I think clinging to life is partially rooted in an egoist/solipsistic metaphysics that you yourself are all that matters (to yourself at least, of course). Relax, we're just a small part of the cosmos. Ancient and immortal :)
But we should put guardrails around if the reason for assisted suicide is not pressure from relatives, depression, etc.
But it being a hard topic does not imply the easy solution of banning it.
The relevant word during our fascist rise is schadenfreude. People not only want to see them drop dead for having the audacity to be dirty and unhoused - they want to see them suffer, hard, the entire time.
You gotta find a way to stop making the inflicting of pain on others pleasurable.
The important point is this: are you causing emotional, psychological, physical distress in the real world to those you care about when you have this disease? Yes or no. That's what I care about. Whether they are able to remember me well despite that, or poorly because of that should be completely secondary.
Sure, we can think about how the burdens of caring for our family can be lessened as they age, or how we may help reduce that burden for our family, but family does have the duty to care for its members, and to place such considerations above the intrinsic value of human life is very sad indeed.
I watched both of my parents deteriorate in the end. The morphine blotted out my father's ability to form long term memory, if it wasn't in front of him things were like they had been before so much morphine was needed. There can be no value in such "life".
As far as I'm concerned not allowing people to end the suffering is a form of sadism.
I suspect this thread will go like many have in the past: there are two camps. The first has never seen a bad death and has a lot of opposition to people choosing to end their life. The second has seen a bad death and a lot of people would choose suicide before reaching that point. If it is a contempt for human life that means people have contempt for their own life and that doesn't make much sense. I can look at myself: I have been dealt a presumably genetic killer, I saw what it did to my mother and I will not allow that to happen to me. Do I have contempt for my own life because I expect the end to be suicide?
This is equally true of conditions like paranoid schizophrenia or psychopathy. Sometimes a person is just born with wiring that makes you dangerous to others. Does this mean that everyone around them must have the magnanimity and charity to them attacking people at random?
