human constructs of gender on them. I always try to put in effort to call babies “it” until they’re old enough to state their pronoun preference. But with animals, I don’t think the “it” pronouns are as important, because they don’t understand. So there’s a much bigger part of Me that’s willing to gender animals than babies.
Why not use “they”? Its gender neutral without being objectifying
Because the talking animals I know tend to prefer “it”. The ones who were unfortunately born in human bodies, I mean.
And because singular “they” implies personhood, and I don’t want to project personhood onto animals. Instead, I want us to decouple our ethics from personhood and treat non-persons with some level of equality with persons. You shouldn’t need to be a person in order to have rights. Calling animals people just reifies the supremacy of persons, and causes more issues down the line when it comes to the questions of non-persons who aren’t animals, and their rights. Like aliens and AIs.
Because the talking animals I know tend to prefer “it”. The ones who were unfortunately born in human bodies, I mean.
If they can talk, they have a human mind. And apparently they have a human body. Idk man kinda just sounds like you’re talking to humans to me
This is delusional
That’s what bigots say about trans people.
Same in Europe though. In fact “it” is just the proper pronoun for a lot of animals in gendered European languages.
At least in the States, I believe it’s for religious and financial reasons. Correct me if I’m wrong, but allowing someone to off themselves could be condemning them to hell. Also, to be cynical, medically assisted “checking out” is the easier, cheaper way out, instead of burning through money in a hospital.
Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with ending the suffering of a terminal illness. Prolonged suffering is unnecessary, and a person should have the right to go out on their own terms.
I’m saying that insurance companies are greedy and want to make more money from the terminally ill, at the expense of the suffering of the patients and their families.
United Healthcare was recently caught paying nursing homes not to send elderly in medical distress to the hospitals, to save on costs.
Yeah, I think their attribution is off. Hospitals and care homes make money off of medical care for elderly and chronically ill/disabled patients from Medicare/medicaid, so there can be a perverse incentive for care providers to perform more testing and treatment than is medically necessary or advisable. Like chemotherapy for people who don’t even have cancer. Additionally, medical technology or pharmaceutical companies sometimes pay doctors for prescriptions, so there can be an even stronger incentive to provide specific treatments, even if they’re inappropriate for the patient at hand.
Insurance companies are on the opposite side of the spectrum when it comes to perverse incentives- they benefit from as few and as inexpensive treatments as possible, regardless of the reason (partially, they also sometimes have contracts with medtech and pharmaceutical companies- second link below). Whether claims for treatment are denied and the insured forgoes care, then dies; claims bounce around in the denial and appeal process for long enough that the insured dies; or the insured can be fully treated quickly and cheaply, the insurance company benefits. When they approve and pay claims for longer term or more expensive care, they consider the company to be losing money, instead of simply allocating money that they had already earmarked for general claim payments to specific insureds/recipients.
I left a job in liability insurance, which is actually very different from health insurance, but they both operate on some similar principles (and under similar bounds) of contract law, risk assessment, etc., because I didn’t agree with the ethics of it and couldn’t rationalize it to myself anymore. Even internally, at every level of interaction, we always phrased our goal as paying exactly what we owed, not as little as possible though. The concept of a company officially and openly naming a role “denial nurse” is wild to me. It feels like something I’d see as the joke answer in an hr training video about legal compliance at my old company.
Kudos to you for not selling your ethics.
I mean, it took me a few years, but the more I learned, the worse it got.
The psyche often refuses to believe what it finds distasteful, abhorrent, until it simply can not. It sank in, and you took action, rather than stay for “practical reasons.” Credit where it’s due.
Nothing remotely like this was said.
@TrickDacy what does ending the suffering of a terminal illness mean ??
Nothing to do with what was said and should be a personal choice. But I’m not participating in a weird conversation you tried to create here based on things no one said.
@TrickDacy why should suicide be a personal choice ??🤔🤔🤔
Obvious reasons but
I’m not participating in a weird conversation you tried to create here based on things no one said.
Your trolling is weak
I can’t answer that but I would ike to use this discussion to say that I’m generally impressed by veterinarians. They have patients that are actually different species and (e.g. in dogs) their size and weight varies widely. They can’t speak or consent to anything and they often actively hide if they’re in pain or impaired. Placebo effect probably doesn’t really work either.At the same time the owners (if it’s a pet) often love them like a child and get super worried and / or pissed if something happens.
Also regularly performing euthanasia (without the patients consent) probably is pretty though on their psyche.
Short answer: religion.
“Only God can take a life”… except when it an heretic, a non believer, a sinner, …
Killing believers = sin
Killing non believers = " the work of God"
And pets are animals and “you can do as you please”.
It’s honestly kind of depressing. I went all out for my dog’s end of life care, ensuring it was as dignified as possible and he was as comfortable as he could be, and I hate the idea that if I were to ever come down with Alzheimer’s or something, instead of going on my own terms in the comfort of my home with people I know and love, I would instead be kept alive as long as possible and then probably die with indignity, terrified and confused and not recognizing anyone around me or even my own self.
