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A euthanasia clinic cum lottery for tormented souls who are terminally suicidal, but otherwise physically healthy.
There are 200 participants in each round. All participants sign a consent form saying that all their organs are donated to the clinic in case of death.
200 pills are placed in a box
and thouroughly shuffled. Of those 200 pills, 199 contain the usual barbiturate cocktail employed by euthanasia clinics. But one pill , physically indistingushable, contains only sugar.
Each participant picks a pill out of the box. All patients are then instructed to simultaneously swallow the pills, under medical supervision. The participants must do the swallowing themselves, to comply with euthanasia laws. If a patient changes his mind in the last moment, he can walk away and tear the consent form, no questions asked.
Once the "losers" have been declared dead, the clinic sells their organs for about €50,000 each. The "winner" is awarded a sum of about €10 Million.
This should be enough to cure his depression and desire for suicide. Let's face it, 99% of severe depression, if not caused by health problems, has financial origins, one way or another. For instance, the prospect of never having to do dreary 9-5 job again, will eliminate depression in most people.
For a sucidal person who has nothing to lose, this would be a great service. The odds of 1:200 of starting a new life feel within real grasp and are far beyond anything a normal lottery could offer. This would give all participants a great sense of hope in their otherwise bleak lives. And even if they lose, they die knowing that their death is not in vain.
A good euthenasia idea
Titanic_20Re-Creati...Euthanasia_20Cruise
One of my favourite idea's on the site actually. [theleopard, Feb 21 2008]
The Long Walk
http://en.wikipedia.../wiki/The_Long_Walk
100 boys in a walking contest. Those that can't keep up get shot and the last one standing gets an incredible prize. Similar, equally horrifically immoral and would be better for TV ratings. [hidden truths, Feb 21 2008]
[link]
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Bone just for thinking most peoples depression could be solved with money (-). |
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Low probability, but just thinking...
placebo effect, person who takes sugar pill dies. (Not impossible; he's v.v. depressed, expects to die, just gives up & expires.)
Now you have 200 dead, not 199; and the clinic gets to keep the money.
As if by magic, lawyers appear... |
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You don't love anyone who is depressed. I hope for their sake, you never do. |
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<Gives [gutpunchllulabies] a friendly nod and moves in behind [RafordSteele]> |
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Wow! Where did we attract you from, [kinemojo]? You are so absolutely right with this idea that you should go back there and never revisit the halfbakery again. These people can't handle the truth the way you can! |
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Nice link [hidden truths]. Read that years ago, Stephen King writing as Bachman. |
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As to the idea, I really don't think it bears commenting on. |
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Lets killing people! Suicide today, and you could win 10,000,000 pounds! Bone, and don't do it again. |
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One of my dearest friends suffers with depression. A colleague at work has also had major problems. A childhood friend lost his mother to it before we were ten years old. |
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I don't think I can adequately express the visceral anger I'm feeling right now. You're not the first to box up the suicidal as if they were in some sort of unchangeable state, here only to kill themselves somehow, detached from your life. Other ideas ask, for example, why we don't make them stuntmen or kill them in some other way that would serve us. You've not quite gone that far, I accept. But nonetheless I could gladly grab you by the collars and shake you at this point. Don't meddle with things you don't understand. |
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I've been battling depression for the last six years, as many of the older bakers know. I'm not suicidal, though there was a period in my early 20s...
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This L/user has obviously stumbled upon this place whilst trolling the web. Finding the HB, it has sadly decided to post something it thinks is funny, missing the mark by a wide margin. |
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Don't get too angry with him... the odds are pretty good that he will soon take on enough responsibility in his pathetic little life (from around 26 years of age) that his natural serotonin levels will fall to a point where he requires medication or will self-medicate with illicit drugs in order to feel better. |
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With a bit of luck he will fall into the demograph that wind up depressed to the point of irrationality. Then would be the time to grab him by the lapels and explain to him that he's a whining loser and that the world would be a better place if he just went and played on a train line. |
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Of course, at age 18 or so he's ten feet tall, bulletproof and hasn't had to deal with these sorts of issues as yet, so we can all feel suitably knowledgeable and superior in the face of his nonsensical maunderings. |
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// Let's face it, 99% of severe depression, if not caused by health problems, has financial origins// |
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By virtue of this idiotic statement, one may rightly say that you, my friend, are an idiot. |
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This is a list of major suicide risk factors from the Encyclopedia of Mental Disorders, a respected publication carefully researched checked by large numbers of psychiatric and psychology professionals. |
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- Male sex.
