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.

[floriduh voter]

Before Terri Schiavo was killed, the hearing which was covered in the local paper was all about if Terri was killed by Hospice and her faith considered euthanasia suicide, would Terri end up stuck in pergatory for eternity? Don’t make light of suicide. It is the taking of a life. If you are anti-abortion but pro-suicide, you aren’t pro-life. You’re some kind of fringe group unto yourself imo.

[wagglebee]

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

As I noted earlier, ALL of the pro-life groups that I am familiar with (National Right to Life, Priests for Life, American Life League, etc.) are just as opposed to euthanasia as they are to abortion.

My guess is that there are some people who are pro-euthanasia but like to tell themselves that they are pro-life. It's not unlike what we went through with the FRiberal Rooty Rooters.

[floriduh voter]

MC talks about the umbrella. Let me put it this way. There is GOOD and there is EVIL. MC needs to forget his umbrella analogy. This isn’t about insurance coverage.

[floriduh voter]

Further, Wesley Smith is a great man too. He's a practical bioethicist, not one who's been bought off by George Soros and Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood ALSO hated TERRI SCHIAVO. The more deaths the merrier.

Euthanasia is a late term abortion.

[floriduh voter]

Wouldn’t VINCE FOSTER or RON BROWN like a do-over?

[dbz77]

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

And he should remain alive because cybernetic engineering is just around the corner?

It has been twenty-one years since Robocop and we are no closer to making a "Robocop" now than we were then.

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?

The same kind of message sent by Navy SEALs who jump on top of grenades.

[dbz77]

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

Does that include protect people from themselves?

[wagglebee]

Hey newbie, are you trolling pro-life threads again?

[wagglebee]

LadyDoc wrote:
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?

To which you responded:
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?

You are just about the most pathetic troll I've ever come across, you are comparing the culture of death with battlefield heroics.

You are a piece of crap!

[floriduh voter]

Doesn't "with liberty and justice for all" mean EVERYBODY?

When posters front that they're pro-life, it's unconstitutional.

[BykrBayb]

How dare you speak about our brave troops in such a disparaging manner? Filth. Absolute filth.

[dbz77]

How dare you speak about our brave troops in such a disparaging manner? Filth. Absolute filth.

Terminally ill people who kill themselves sacrifice their lives for their families. You do realize that medical care costs a lot of money.

[wagglebee]

Terminally ill people who kill themselves sacrifice their lives for their families. You do realize that medical care costs a lot of money.

Actually, and I wouldn't expect a troll like you to know this, most terminal illnesses are nowhere near as expensive as you and your ilk would like people to believe. I'm curious, did you have a relative who you felt would have left you a great deal of money if only they had died sooner?

You are certainly not the first person who suggested that "worthless eaters" should die to save money, nor will you be the last. However, you are the only one I know of who had the gall to compare euthanasia to the courage that those in combat exhibit when sacrificing their lives for their comrades and THAT makes you truly vile.

Read on, you will no doubt agree with this:

“This person suffering from hereditary defects

costs the people 60,000 Reichmarks during his lifetime.

People, that is your money. Read ‘New People’.”

[wagglebee]

[narses]

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.

Wrong. Life matters, at the start and at the end. Illogical and emotional arguments that try and differentiate between life young and life old fail. That kind of foolish and puerile argument deserves rebuke.

Oppose assisted suicide on it's on merits, don't bring the voiceless babies into it.

The voiceless babies and the voiceless victimes of the slaughter of euthanasia are the same voices, they are the voices of life. Pol Pot and Jack Kevorkian are cut from the same evil cloth as was Margeret Sanger.

[little jeremiah]

1. There are various levels of cost of varying kinds of care.

2. Raising children costs a huge amount of money.

3. Your position that people should be encouraged to kill themselves to save their families money is detestful and barbaric.

[little jeremiah]

Well said, narses.

[little jeremiah]

If you want to off yourself, go right ahead. There is nothing in the world that can stop you.

[dbz77]

3. Your position that people should be encouraged to kill themselves to save their families money is detestful and barbaric.

How is sacrificing oneself for one's family detestful? Soldiers have been doing that for people that they are not related to, you know.

[dbz77]

However, you are the only one I know of who had the gall to compare euthanasia to the courage that those in combat exhibit when sacrificing their lives for their comrades and THAT makes you truly vile.

Define euthanasia.

From what I have been reading from others, euthanasia is killing others because they are ill. It would be no morally different than military pilots shooting down their wingmen so that their planes will crash into enemy ships or troop formations.