Wesley J. Smith: Switzerland's Suicide Tourism More Shocking Than Kevorkian's Escapades

Life News ^ | 12/15/08 | Wesley J. Smith

[wagglebee]

LifeNews.com Note: Award winning author Wesley J. Smith is special consultant to the Center for Bioethics and Culture Network. His current book is "Consumer’s Guide to a Brave New World."

 

The similarities between the "suicide tourism" ongoing in Switzerland and Jack Kevorkian's death circus are just too striking to ignore.

Both involved depressed people with disabilities, people with terminal illnesses, and some people who are not ill at all traveling from their homes to be made dead with the participation of strangers.

Both involved publicity hungry vultures, Kevorkian and Dignitas' Ludwig Minelli (among others), who use their ghoulish fame to push a death on demand agenda.

Here's a difference: Kevorkian helped kill for free, while Minelli's group charges about $8000 to be made dead.

On the other hand, Kevorkian's goal, as described in Prescription Medicide, was to conduct medical experiments on living people being euthanized, a proposed process Kevorkian called "obitiatry." Minelli seems content to count the money and pat himself on the back for his compassion.

Kevorkian is out of business now, getting $50,000 a kill, er I mean, a speech.

But the Swiss government is apparently embarrassed by all of the publicity suicide tourism is garnering, culminating last week in the televised assisted suicide of Craig Ewert. So now, it is considering slamming the door on foreigners coming to Switzerland in a plane, with the plan of being returned home in a pine box.

At least that is the talk. But it sounds more like feckless hand-wringing to me. From the story:

Critics accuse it of turning Switzerland into a magnet for "suicide tourism" and of operating on the fringes of medical ethics and public opinion. Dr. Bertrand Kiefer, editor in chief of the Revue Medicale Suisse, a medical journal, fears some people are killing themselves not to escape intolerable suffering but to relieve family or society of a burden. Dignitas says its members' right to self-determination is paramount. The only criteria for assisting a suicide are that the person "suffers from an illness that inevitably leads to death, or from an unacceptable disability, and wants to end their life and suffering voluntarily."

Good grief. As regular readers of SHS and my other work know, in no jurisdiction where it is legal, is assisted suicide or euthanasia restricted in practice to people with unrelievable suffering. That is just a talking point to get society to swallow the hemlock.

Oh well, at least the Swiss are, sort of, expressing their concern:

A small religious party is campaigning to ban groups from charging for their services--an idea that the pugnacious Minelli calls the product of "sick brains."

Officials in the canton of Zurich threatened to restrict their activities by making doctors see each patient more than once, and by limiting the supply of sodium pentobarbital. So some groups hoarded the drug, while Dignitas turned to plastic bags and helium. The bag is placed over the head of a person who then opens a flow of helium, falls into a coma and dies "in 99.9 percent of cases," according to Derek Humphry, a British author whose suicide manual "Final Exit" has sold at least a million copies. But the use of helium smacked to many Swiss of Nazi gas chambers, and made Minelli a tabloid hate figure--a sentiment widely shared in Schwerzenbach.

Like most Swiss, the townspeople support the principle of assisted suicide, but "the helium was the last straw," says Manfred Milz, who is evicting Dignitas from his building. The government is weighing rules that could spell the end for "suicide tourism," which James Harris of London's Dignity in Dying says would only mean more agonizing suicides, often botched.

I can smell the terminal nonjudgmentalism all the way out here in California.

Suicide is not a necessity. The way to stop the circus is to outlaw assistance and enforce the law. People in such despair that they are willing to fly overseas to be made dead need our compassionate help in living, not in dying.

And here's the thing about media epitomized by this story: Even though it could be perceived as being critical of suicide tourism, there are no quotes from anymore that challenge the fundamental premises of the assisted suicide movement. Reporters, it seems, have sucked the cultural helium in a bag and don't feel the need to present contrary views.

[BykrBayb]

And for MC to invoke the holocaust of abortion, while repeating the propaganda of the Holocaust, is just too ironic.

[little jeremiah]

Wagglebee doesn’t need me to speak for him, but since you pinged me, here goes:

He doesn’t “use” the deaths of unborn babies as an umbrella for a “larger agenda” of opposing assisted suicide/euthanasia. He is committed to protecting the right to life, and the moral foundations upon which this country stands.

Sounds as though you are the one with the agenda; not clear about what it is. But attacking a very valuable member of this forum is not the right way to go about promoting it.

[BykrBayb]

Wagglebee has been opposing euthanasia for years. You’re not the first troll to show up here demanding that he stop, and you won’t be the last.

[stevem]

I'm no psychologist. I did once watch Kevorkian describe one of his victims. I swear it sounded to me as though he was getting sexual gratification talking about an act of dying.

I will believe it for the rest of my life. Kevorkian is as evil as any object of any horror story ever told. Are the Swiss following suit?

[dsc]

Abortion, assisted suicide, euthenasia...are they not all part of the culture of death created by Satan?

[LadyDoc]

ah, but many of those who “choose” this are clinically depressed....

and what does it say when a young man who is paralyzed asks to kill himself, and his parents high tail it to Switzerland?

Several of Kavorkians’ patients had depression and no terminal disease; one who claimed terminal cancer was schizophrenic and cancer free; another had “fibro myalgia” and was “helped” by her psychiatrist husband not to get pain relief, but to suicide...and he had been arrested at least once for spousal abuse.