- Age over 75.
- A family history of suicide.
- A history of suicide attempts.
- A history of abuse in childhood.
- Traumatic experiences after childhood
- Recent stressful events, such as separation or divorce, job loss, or death of spouse.
- Chronic medical illness. Patients with AIDS have a rate of suicide 20 times that of the general population.
- Access to a gun. Death by firearms is now the fastest growing method of suicide among men and women. Nearly 57% of deaths caused by guns in the U.S. are suicides.
- Alcohol or substance abuse. While mood-altering substances do not cause a person to kill himself/herself, they weaken impulse control.
- High blood cholesterol levels.
- Presence of a psychiatric illness. Over 90% of Americans who commit suicide have a mental illness. Major depression accounts for 60% of suicides, followed by schizophrenia, alcoholism, substance abuse, borderline personality disorder, Huntington's disease, and epilepsy. The lifetime mortality due to suicide in psychiatric patients is 15% for major depression; 20% for bipolar disorder; 18% for alcoholism; 10% for schizophrenia; and 5–10% for borderline and certain other personality disorders. |
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Nowhere is financial status mentioned (other than in the "recent stress" section regarding job loss, but that isn't even necessarily a financial crisis in someone's life). But it did not take that research for me to know that the statement is idiotic. It should be common knowledge that suicides are as prevalent among the wealthy as they are among the poor. |
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Other than that, what [everyone] said. |
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//Those are suicide risk factors not depression risk factors// |
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The most likely reason for you to make this statement is that you are contending that the statment the list is intended to correct is true. |
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However, while the risk factors are for suicide, the depression that the auther discusses is necessarily suicidal, so the argument holds. |
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[rcarty], do you actually believe that most suicidal depression (I won't hold you to the absurd 99%) is caused by financial problems? I am certain that you will not find any evidence to suppoort that notion. |
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Did you even read the idea and my reaction? |
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It is the author who is denying "psychosocial factors to depression" and reducing them down to 1%, with the remaining 99% being money. |
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I am trying to promote the idea that depression is deeper than that. |
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If you two don't stop this arguing I'm gonna slash my wrists! |
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//This should be enough to cure his depression and desire for suicide.// |
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"Oh. My. God. I've just made €10 million out of the deaths of 199 people. All of whom were in a difficult corner like me. What does that say about me? Doesn't that put me in the same bracket as Judas? No, he didn't make as much or kill as many. I'm sure the world would be better without me..." |
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This is a phenomenally stupid idea. |
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Let's face it, life can be tough. Even if you are a reallly together guy/girl who knows where his or her towel is, like me, life can still try to throw you of balance what with all the shit that keeps happening even if you are good and pure. |
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So to all those who read this I would like to say: hang in there. |
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I have suffered from depression since my early childhood, say from around the age of seven. I am now 37 and am pleased to tell you that I have been cured. Yes, CURED. It is a disease and I have healed. I now have the neccesary tools to cope with whatever life throws my way and am confident that depression will not be part of my life again. Pain, sadness, anger, I experience them and get better and wiser from it without getting depressed. |
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I tell you about this personal stuff only in the hope that you will take hope and strength from my experience and the notion that you to can be cured if you are depressed. |
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And even though my depression put me on the brink of hurting myself I would like to remind you that depression is not the most common factor to lead to suicide. |
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Most suicides are not premeditated, but the result of a split second reaction where anger turns inward. Peer pressure, stress, not feeling loved enough, loneliness, sudden exposure of bad deeds in the past are more common causes of suicide. |
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Also many suicides are a cry for help. The lucky ones don't succeed and get over it with love. |
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On a slightly scientific medical note, most drugs capable of causing death will ruin the organs, so you'll only be alble to harvest them from that one lucky guy who didn't take the poison. I'm sure he won't mind, what with all that money making him happy. I've seen a lot of happy rich people out in LA... |
