Switzerland: A Suicidal Haven?

[Nikita]

Interesting article. I'd be interested to hear people's opinions on this. I added in the video link if anyone's interested in watching...it is graphic and really sad, although you don't actually see him die. What you can see is no reluctance on his part in taking the drug that would kill him. This was an obviously well-thought out decision on the part of he and his wife.

http://news.aol.ca/article/tv-suicid...-haven/455631/

Switzerland: A Suicidal Haven?
Source: The Associated Press
Posted: 12/14/08 3:06PM
Filed Under: World
By FRANK JORDANS

SCHWERZENBACH, Switzerland (AP) — Twice a week, on average, in a nondescript building by the railroad tracks, a foreigner comes to die.

Most are terminally ill. Some are young and physically healthy except for a permanent disability or severe, debilitating mental disorder.

Drawn by Switzerland's reputation as a trouble-free place for foreigners to end their lives, more than 100 Germans, Britons, French, Americans and others come to this small commuter town just east of Zurich each year to lie down on a bed in an industrial park building and drink a lethal dose of barbiturates.

Now the country's suicide practices are under the spotlight after British TV last week showed Craig Ewert, a 59-year-old Chicago man with a severe form of motor neuron disease, killing himself in Switzerland two years ago.

Other countries, including the Netherlands, Belgium, and Oregon and Washington in the U.S., have recently passed laws allowing the incurably sick to seek out a doctor who — under tightly regulated circumstances — can hasten their death.

But only Switzerland, in a law dating back to 1942, permits foreigners to come and kill themselves, placing few restrictions on the how, when and why. Doctors have relative freedom to prescribe a veterinary drug for that very purpose.

Link to Video (please note the video is graphic and AOL accepts no responsibility for any trauma/disturbance resulting from watching):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OC1Af4eKbM

Craig Ewert assisted suicide on UK television

Five minutes after drinking a glass of water laced with sodium pentobarbital, they fall asleep.

Death follows about half an hour later.

Like Ewert, most foreigners turn to Dignitas, one of several Swissorganizations dedicated to the cause. Dignitas' founder, Ludwig A. Minelli, has built the group into a thriving nonprofit operation.

Critics accuse it of turning Switzerland into a magnet for so-called "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."

Kiefer also says assisted-groups lack financial transparency.

Dignitas says it charges 10,000 Swiss francs ($8,300) for its services, which include taking care of legal formalities and arranging consultations with a doctor willing to prescribe the deadly medicine. The group says it pays its staff salaries and invests any profit in its advocacy and counseling work, which includes suicide prevention efforts.

Other such organizations in Switzerland say they are cheaper and do not charge the patient directly, relying instead on membership fees and donations.

"We need to ensure that there's no economic incentive for these organizations to encourage people to commit suicide," says Kiefer.

A small religious party is campaigning to ban groups from charging for their services — an idea which 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 and Dignitas turned to alternative methods, coming under scrutiny this spring after it was reported they were suffocating people with 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.

The canton of Zurich examined the practice and found in May that the group had done nothing illegal. 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.

It has to leave by June — its third move in two years. Dignitas previously used a private home, hotel rooms, even mobile homes.

But demand continues to grow, Dignitas says, and its membership has reached nearly 6,000 over the past decade. Some are merely supporters of its work, others intend to die with its help when the time comes.

The government is weighing rules that could spell the end for "suicide tourism," which James Harris of London-based Dignity in Dying, would only mean more agonizing suicides, often botched.

Bernard Sutter, a spokesman for Exit, Switzerland's largest assisted-suicide group, which only helps Swiss residents, says other countries should change their laws.

"We can't solve all the problems of Germany, England, France and Italy," he said.

[65505201]

IMO, if a person wishes to die, it's their decision to make. Better it be done in a controlled setting than in front of a train or off a bridge.

Besides....if it's death by suffocation in Swiss boobies, I may actually give it a second thought....

[Tijuana]

IMO, if a person wishes to die, it's their decision to make. Better it be done in a controlled setting than in front of a train or off a bridge.

Only if its a decision made when the person is in the right state of mind. But generally yes, it shouldn't matter where and its wrong to blame Switzerland in anyway, because people dont kill themselves because of Switzerland, they just do it there.

