No, we can't promise you what type of Soylent you'll be made into.
Posted on 10/27/2008 2:49:24 PM PDT by wagglebee
SCHWERZENBACH, Switzerland, October 27, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) – According to a Swiss physician, suicide “is a human right” that must be accommodated by allowing doctors to prescribe lethal doses of sedatives, so that patients do not have to resort to more “brutal” methods. Alois Geiger wrote in the Times on Friday that he is one of three doctors who prescribe drugs to people who come to the legal “suicide clinic” Dignitas in Schwerzenbach, Switzerland (See: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/artic...).
In his piece, entitled “Why I prescribe drugs for suicide,” Geiger wrote that lethal doses of sedatives allow a person “to end his life in a pain-free way, free of brutality, and moreover to do so not alone but accompanied by people standing lovingly at his side.”
Geiger said that objections to doctors prescribing suicide drugs comes from an attachment to the ancient Hippocratic Oath that was once routinely taken by physicians. The Oath, dating to the 4th century BC, was largely abandoned by the medical profession in recent times because it includes a prohibition against abortion. Similarly, those who take the Oath swear, “I will not give a lethal drug to anyone if I am asked, nor will I advise such a plan.”
Geiger said the Oath is “largely out of date” because it forbids abortion and the removal of “bladderstones.” “Nowadays,” he wrote, “an effective and safe drug can end a pregnancy in the early weeks without a problem. The excision of bladderstones is not immoral and the same can be said for a socially approved termination of pregnancy administered by a doctor.”
“When it comes to prescribing medication to a patient to help end his life, I view the Hippocratic oath in a similar way,” Geiger wrote.
But the actual experience of the death of a loved one at the Dignitas facility is far from the candle-lit fantasy of the euthanasia proponents.
The Dignitas facility, usually described in the media as a “clinic,” brings clients to an anonymous apartment where the drugs or other methods of killing are administered and the whole operation is filmed. The video of the death is then sent to the Swiss Crown Prosecutors to prove that the death was within the law.
Dignitas was evicted from its rented flat in Zurich last year after complaints from other tenants. Gloria Sonny, a neighbour in the building told the Daily Telegraph at the time, “We call it the 'House of Horrors'.”
In 2007, Paul Clifford, a man from South London whose mother, Maxine Coombes, committed suicide at the Dignitas facility, described the family’s experience as “terrible” and likened the flat where his mother died to a “backstreet abortion place.” Mr. Clifford, describing his experience to the Daily Mail newspaper, said, “I wanted to take the drink [lethal dose] off her and chuck it on the floor but that would have been selfish.”
Coombes, he said, took a lethal dose of barbiturates just 15 minutes after entering the room after a Dignitas staffer, “Arthur,” recorded her answers to questions that would absolve the organisation of legal blame: “You know what you are doing, don’t you? Nobody’s pressuring you to drink this drink, are they? You know if you drink this drink you are going to die?”
After his mother’s death, Clifford said he had to go out of the room and “sit on a flight of stairs which stank of urine” while the staffer checked that she was dead. Later, the state prosecutor and a medical examiner arrived and asked the family “loads of questions,” while Coombes remained slumped in her wheelchair. When Clifford was allowed to spend a few minutes with his mother’s corpse, the body had been left on a bench “going blue”, and covered in a “dirty blanket like half a curtain, with “her clothes chucked on the floor.”
Dignitas founder, Ludwig Minelli, said in an interview in March 2008 that Dignitas has assisted 840 people to commit suicide.
Geiger blames the monotheistic religions, particularly Christianity, for the prohibition against suicide. But, he writes, “what if there is no God?” Suicide should be an option, he argues, for those who do not believe.
“[C]an there not be arguments for deciding the end of one's life: a life of suffering perhaps, or one blighted by increasing isolation, or the dependency on outside care?”
The Daily Mail reported earlier this year that the Dignitas facility was pioneering new suicide methods apart from drugs. In March, the Mail said that a helium-filled plastic bag is put over a client's head until he suffocates. Juerg Vollenweider, deputy head of the Zurich Oberland Crown Prosecution, confirmed that Dignitas used the new method for the first time on February 18.
See: Why I prescribe drugs for suicide, by Dignitas doctor
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/artic...
Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
Swiss Lure Suicide Victims: Euthanasia Administered Within 24 Hours
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2004/may/04052509.html
Neighbors Complain Swiss Euthanasia 'Clinic' Parade of Dead Bodies Disturbing
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/jun/06060807.html
Mentally Ill have a Right to Assisted Suicide ~ Swiss High Court
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/feb/07020206.html
Swiss Euthanasia Group Reopens "Clinic" Next to Country's Largest Brothel
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/mar/08031711.html
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Scary.
slippery slope strikes again- Dr., read Humane Vitae. Oh yeah God is dead in Switzerland.....Much like their population now.
Anyone who wants can jump off a high bridge or pull an Isiah Thomas. But having laws that sanction the state to help you with your dirt nap is beyond ridiculous.
2008: “Suicide is a Human Right”: Dignitas Suicide Doctor
2050: “Suicide is a HumanRightDuty”:Dignitas Suicide DoctorUN World Government
No it’s not
All Liberals have that right. Do it today.
One year, five of my students - former and present - committed suicide. It was a horrible year. The suicides wrecked families and tore communities apart. Unfortunately, those of us who live in interior Alaska are living in the center of the highest per capita suicide rate in North America, and that year may still yet be repeated around here. My disgust for this person suggesting that suicide is a “right” is intense. The person who committed suicide might be dead, but those left behind have to live with the pain for the rest of their lives.
The amoral idiot making this proposal should have sat with my son for the years following the suicide outbreak up here. Every time there was a death in the community or in the family, he’d look at me with those beautiful 4-year-old eyes and ask me if the dead person killed him or herself.
Cult of death indeed. These fools have no idea what kind of insanity they propose.
No, we can't promise you what type of Soylent you'll be made into.
You payin attention, hilary?
Not that I agree with this but.....
.....Why do we hear that gun control is needed to prevent suicide? It seems like shooting yourself with your own gun would be a double right here in the USA in this case.
You make an excellent point.
The description of the typical “Dignitas” experience sure doesn’t seem dignified to me.
I recall reading recently about a guy who had Dignitas off him because he was injured playing rugby a year or so ago and was paralyzed at the mid-chest. The last person who tried to talk him out of it was a guy who has lived 20 years so far as a quadriplegic (dude can’t even breathe for himself) because of his rugby injury. He says his life is great because he chooses to live, but he couldn’t get the other dude to see it.
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