8mm
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."
Your assertions do not rise to the level of common discourse on FReerepublic, and as such I will not be bothered to refute them, even if doing so is a simple matter of pointing out elementary semantic and logical errors.
I am not sure where I bore false witness. Perhaps you could enlighten me so I don’t do it again.
Euthanasia is ending someone else’s life through active or passive means because of a medical or quality of life problem, that motivation being the major difference from other kinds of homicide. Suicide, on the other hand, is self murder, ending one’s own life. Going to buy drugs for killing yourself with later is preparation for suicide, not euthanasia, which would be if someone brought you and especially if they gave you the drug.
What logical or semantic errors?
Sorry for not being clear. I was referring to others, not you.
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