[kstenerud]

My wife helped a friend die in Germany 10 years ago. He'd acquired some cyanide, which resulted in a long, protracted death because he took too much and vomited most of it up. It was messy, painful and traumatic, but she sat with him until the end.

When someone is determined enough to die, they find a way.

[b3lvedere]

Terrible to read he still suffered a lot. I hope your wife is ok.

I've read about four or five stories in my lifetime about people who assisted in aiding a dear friend. Most of them just stuffed a pillow in their face when they begged to end their very painful existence.

I've witnessesed my brother in law suffer immensly from cancer before he decided to end it all by assisted death. Near the end he was not human anymore for me. Just a body chock full of medicines constantly trying to survive as much as possible. I can't blame the cells trying to win that desperate war, but it was horrifying to watch him transition from a strong happy human to that state.

[sitkack]

I heard a first hand account of someone help their father with last stage cancer administer a morphine drip, everyone said their goodbyes and he went to sleep. Only to wake up hours later and say, it is working and they both struggled to milk the bag to increase the flow, they talked for 20 minutes while they both tried to "fix it" and he finally went back to sleep for the last time.

We need a humane way to treat humans.

[jamal-kumar]

That's wild, because in my understanding it's an indictable offence to aid and abet someone to end their own lives in Canada. Like more than 10 years jail

https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/c-46/section-241.ht...

Counselling or aiding suicide

    241 (1) Everyone is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term of not more than 14 years who, whether suicide ensues or not,

        (a) counsels a person to die by suicide or abets a person in dying by suicide; or

        (b) aids a person to die by suicide.

The document goes on to detail the medical exemptions we're talking about here. What's the law in Germany?

[kstenerud]

She didn't care, and she got away with it. And if she were still alive today, I wouldn't be talking about it since the statute of limitations is not passed.

Also this was in Germany, but still just as illegal.

She was the most amazing and remarkable woman I ever met. There will be an Arte documentary about her early next year (not about this; about her work in Ukraine).

[squigz]

I doubt GP's friend was really considering the law in that circumstance.