Posted on 06/08/2008 11:49:59 AM PDT by wagglebee
Elderly foreign tourists are tapping Mexican pet shops for a drug used by veterinarians to put cats and dogs to sleep that has become the sedative of choice for euthanasia campaigners.
Tourists from as far as Australia have travelled to Mexico to buy liquid pentobarbital, which causes a painless death in humans in less than an hour, right-to-die advocates say.
Clutching photos of the bottled drug to overcome a lack of Spanish, they have maps sketched by euthanasia activists to locate back-street pet shops and veterinary supply stores near the US border. There they can buy a bottle for $35 to $50, enough for one suicide, no questions asked.
"We have a moral right to a peaceful death. I don't want to die with a total loss of dignity, incontinent, barely able to see and stand up, suffering as my mother did," said Bron Norman, a healthy 65-year-old Australian woman who spent $2,860 to fly to Mexico in March to buy pentobarbital.
Used legally across the world to anesthetise and euthanise farm animals and pets, pentobarbital, sometimes known by the trade name Nembutal, is tightly restricted to veterinarians.
But lax regulation in Mexico means it can easily be bought.
Euthanasia campaigners call it "the Mexico option" and say they are willing to travel so far because pentobarbital is one of the few drugs that produces a reliable and tranquil death by sending a person to sleep before shutting down breathing.
"There are few countries in the world where the drug is as readily available as in Mexico," said Australian doctor Philip Nitschke, who set up pro-euthanasia group Exit International.
Exit International has helped 250 people from Europe, the United States, Australia and New Zealand get pentobarbital in Mexico over the past few years. And, it says, interest is growing.
"You do this trip because you want an insurance policy," said Michael Irwin, a British euthanasia campaigner and former United Nations medical director who plans to take a dozen Britons to Mexico this year to buy the drug, helped by Exit.
"You make (the trip) in good health so that if you become terminally ill this can guarantee you a quicker exit."
Little does she know that by so willfully disregarding the Will of God she has already lost her dignity.
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Cue “Dead Man’s Party” by Oingo Boingo...
But, will they stop voting liberal?
When God wrote the rules there weren’t things like feeding tubes, resuscitators, heart machines, bypass machines, etc. I think it cruel people are kept alive by machines against their will......and yes, people do deserve to die with dignity. If you wish to lie in a bed diapered with tubes coming out of every orifice suffering while waiting to die feel free.
If you believe in that kind of thing. Most people don’t like to have religious groups imposing their morality on what they do with their body. This isn’t like an abortion, where an innocent party with no say in the matter is killed off, this is about people in extreme pain having the right to end their life by their own free will....
This is about suicide, not euthanasia.
My real problem comes when somebody tries to lure medical professionals into helping them commit suicide. “Helping” someone commit suicide is in fact homicide. It is a very dangerous precedent.
Women use to travel wherever necessary to get an abortion (although the baby was still dead as a result of their actions regardless of where the murder occurred).
Why are these people buying “original sin” to take home with them?
Why don’t they get a nice view of the beach and down it there?
Why the return trip ticket?
We are born with a total loss of dignity; naked, cold, wet, crying, incompetent and incontinent.
And they expected life to somehow “get better”?
Does the indignity begin with diapers? When they break out a bedpan or have to give you a sponge bath, should they first ask “are you sure you want to go on with this burdern on my profession?”
There are instances where people are ruled incompetent and sometimes without relations to look out for their best interests. While not in a coma, the state has declared that some people would be better off dead.
If you are walking around society and confess to having suicidal thoughts, you will be put under analysis and treated for “depression”. In some hospitals, they will advise it. That puts suicidal thoughts in someone’s head.
How much “free thought” is there to the decision?
comparing birth to death is nonsensical.....of course you were obviously a dumb baby. I came out of the chute fully clothed and speaking......and HEALTHY...which is an obvious characterization you left out.....
This is a story about PEOPLE making their OWN decision...not about doctors making it for them....try and stay on topic.
*these shops
“We have a moral right to a peaceful death.”
The next step is you have a moral obligation to accept a peaceful death, and no one has to get your permission first.
The situation you’ve described is why I wish the Japanese every success in developing robots for home care — before I need them. I’d rather have Rosie beeping cheerfully, while she looks after me; than be abused by a bitter, lazy, passive-aggressive “care giver”.
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