The “rational” suicides are elderly who “don’t want to be a burden” so kill themselves. (often before they are terminally ill),,, But what kind of a message does this send to people?

And in the UK one “ethicist” gave a speech saying that the senile should be killed because their family are wasting time and energy caring for them, and it costs the National Health service a bunch of money....

[DieHard the Hunter]

> You cannot be both pro-life and pro-euthanasia.

Interesting. I’ve never given any serious thought about pro-or-anti-euthanasia, and certainly never thought of it in the same context as pro-life.

Why can’t you be pro-life and pro-euthanasia at the same time? What is the ethical and moral linkage?

Note that I’m not disagreeing with what you’ve said: I’m seeking to understand the issue.

(I prefer to describe myself as anti-abortion)

[Mr. Silverback]

LadyDoc and Narses’ responses to you capture much of what I think about your post, but let me add this:

If you want to check out, put a plastic bag over your head and pup helium into it.

DO NOT screw up the medical system that takes care of me, my family and my friends.

DO NOT screw up the legal system that is supposed to protect my rights and those of my family, friends and descendants.

You want to punch out? Do it on your own. Leave the rest of us—ALL of us—out of it.

[Mr. Silverback]

Where did you get the ridiculous notion that JR supports euthanasia?

Seconded.

[Mr. Silverback]

Why can’t you be pro-life and pro-euthanasia at the same time? What is the ethical and moral linkage?

I'm going to assume you mean pro-assisted suicide, not pro-euthanasia, because I doubt you'd be asking why killing Grandma against her will is necessarily a bad thing.

You ask a good question.

First, it's up to God when we check in and out.

Second, the people who are cited when assisted suicide is sold to voters (terminally ill, in great and unrelievable discomfort, totally rational about the decision) are as rare as a dragon's tooth in the real world. Many of those who choose assisted suicide are clinically depressed (there goes rationality), non-terminal or many months or years from death and could have their pain relieved by good palliative care specialists. And it's not just that these people are a bit off the mark; as soon as the procedure becomes legal, folks start requesting suicide for stuff like (in one Dutch case I recall) being sad over the death of an adult child. Even doctors abuse it; the Dutch set tight standards on who could be assisted in suicide and doctors just ignored them.

Third, it is inevitable that in nations with nationalized health care, a right to die will evolve into a duty to die. Then we really will see euthanasia.

[BykrBayb]

Why can’t you be pro-life and pro-euthanasia at the same time?

Please don't confuse a stale old joke with a statement of fact. Being pro-euthanasia doesn't really mean you like Chinese kids. It means you favor the destruction of life.

With this new information, can you make an attempt to answer the question for yourself?

[wagglebee]

And now I have, and your abortion posts have nothing to do with the fact that you are lumping abortion and suicide together. They are in no way the same. In case you forgot, the unborn have no voice.

What I am "lumping" together is the protection of innocent life.

My belief(which is just as valid as yours) about Pro-life is about ensuring all God's children have a right to be born and pursue whatever his plan is for them.

Then perhaps you might explain why EVERY major pro-life group (National Right to Life, Priests for Life, American Life League, etc.) considers the fight against euthanasia vital to the pro-life movement? Answer that question.

You don't know what my opinion on suicide is, but rest assured my opinion is that it is in no way the equivalent of abortion.

If you think I give a damn about your opinion you are very much mistaken.

[wagglebee]

For Wagglebee to use the deaths of over 30 million babies due to abortion as an umbrella for a larger agenda of opposing assisted suicide deserves rebuke.

First of all, I have NEVER done that. ALL pro-life groups consider the fight against euthanasia to be vital.

Obviously YOU are uncomfortable with being shown how out of step you are with the pro-life movement, but you are.

And for the record, the number of deaths from abortion in the United States since Roe v. Wade is 50 million, not 30 (worldwide in the past century it is one billion).

[trisham]

Being pro-life means that ALL innocent life must be defended. Pro-life is not simply being anti-abortion.

********************

Amen, FRiend.

Thanks for all you do.

[wagglebee]

Thanks and thank you for all of your support.

[floriduh voter]

Euthanasia is murder. Abortion is murder. A life is snuffed out. Ignorant fools.

[floriduh voter]

You have a strange definition of innocence. Maybe you better re-think things. Lots of assisted suicides are actually forced exits (also known as murder).

[floriduh voter]

Father Frank Pavone leads Priests For Life. They fight for everyone. Pavone doesn't seem to be ashamed of his calling.

For anyone to attack you for your interest in protecting all life, I would question why they are posting at FR to begin with.

The opposite of pro-life is pro-death. For someone to try to diminish what you do here is dishonest and preposterous.

People who are killed for their organs or in a bank holdup are not taken out by free will. They are murdered. Killers are pro-death.

[floriduh voter]

RADIO: www.terrisfight.org. Show is called "Lifeline".

LISTEN LIVE ON SATURDAYS at 3:00 pm est. Apparently, Terri's Foundation has saved HUNDREDS of lives. Thank you, Terri's Foundation.

(euthanasia is also known as late term abortion).

[floriduh voter]

No Rush lovin', Levin' fan would be dissing wagglebee.

I'm surprised there are no posts from that one that they hate Terri Schiavo.