VSED: The Downsides of Fasting for Ending Life
What are the pros and cons of voluntarily stopping eating and drinking to end your life?
This is the last video in a three-part series on the process of dying. The first two were How to Die a Good Death ( ) and VSED: The Benefits of Fasting for Ending Life ( ).
Please take care while watching these videos if this is a difficult topic for you.
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Please take care while watching these videos if this is a difficult topic for you.
FIRST
I’m heartbroken for this. It feels wrong but also it doesn’t. What if I did do it years a go when I was really in a bad shape in my mind, i would’ve done it. But looking back now I’m glad I didn’t. How is this justified?
I think they are talking about people with terminal illnesses that way beyond hope for recovery, like cancers that have spread to every system of the body, although I can’t imagine being a part of doing this to someone who is asking for food and water. If someone asks for food and water, I’m giving it to them.
My dad was terminal. He’d decided to stop eating and drinking. The doctors worked on my mother to get her to persuade him to get a feeding tube. *That* was inhumane.
Damn. Life’s hard!
Appreciation for covering a sensative topic with empathy and sound science ✌️
If the patient doesn’t want to eat when dying thats ok. Other animals hide and stop eating when they are dying.
This is interesting information for dry fasting, which I think is probably not a good idea for people to do. But it supports the reasons why people do it. Seems pretty dangerous to me.
I’m confused how not eating or drinking at all is not miserable
This is a really important topic. Would hospice teams be on board if the patient made a request for help and comfort care while withholding food and water?
My dad got no food or water in hospice. Just morphine.
This is why you make the decision yourself, when you still can, because if you don’t your loved ones will be forced to make it for you. My father died of Alzheimer’s, and my mother had to give the order to deny him hydration and nutrition. It is cruel to put that burden on a loving relative. It is cruel to make the patient continue in a life they didn’t want to be that way. If I cannot be offered the same humane, painless death we afford a beloved pet, let me make my own choice while I am still competent.