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.

[trisham]

Amen!

[Mr. Silverback]

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.

Yeah...if you have two kids and get pregnant with a third, isn't it a sacrifice for the sake of the family to abort child #3? The other two children will be able to go to nicer schools and such.

Or what if a mom gets breast cancer when her kids are in their teen years. If she chooses treatment the family may have to drain their savings (intended for college tuition) to fund it. Instead, she could just choose assisted suicide right after the diagnosis. Sure, she might have survived the cancer, but this way no matter what the final outcome would have been, her kids will get to go to a good school.

That's the same as jumping on a grenade to save a comrade, right, buddy?

[wagglebee]

All of this would be funny except for the fact that we are talking about human life here. When the Germans accepted twisted logic like this in the 1930s, Western Civilization was nearly destroyed.

[Mr. Silverback]

Yeah, not funny at all...which is why I seldom use sarcasm except when I discuss politics.

[dbz77]

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.

Sacrificing oneself is a wholly different matter than sacrificing someone else .

[wagglebee]

Sacrificing oneself is a wholly different matter than sacrificing someone else.

When you and your ilk decide that human sacrifice for financial reasons is acceptable, it is only a small step to make it involuntary.

[Mr. Silverback]

So, the second scenario I presented in post 82 would be acceptable? If not, why not?

[little jeremiah]

Excellent point. Encouraging or aiding anyone to commit suicide is a terrible moral crime. Terrible easy to push a depressed or hopeless person over the edge. If instead, the suffering person recieved kindness, help and love many who might choose death, will choose life.

[dbz77]

So, the second scenario I presented in post 82 would be acceptable? If not, why not?

Because it involves sacrificing someone else .

There is nothing wrong with combat pilots crashing their planes into enemy ships, buildings, or troop formations.

. It is absolutely wrong for combat pilots to shoot down their wingmen so their planes would crash into enemy ships, buildings, or troop formations.

[Mr. Silverback]

Because it involves sacrificing someone else .

Can you read?

I said the SECOND SCENARIO in post 82. I'll post it again:

Or what if a mom gets breast cancer when her kids are in their teen years? If she chooses treatment the family may have to drain their savings (intended for college tuition) to fund it. Instead, she could just choose assisted suicide right after the diagnosis. Sure, she might have survived the cancer, but this way no matter what the final outcome would have been, her kids will get to go to a good school.

Would that be acceptable? If not, why not?

[dbz77]

If she chooses suicide, she should do it herself. No assistance.

[wagglebee]

If she chooses suicide, she should do it herself. No assistance.

Then why are you on this thread pushing your "suicide for the good of the collective" agenda?

ALL we is euthanasia/assisted suicide. It is axiomatic that a person has the ability (which some would label "right") to kill themself. We are discussing medical involvement in a person's death.

[BykrBayb]

Wow! Most of us don’t think of our mothers that way. How sad for you.

[wagglebee]

Wow! Most of us don’t think of our mothers that way. How sad for you.

As a rule, the average person will have more money upon retirement or soon thereafter than they will for the rest of their lives -- obviously there are exceptions to this, but this is the norm.

Using the "logic" proposed in this thread, a person should work as hard as they can, as long as they can and spend as little as they can on themselves. Then, when either can't work or can't earn enough money to support themselves on a day-to-day basis, they should kill themselves. Forget about enjoying retirement, you need to die for the "common good." What is being proposed here is textbook Marxism (yes, in case there was ANY confusion, I called the person who supports the suicide-wealth redistribution agenda a MARXIST).

[Mr. Silverback]

If she chooses suicide, she should do it herself. No assistance.

Is she making a noble sacrifice for the beenfit of her family, like a soldier faling on a grenade to save his comrades? If not, why not?

[floriduh voter]

Suicide is a violent act. I thought violent posts were against Free Republic guidelines. Those advocating suicide here are advocating violence. Why aren’t their posts deleted?

[Mr. Silverback]

That's odd.

You seemed so full of conviction, dbz.

And yet, you also seem to be dodging my question. It's been 5 days since I posted it and you've visited a number of threads and left comments since then.

So, unless this...

...is your current position, here's a reminder of what I asked:

Is she making a noble sacrifice for the benefit of her family, like a soldier faling on a grenade to save his comrades? If not, why not?

Now, how about an answer?

[Mr. Silverback]

Suicide is a violent act. I thought violent posts were against Free Republic guidelines. Those advocating suicide here are advocating violence. Why aren’t their posts deleted?

For the same reason they have a bin fulll of baby shoes at the Auschwitz museum.

[wagglebee]

Perhaps one of his comrades at an anti-FReeper site warned him about the “Grand Inquisitor.”

We seem to get a fair number of deathbots who come and make a lot of noise for a week or two and then drop out of sight.

[Mr. Silverback]

LOL!