Comment by rectang | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rectang | Hacker News Reader

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It's not zero. The numbers are pretty big:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treatment-resistant_depression...

Treatment-resistance is relatively common in cases of Major Depressive Disorder. Rates of total remission following antidepressant treatment are only 50.4%. In cases of depression treated by a primary-care physician, 32% of patients partially responded to treatment and 45% did not respond at all.

I'm not advocating withholding help from any of them. It's more of a philosophical quandary.

If you believe (as I do) that the universe is indifferent to human suffering, that life has no greater purpose beyond this one life, and that minimizing human suffering is worthwhile; then the idea of forcing someone to live a life of pain bothers me. And at the same time, the idea of a suicide increasing the suffering of those left behind also bothers me.

It's probably impossible to avoid this degenerating into a religious debate, but those are my thoughts.

> It's not zero. The numbers are pretty big

Woah.. treatment resistance is nowhere near the same as being untreatable. It's an alarmingly huge leap to make, especially since the definition kicks in after only two anti-depressants have failed.

> minimizing human suffering is worthwhile;

I agree..

> then the idea of forcing someone to live a life of pain bothers me

But I still take issue with the seeming over-simplicity of this statement, as well as your original comment, because it (dangerously, in my opinion) brings the notion of euthanasia/suicide [1] into the dicussion merely because of some pain.

If someone's life is going to be, essentially, nothing but pain, then, OK, I agree it's inhumane to force that someone to live, but that just hasn't been established.

Meanwhile, philisophically, I'm uncomfortable with not pursuing all the other avenues of pain relief before resorting to death.

[1] Assisted, unassisted, whatever.. I'm not categorically opposed, by any means.

Have you seen this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWWkUzkfJ4M

Ironically, had that woman lived in a country which forces people to live, the result would have been, as she put it, "a grusome and lonely death".

Fortunately, that speculation has little merit, not just because it's a sample size of 1 (aka anecdata) but, more importantly, because it was made by the depression sufferer herself.

Also, characterizing a country that doesn't support physician-assisted suicide as one which forces people to live strikes me as a non-sequitur. Merely decriminalizing suicide is enough to remove any "force".

This is why I, again, object to your glossing over the details when speaking on this issue. The details matter, especially if you're not just trying to gratuitously stir up emotion or controversy.

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