On one hand I am glad of what I was able to do for my dog, I loved him to death. I just wish that I could be afforded that same dignity when it’s my turn to go.
What everyone has missed so far:
Societies typically have a value for human life - it’s often cheap. A wrongful death lawsuit is an example of this.
However, individuals with names are where it gets messy and personal and emotional.
The Republican counter to Obamacare was that “Death Panels” would tell you when it was time to put your granny down because she was costing the state too much (what they said, not what Oabamacare’s policy really was). Once it became a question of “look at your Grandma Stevens and ask yourself when it’s time to put her down” that’s when it upset people.
Also, on the flip side, pets are animals that we have forced to some degree, to put up with our BS to have a stable food source. Humans do tons of wacky shit to them. We castrate them, cut off parts of their ears and tails, cut out their uteruses, breed them to be genuine abominations, cut their hair, teach them tricks, make them wear sweaters and shoes and jewelry, and make them eat pellets made by a machine from the parts of animals we don’t want to eat ourselves. Part of breeding them and buying them is the convenience of their lives in ours - we demand they be in our lives, and so people also play a role when they exit our lives. It’s an unnatural life for most pets, and we caused it.
Which all depends on how much a society really gets into pets. Plenty of places eat dogs and cats because it’s meat that grows itself. In parts of Eastern Europe, they only fix stray female dogs, not the males, because the patriarchal men making decisions don’t want to emasculate the boy dogs.
As for euthanasia in general, compassionate care of an aged pet often doesn’t align with how people put down a pet. Many shitbag people drown inconvenient animals, including pets. Some abandon their pets miles from home in hopes of them never coming back. Some only put them down when the vet bills get too expensive. A good vet will show you a chart that helps you understand how much pain an animal is in and let the owner who wants the pet to live forever for the owner’s emotional needs understand that they have to make a decision to end it. This is exceptionally rare, and not the way things go for 99.999% of the species made our pets on this planet.
Lets be honest, most humans do not view pets as equals to a human. Valuing our own species over others is just part of our biology. (not saying that I agree with this view)
If people had the legal responsibility to keep paying thousands or tens of thousands (or potentially more) to keep a pet alive at its senior years, then like… I bet like 50% of pet owners will either become bankrupt or go to jail for animal cruelty.
Laws are just written with humans prioritized… I mean… humans have healthcare¹, pets do not.
A human in an emergency situation arriving in a hospital, and they are legally required to give treatment even if the person cannot pay at the time¹, a vet can legally refuse to treat a pet in an emergency until the owner pays (not saying that would refuse, but they could).
(¹restrictions apply, varies by country)
One could argue that if euthanasia is legal, then there would be situations of: “Hey, granny is kinda taking too much resouces… maybe we should just pull the life support?” or “Okay my child has cancer and takes up too much of my money, and all this money would be wasted if the treatment fails, I’m gonna talk to the doctor and end this parasite once and for all”
One could argue that if euthanasia is legal, then there would be situations of: “Hey, granny is kinda taking too much resouces… maybe we should just pull the life support?” or “Okay my child has cancer and takes up too much of my money, and all this money would be wasted if the treatment fails, I’m gonna talk to the doctor and end this parasite once and for all”
Which is exactly why I’m in favour of euthanasia for humans on a moral level (people should be able to decide their own fate) but against it on a societal level (it will likely result in people getting pressured into “choosing” death.)
The harm of the people who are unable to choose death (a.k.a commit suicide) on their own suffering is a lesser evil compared to people who want to live being pressured into dying (in my view).
Right?! For example in Canada they have “MAID” (Medical Assistance in Dying) and it’s a good start but recently they tried to add mental disorders to it and it’s really itchy for me.
Yeah I got major downvotes on here once for saying MAiD for mental health problems seems ripe for abuse. Isn’t suicidal ideation a symptom of many mental health issues? And the state is just going to help people fulfil those urges rather than treating the underlying illness causing them? Seems crazy to me
Society is not that sick to let animals to suffer
Except if they’re animals in the mass meat production business, then nobody cares
I always said we are more humane to animals than we are to humanes
Most animals humans own live in factory farms.
I think opinions are shifting as people become less religious.
Euthanasia is accepted and has been legal in Belgium for decades. It’s not perfect but clearly better than nothing as it has stopped many people from needlessly suffering or worse, forcing their loved ones to discover their bodies after doing it themselves. (Though it still happens as many, many things aren’t covered or extremely hard)
Because we are so stupid and terrified about death.
I don’t have a good source, but my instinct is that ‘society at large’ in many (probably most) places is at least in majority ‘okay with human euthanasia’, and has been for quite a while. It’s the laws that need to catch up, but don’t due to lack of political will and a vocal minority.
