Posted on 01/09/2007 4:39:00 PM PST by wagglebee
Zurich, Switzerland (LifeNews.com) -- A Swiss euthanasia group that says it has coordinated the deaths of more than 600 people at its clinics there is coming under fire after a German woman apparently suffered tremendous pain when she died at one of its facilities.
The SonntagsZeitung newspaper in Zurich reported Sunday that a 43 year-old German woman with the initial A.H. screamed in pain for over four minutes before her death.
The Dignitas group gave her a lethal cocktail last November that eventually took her life.
Friends who accompanied her to her death told the newspaper the woman cried out, "I'm burning, I'm burning" and then fell into a coma. She was reportedly comatose for 38 minutes before finally succumbing to the drug.
Dignitas refuses to discuss the details of the case.
"We have no comment on any reports by the Tamedia house in Zurich," Dignitas head Ludwig Minelli told the AFP news agency about the company that publishes the newspaper.
If the allegations are true, this is the second time a German patient has suffered and been the victim of an assisted suicide that went wrong, despite assurances from euthanasia advocates that the process is painless and peaceful.
In August 2004, a Germany Dignitas client named Peter A. spent three days in a coma after taking the lethal drugs, the SonntagsZeitung reported.
A Zurich prosecutor told AFP it was too early to say whether it would conduct an investigation into the German woman's death.
Ludwig Minelli, the 74-year-old lawyer who runs Dignitas, told British lawmakers in September that the group has killed 619 of its members since it was created in May 1998.
In July, he indicated he plans to create a chain of centers across Europe and he claims in a recent interview that the group has saved more lives than it has taken.
He claims the group has saved lives by helping people to talk more about end of life issues, which has resulted in fewer people committing assisted suicide who might have otherwise.
"We are the biggest suicide preventing organization," Minelli claimed in an interview with Reuters, alleging that 70 percent of the people who Dignitas clears to kill themselves don't follow through.
"I have always been a person who helps people," he added, rejecting criticism from pro-life groups and others that his group encourages people to use assisted suicide.
Wesley J. Smith, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute and a special consultant to the Center for Bioethics and Culture, says Dignitas is doing a disservice to the disabled and elderly.
"Dignitas admits to having assisted the suicides of many people who were not terminally ill. As Minelli succinctly put it, 'We never say no,'" Smith explained.
"Minelli's position has a large constituency among euthanasia believers. Indeed, over the years, the movement has left many telltale signs that assisted suicide is not intended ultimately to be restricted to the imminently dying," he said.
Smith worries that, should Dignitas take its assisted suicide centers worldwide that a right to die will turn into a duty to die.
"Once assisted suicide is accepted in law and culture, the premises of radical autonomy and allowing killing to alleviate human suffering would conjoin, unleashing the irresistible power of logic that would push us inexorably toward the humanist nirvana of death on demand," Smith says.
I would agree if the Germans were complaining about how Poles or Czechs killed people, but the Swiss were at best "useful idiots" for the Nazis.
And they are going to set up a chain of these death clinics. I predict that from the 'right to die' will stem the 'duty to die,' and soon thereafter the kiddies will be dragging grandma into such 'clinics.'
That's certainly their goal.
sans Morphine. (Doh!)
It is amazing to me how little research people who want to commit suicide will actually do.
But they're opposed to the death penalty for those who have committed violent, atrocious crimes because it's *inhumane*.
*bang head on desk*
I've always thought that would be a good way to execute those on death row. With the lefties catering to junkies, maybe they'd quit b!tching about "cruel and inhumane death".
What the heck was it, drain cleaner? What morons. How about just a bunch of sleeping pills? I guess it's more fun to watch them scream and writhe in pain.
"I have always been a person who helps people," he added, rejecting criticism from pro-life groups and others that his group encourages people to use assisted suicide.
So that's what he thinks he's doing, helping people. Deluded or evil I'm not sure which, but helping? Absolutely NOT.
Even then one has to do it right. One of my relatives who is in the medical field told me not long ago about a ward at her hospital which has among its patients some young people (teenagers) who botched their suicide by gun. Among them is a young man who pointed a shotgun under his chin and succeeded in blowing off his face and blinding himself. Now, he's in that ward, awaiting perhaps decades before he dies. The very thought of having no face and being blind depresses the heck out of me. I suppose that he eventually will go home once his family is taught how to care for him, but still...
So, if you're going to do it, point the gun in the right direction. Under the chin doesn't cut it. I happen to know how it's done but I'm not gonna say.
Yes. And that is the most tragic part.
bizarre that they refer to her as a "patient".
And often end up with a free new liver.
We had one come into the ICU I used to work in, who had shot himself THREE TIMES with a 30-06. He did not make it, but after "missing" twice due to flinching, he still managed to reposition the weapon and pull the trigger a third time. He lasted most of a day, and then became a donor.
We also had a woman for three weeks before the family let her go moved her to a skilled facility that would take her. She had shot herself in the head with a .38; no exit wound. The slug bounced off the opposite side of her skull, and went through another portion of her brain. She was breathing on her own, not ventilated, so no life support to remove.
Other horror stories over the years involving guns done wrong. No, thank you.
Vonnegut had a vision.
What, did they hire George Felos as a front man?
Man, you could charge admission.
No lingering pain. No comatose survivors. You would need a garden hose and a mop in there afterward.
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