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.

[little jeremiah]

Comparing soldiers whose duty it is to kill the enemy, knowing that their own lives may be sacrificed, has nothing - I repeat, NOTHING - whatsoever to do with promoting or legalizing doctor assisted suicide.

Nothing.

The fact that you say the two are equal shows you know absolutely nothing about military service or the medical profession, what to speak of the essence of right and wrong.

[narses]

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.

Well exactly. Both are murder. A military superior, in battle, may use force (including deadly force) against a member of his own military only under very proscribed circumstances. Ther one you cite would lead to murder charges under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

[dbz77]

Comparing soldiers whose duty it is to kill the enemy, knowing that their own lives may be sacrificed, has nothing - I repeat, NOTHING - whatsoever to do with promoting or legalizing doctor assisted suicide.

I have not advocated doctor-assisted sucide.

[narses]

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

To the morally blind your argument looks good. In fact it fails.

The soldier who gives his LIFE that others may LIVE acts out of the highest level of love and the highest level of morality, a life for a life.

You equate money to life in the argument that I ought to be willing to kill myself so that my death costs less money. A void and sorrowfilled failure as an argument.

[narses]

Thanks. On occasion the words flow well. Deo Gratias.

[little jeremiah]

So what the hell are you advocating? That people commit suicide in clinics? On their own? What?

[little jeremiah]

Yes indeed. When He uses us frail vessels, miracles can happen. One heart changed is a miracle.

[PGalt]

life

[dbz77]

That people commit suicide in clinics? On their own? What?

If they want to kill themselves, they should do it themselves.

[little jeremiah]

Then why are you on this thread? It is about doctor assisted suicide.

[little jeremiah]

Perhaps I should give a little background, this may help you understand my rancor. A bit of personal history:

When I was a young teenager, I tried to commit suicide. A serious attempt, not a “cry for help”. I didn’t announce it, tell anyone then or later. My family was very - well, unloving, uncaring, parents extremely distant and unreachable. I was an agonized, miserable soul. I was raised without any religious teaching, belief or values.

Luckily I did not go over the edge into death, although I could have easily. After I had swallowed bottles and bottles of pills - all kinds, whatever I could find - I lay down to face death. I felt completely alone, unloved, with no home or stability.

Then I realized that death was a door which I was going to enter, and I did not know where it led. Fear overcame my decision to die, and I managed to make myself vomit up countless pills. It had taken maybe a half an hour to swallow them all.

I did suffer some reactions - for instance, I went deaf for a weak - but survived. I thank God that I did not die that day.

Many people may think “I want to end it all” but then have second thoughts - too late.

[Mr. Silverback]

Does that include protect people from themselves?

Assisted suicide advocates want it to be part of the medical system. Medical professionals protect people from themselves every day. For example, every time a doctor orders a psych consult for a patient that s clinically depressed, they're protecting that person from themselves.

I have a message for you and all other assisted suicide trolls who claim you're advocating for personal freedom:

If you want to check out, put a plastic bag over your head and pump 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.

To do so stomps on myy personal liberties, and those of the people I love, and millions of people I have no connection to.

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

[Mr. Silverback]

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

If you can't get the difference between these two situations, it is certainly beyond my power to explain it to you. I'll just give you a warnng: Be careful what you advcate as noble, lest it become a duty for you someday.

[Mr. Silverback]

I doubt even this troll is too obtuse to get the point, but just so he's fully informed, he should know what that little line at the very bottom of the poster says:

"The magazine of the race-political office of the NSDAP."

The NSDAP is the formal name of the Nazi Party.

If only that guy on the poster had been as noble as a soldier, he could have whacked himself and through his sacrifice saved the fatherland a bag of cash, eh?

[BykrBayb]

I thank God that you did not die that day. The world is a better place for you having been in it.

[wagglebee]

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

By your twisted logic, 3500 American women are "sacrificing" their children each day in abortuaries. They are doing this to save money, because children are expensive.

You are really sick.

[trisham]

I’m so glad that your attempt was unsuccessful, FRiend. God was with you that day. :)

[Mr. Silverback]

What a blessing to you and FR that you escaped the jaws of death that day!

[little jeremiah]

Thank you - even now, decades later, when I think of the despair and hopelessness that led not only to thoughts of suicide, but dangerous action that would have led to death had I not taken action, my skin crawls and sometimes tears well up in my eyes.

How many suicide cases have similar last thoughts of “Oh no!” but can’t reverse what they’ve done?

I am extremely thankful that I was saved, I do think by the unseen hand of God. He cares about every soul, even the atheists, which I was at that time.

[wagglebee]

How many suicide cases have similar last thoughts of “Oh no!” but can’t reverse what they’ve done?

Even more to the point, how would those same people feel if the people who claimed to love them were encouraging them to commit suicide for their own financial benefit?