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.

[wagglebee]

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.

The media has been cheering the culture of death for a long time.

[wagglebee]

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[wagglebee]

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[x]

"Suicide tourism?"

Not much hope for return business there.

[Old Sarge]

But the use of helium smacked to many Swiss of Nazi gas chambers

I love the irony.

They tore down the Berghof stone by stone, so barely the foundations remain - to keep Hitler's mountain retreat from becoming a tourist site.

And now they're promoting Switzerland as an attraction for a different final solution seventy years later.

Irony.

[the invisib1e hand]

Like a roach motel.

[wagglebee]

Pinged from Terri Dailies

[MovementConservative]

Pro-Life Ping

Your use of "Pro-Life" to describe decision made by people who actually have free will is an affront to the millions of unborn children who never got a chance to live because of abortion doctors. It diminishes them wrongly, and you should be ashamed to use them in this manner.

[Salvation]

Sounds like we all should avoid visiting Switzerland.

[wagglebee]

Your use of "Pro-Life" to describe decision made by people who actually have free will is an affront to the millions of unborn children who never got a chance to live because of abortion doctors. It diminishes them wrongly, and you should be ashamed to use them in this manner.

How dare you accuse me of diminishing the effects of abortion! I personally post more pro-life threads than anyone here, NOBODY has EVER suggested that I am doing ANYTHING that is an "affront" to the unborn. But, I will still respond to your pathetic nonsense.

First of all, I do not have a pro-life ping list (though I am temporarily helping 8mmMauser out with the Terri Dailies list).

Secondly, it is YOU who does not seem to comprehend what the pro-life movement is about. Being pro-life means that ALL innocent life must be defended. Pro-life is not simply being anti-abortion.

If anyone should be "ashamed" it is those (perhaps you are among them) who believe they are pro-life even though they are also pro-euthanasia; this attitude is an disingenuous as those who claim to be "personally opposed" to abortion, but wouldn't want to deny someone else the "choice" to murder their child.

[narses]

Your use of "Pro-Life" to describe decision made by people who actually have free will is an affront to the millions of unborn children who never got a chance to live because of abortion doctors. It diminishes them wrongly, and you should be ashamed to use them in this manner.

Wrong. Dead wrong. And for you to berate another poster over whatever odd fetish drives your wrongheaded decisionmaking process is wrong, offensively so.

[MovementConservative]

...NOBODY has EVER suggested that I am doing ANYTHING that is an "affront" to the unborn.

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.

Secondly, it is YOU who does not seem to comprehend what the pro-life movement is about. Being pro-life means that ALL innocent life must be defended. Pro-life is not simply being anti-abortion.

Someone with a death wish is the innocent equivalent of unborn children? Please. And just because you say being Pro-life is not simply being anti-abortion doesn't make it so. 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.

If anyone should be "ashamed" it is those (perhaps you are among them) who believe they are pro-life even though they are also pro-euthanasia;

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.
I am not here to engage in a pissing match. If you want to downgrade the unborn by linking them with the suicidal, you will continue to. Just don't be so surprised that not everyone yells "Amen". Good night.

[BykrBayb]

NOBODY has EVER suggested that I am doing ANYTHING that is an "affront" to the unborn. ~ Wagglebee

And now I have ~ MovementConservative

And still, NOBODY has EVER suggested that Wagglebee is doing ANYTHING that is an "affront" to the unborn. NOBODY. That's who.

MC, you really have no idea what it means to be pro-life. You cannot be both pro-life and pro-euthanasia.

You speak corruptly about pursuing God's plan, as if to suggest that God wants us to commit the most egregious of sins.

It's true that we don't KNOW what your opinion on suicide is, but I'm going to guess it's relatively close to your statements on the subject. Why would you bother expressing opinions that you don't believe?

Just so you'll know, for future reference, Free Republic is a pro-life forum. Wagglebee's contribution to the pro-life movement is and has been substantial. He's not going to surrender to your agenda. So you may as well hang it up, before you make such an ass of yourself that you either get zotted, or crawl away with your tail between your legs.

[avenir]

“Therefore He gave them over...”

[netmilsmom]

Could you please define your definition of “Pro-Life”?

[Skooz]

Gee whiz.

Rudy Maxa had just about convinced me to move to Switzerland, and now this.

[little jeremiah]

You have done as much or more than any other member on FR to promote life, in opposition to the culture of death. For Movement Conservative to verbally attack you is nothing short of irrational and nutso.

It is merely the other side of the evil Death Worship poison coin.

[MovementConservative]

I stand behind my position that equating the holocaust of abortion with suicide dimishes the voiceless who never had a chance to be born. When has an unborn baby ever chosen to be killed?
There is not one principle Jim Robinson listed in his "Statement by the founder of Free Republic" post on March 22, 2004 that I am not not in total agreement with. So no, I doubt I will be getting zotted or going away with my tail between my legs anytime soon.

As for the insults you hurl at me, that's a nice touch. Kinda tells me all I need to know about that person.

FYI, I have included the applicable section from Jim's post that details what FR is. Notice you will find direct reference to opposing abortion. Pro-Life=anti-abortion. If you want to read more into it, go ahead. Here it is for your reference.

As a conservative site, Free Republic is pro-God, pro-life, pro-family, pro-Constitution, pro-Bill of Rights, pro-gun, pro-limited government, pro-private property rights, pro-limited taxes, pro-capitalism, pro-national defense, pro-freedom, and-pro America. We oppose all forms of liberalism, socialism, fascism, pacifism, totalitarianism, anarchism, government enforced atheism, abortionism, feminism, homosexualism, racism, wacko environmentalism, judicial activism, etc.

[BykrBayb]

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

[MovementConservative]

For Movement Conservative to verbally attack you is nothing short of irrational and nutso.

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