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Perhaps you should just disable the brakes on their cars... though that would still lead to liver trauma in most cases. That would prevent "block" transplants, which ar transplants of heart / lungs / liver simultaneously. They are done to minimise the number of blood vessels that need to be reconnected. |
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The liver is particularly susceptible to tearing, in fatal crashes. |
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I would like to offer my two cents on this issue as someone who has suffered from depression, has considered suicide and has not been offended by this idea. This may not be the route that most of you have taken in life, but I've gradually taken steps to remove from myself any emotion that can be manipulated by other people or uncontrollable circumstance, and one of these is the sorrow that accompanies death. While it is possible that [kinemojo] is an ignorant and insensitive prick, it is also possible that his way of coping with depression issues is to simply detach himself from the emotion. You have all been very hard on him and I understand that you've been offended, but I think he understands now how society reacts to this kind of thing. |
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This has been said before. Cause of death by lethal injection (or another chemical cocktail) is massive organ failure. Ergo, the organs would not be fit to sell. |
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I presume a few things here. You have successfully conquered your urge to purge the world of yourself, and you feel, as most addicts that have kicked the habit do, the urge to propagate your wisdom. |
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If you honestly feel that luck and serendipity played a part in your salvation, then by all means, evangalise it. However the truth, methinks, lies a little deeper, and perhaps that is the message you should be passing on. |
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If, however, I am wrong. I eagerly await the results of your competition. The presumption being that you are in the first round. |
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I can understand the negative and emotional reactions to this idea, but I think they are mostly dishonest and sometimes hypocritical. |
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First, let me clarify: This is not an ignorant attempt at making fun of people suffering from depression. I have been a victim of depression myself in the past, despite being very young, [whoever -accused -me-of- youthful-arrogance].
In my case, the depression was caused not directly by poverty, but by a complex chain of events that could have been broken if I had been super-rich. I am not suggesting that money can cure depression by making you happy, but I think that for many people suffering from it, money _can_ help break the viscious cycle.
The problem with depression is that it is self-enforcing, and that the tiniest lifestyle detail, such as living next to a noisy street, can keep feeding the positive-feedback loop. The other problem is that there is no "cheap" cure.
It takes several years of experimenting, "finding yourself", travelling, and _underperfoming_ to break out of that cycle, and the material constraints of the average middle class wage-slave simply do not allow for that kind of leeway unless they are still a teenager. Sure it would be nice if depressed people got financial assistance from state/charity, but that rarely happens in real life. |
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Secondly, "our" society (North America and Europe) is becoming increasingly libertarian, and nobody (at least not in my social circles) seems to object to this. I would not be surprised if several of the people who were so outraged by my idea were actually rabid libertarians in private. There seems to be a large number of them on the HB, anyhow. Not that I think libertarianism is evil, but its logical consequence is that our society will eventually allow such institutions to exist (and indeed already allows them), if it continues following the current path. |
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We cannot have it both ways. We cannot, as a society, worship The Individual and His Freedoms, but then ignore the other side of the coin. We cannot condemn the constraints that religion, patriarchy, family, social democracy, etc. places on individual freedoms, and then express outrage when some individuals use those freedoms to cause harm to themselves. |
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I am pro-suicide and I am not ashamed of it. Sure, it is unethical to encourage frivolous suicide, and strong prevention mechanism should be in place. But ultimately, people should be given the freedom to choose for themselves. The mere existence of such a "lottery clinic" would have given me hope as a depressed individual, even if I had never intended on setting foot in it. |
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It's almost a cliche that the person you just found out killed themself was 'doing so well'. |
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Once you make a huge effort, and break your back doing a lot of work despite wanting to lay in bed all day, and finally find success- And then maybe one day you realize the depression is still with you, and it just destroys all hope. |
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I have to say that an unearned windfall would probably just give you more time to sit around being depressed. |
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[kinemojo], the point here is that any society that has an institution such as this is a sick society. |
