Explain this part to me. Every patient in the USA already ---properly---- has a right to refuse any surgery, mediction, therapy, or any other intervention to extend life "beyond where it should naturally end."
If you specify that you don't want a respirator, a kidney dialysis, a coronary operation, chemo or radiation or even O2, they can't force it on you, and if they do they can be prosecuted for assault.
You also have a right to suspend ALL medical treatment and be given simple palliative care --- comfort care ---until your life comes to its natural end.
All that in mind, why would a person have to go to Mexico? OK, I can see some advantages ---- much cheaper to get a cook, laundress and personal attendant there --- but I wouldn't think it's necessary to go there to evade aggressive treatment.
The devil is in the details. In this case, many “treatments” and drugs are physically and especially mentally debilitating. They are increased gradually, making resistance more and more difficult. The end result is that great numbers of people who are in “care” lose the ability to make choices the healthy take for granted.
It is impressively stealthy, and often done with the, again gradual, cooperation of caring relatives. At a particular point, recommending to them that they obtain power of attorney to make decisions for their elders.
To see it in practice, a visit to such a care facility is in order. To see rows of wheelchair bound mostly women, lined up in corridors to stare at blank walls in a combined natural and drug induced stupor. Very few of them still have the ability to choose much of anything for themselves.
Now, were you to ask those people a long time before what they would like to do in those circumstances, few would want to be where there are. And yet they all ended up there.
So there is a process to get them there. It often begins with their lives becoming problematic for their children, usually with some degree of infirmity.
And this, early in the game, might be the time to consider moving to Mexico. So any prior preparations should have been made before. Such a trip can be stressful to some extent, along with the disposition of property before you go, so it cannot be put off until the last minute.
But the end result is if a person waits beyond this point, it may be too late for them. They will not only have to have the strength left to make the trip, but they will also have to not be gradually worn down by drugs and natural weaknesses.
Explain this part to me. Every patient in the USA already ---properly---- has a right to refuse any surgery, mediction, therapy, or any other intervention to extend life "beyond where it should naturally end."
Considering that this article refers to an organization that exists in Switzerland, I am hesitant to draw many comparisons to our laws and rights that we enjoy here in the USA. That being said, the organization appears to be fully in compliance with Swiss law, and I would imagine that it appeals to those people who wish to have a quick and Government-approved end, avoiding months or more of drawn-out pain and suffering.
And here's another thing. Some 30,000 Americans commit suicide every year, without manipulatively dragging our major medical, legal, and political structures into it for "assistance" or "permission."
Committing a fast suicide requires a particular mental focus which extremely sick people may not have. It can be, and usually is, violent, painful, lonely and is often botched.
This "service" provides the imprimatur of Government Approval as well as the flimsy facade of medical oversight, and the promise of a fast and relatively painless end. I can understand the appeal that it has to some people, even though I disagree with it.