[Hugh Jass]

A very sad video.

I agree with the above comments, if one wishes it, it should be a right.

[UrbanPoet]

Hmm... how about people with a debilitating mental illness? Their view of reality might be so severely distorted that they want to kill themselves... Otherwise they have a chance to live a productive life with the proper support and treatment.

[iamtoldtherewillbenomath]

That's a very small part of an hour long documentary that aired on CTV a number of months ago.

It was a very interesting, balanced documentary - I think (iirc) they did actually show the death of Craig Ewart. The documentary also featured stories on others who had their requests for assisted suicide refused.

The main point of the documentary is to demonstrate that these people do not do this on a "whim" - there are waiting periods, psychiatric assessments and a substantial financial impact, amongst other significant hurdles. The documentary also features their life, the challenges and pain they are living with, and how their family is involved.

If you have a chance to view the entire documentary, I highly recommend it. It is certainly one of the most powerful, moving things I've even seen on TV.

[chrza]

I don't want to watch the video. But, I think people should most certainly have the right to die if they so choose. But ya, i'd have to agree that they would need to be in the right state of mind, obviously. Who determines that is a different story.

[ruhroh]

I'm all for assisted suicide (so long as person is in right mind, etc etc). I've heard about this a while back, but didn't know there was a documentary :O

That helium suffocation, though... I don't think I'd be very happy at being suffocated with helium, it sounds so traumatizing when your death should be peaceful. I prefer the death drink. Reminds me of Soylent Green.

[akbar_k]

I don't see the problem with killing yourself. It's sadness and desperation that I have a problem with, and those things you can do something about. Reach out to someone you know who's down and out, and lend a helping hand. But when the time comes, if it comes, and you know it's time to check out, such is life.

[manixc]

I think suicide is the easy way out unless there's an extreme good reason (i.e. terminal illness, etc. but who's going to decide that?).
Then, again it's someone's else life and they should decide how they want to live or end it.

[ali123]

Imo Most people who commit suicide are not in the right state of mind and this just makes it easier for them. I don't have any problem with them ending their own life but I'm not in support of assisted suicide. If something like this becomes the norm imagine how much the rate would go up.

[watching]

Assisted murder is what it should be called. Suicide is murdering yourself, so if someone helps you that someone is an assistant murderer. If someone wants to go out that way, who's stopping them in the privacy of their own home and why do they need someone else to share the guilt?

[flexwong]

unfortunately, suicide is something every city deals with on very frequent basis. we just never hear about it because newspapers/tv stations aren't allowed to publish stories regarding suicide. it triggers a mass effect (can't remember the exact term) and past experience has shown that within 3 days of publishing a story about a suicide, suicide rates jump up drastically. it's really disturbing to think about people going to switzerland just to end their own life. i've always rather had a positive view of the swiss being so peaceful and happy in their little villages and towns.

[chrza]

Assisted murder is what it should be called. Suicide is murdering yourself, so if someone helps you that someone is an assistant murderer. If someone wants to go out that way, who's stopping them in the privacy of their own home and why do they need someone else to share the guilt?

Oh god... It's not murder. You're consenting to it. Some people want to do it in the privacy of their own home, some people want to do it in a building in Switzerland. What does it matter to you?

And why should it be guilt that they feel? Some people endure unbearable pain everyday of their lives, pain that hopefully none of us will ever know. And you think they should keep going through that just to make you feel better? That's pretty twisted.

For someone who is say, terminally ill and suffering, I see it as help. Some people don't have the proper means or help to do it painlessly. Some people don't want to leave themselves to be found unexpectedly and shock people. So it's obvious why some people go to this place to do it.

[BadDrafter]

unfortunately, suicide is something every city deals with on very frequent basis. We just never hear about it because newspapers/tv stations aren't allowed to publish stories regarding suicide. It triggers a mass effect (can't remember the exact term) and past experience has shown that within 3 days of publishing a story about a suicide, suicide rates jump up drastically. It's really disturbing to think about people going to switzerland just to end their own life. I've always rather had a positive view of the swiss being so peaceful and happy in their little villages and towns.

+1