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[kinemojo], I'm not impressed that your response is to imply that "most people" who object are probably hypocrites and "raging libertarians". I've told you my position and why I hold it. I'm not in favour of suicide, nor of the overarching freedom of the individual to do whatever they please. |
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That is, I don't believe that one's life is one's own to take, and I utterly reject this idea as twisted at best, and outright evil at worst. |
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We've lost good folks here due to depression in the past. I again request for a deletion to respect some sensitivities. |
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Of the four people I have known personally and well who have taken their own lives, there is one who may have been helped by a massive infusion of cash, although I'm not certain they could have handled it. One would have required you add an extra '0' to the sum to qualify as a 'drop in the bucket'. One would have certainly ended up massively enriching an undeserving ex-spouse, intensifying the depression many-fold. And the last - I hate to think how horrid, with state involvement, media attention, flocks of lawyers - would probably have resulted in at least three more deaths. |
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There are a lot of people who don't understand relative risks. There would be people doing whatever necessary to get into the lottery, thinking it a worthwhile 'calculated risk'. |
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Suicide hurts people. Don't encourage it. |
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(Clinic director [kinemojo] to surviving next-of-kin: "No, ma'am, the proceeds from the sale of your husband's body parts go toward making up the prize money. Very regrettable, of course; but I'm sure you and the kids must have been creeps to drive the old man into this, anyway. He lost, okay? Face facts. Now if you'd sod off, I've got some ad copy to review.") |
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Have a wander through the remembrance posts, [kinemojo]. At least two of those remembered there took their own lives. I defy you to find anyone here who supported their decisions. |
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I'm not angry now. I'm bitterly sad. Please, for the sake of all those who have lost friends and children, delete this. |
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Apparently a sense of humour has left the
room. |
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Why not televise it? Allow spectator
betting? A no-holds-barred version where
they are locked in a room for three days
and all the pills MUST be eaten? |
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What transplant recipient is going to want the organs of someone who just died from a massive dose of poison? That's like featuring puffer fish on Iron Chef. Still, I'm laying some loaf on you just for taking on a controversial topic. Croissant! |
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My life IS mine to take, this defines my ultimate freedom. I have no choice but to respect the choice of anybody who decides to take their own life. Easy for me to say as nobody close to me ever did it. |
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I did bring my sense of humour, it wasn't activated. |
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[marked-for-deletion] utter bullocks, stereo typing, cruelty, gross out humour, advocacy, bad science. |
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Even the addition of jam and bees won't help this one. |
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//defines my ultimate freedom// |
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Hmmm. Perhaps, in a broad sense. But recall that in Guyana in 1978, one man convinced almost a thousand people to take their own lives by convincing them that they were defining their ultimate freedom. |
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Jim Jones insisted (listen if you can to the death tape) that by this suicide they were making the rest of the world respect them. But I am not alone in not considering their action at all respectable, but reprehensible and horrific, even besides the children part. |
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"Let's make a suicide lottery."
"Are you joking?"
"No, I think it would help people."
"That's a terrible idea."
"Woah, you don't find it funny."
Maybe, [Dilettante], you could explain why a sense of humour failure is so unexpected? |
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Meh, don't bother. You're only trolling. Go do it somewhere where you look a bit less insensitive. |
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Yes in a broad sense, the broadest philosophical sense, my ability to end my own life defines the extreme of my freedom. My feelings about suicide are best described by the story of Aragorn. Google that if you want to know. |
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On a more down to earth, both feet on the ground note, I say that most suicides are the final result of some mental illness, that could have been cured, like mine was. |
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//3019 or 3020: Arwen and Aragorn marry in Midsummer. They reign for many years and he dies in the 102nd year of his reign and 190th year of his life.\\ |
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Did a quick search and this is all I came up with. Aragorn decides to die and dies by the power of his will, stops his heart and breath with willpower. |
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//[marked-for-deletion] utter bullocks// Hahahah. |
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