Assisted-Suicide Blog

A lengthy legal battle in Italy is set to continue for a man campaigning to remove life support from his daughter who has been in a coma for 16 years. State prosecutors in Milan have sought an in junction against a July 9 ruling by an appeals court in the city allowing for the removal of feeding tubes connected to Eluana Englaro’s body since a 1992 car accident.

‘It is not certain that Eluana is without consciousness and the issue of the irreversibility of her state has not been dealt with thoroughly,’ prosecutors wrote in their injunction request. The 34-year-old Englaro’s case has fuelled controversy over euthanasia in mostly Catholic Italy where church authorities have spoken out against her father Beppino’s wish to terminate her life. The issue has also come before parliament with lawmakers in Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s conservative coalition and centrist Catholic opposition parliamentarians, moving to block the appeals court ruling.

Tags: Cathoilic, coma, Italy, life support

The annual conference and general membership meeting of the highly respected Swiss-German EXIT organisation (50,000 members, who all must be residents of Switzerland) at this years meeting in Zürich 26 April 2008, adopted with overwhelming majority a resolution which requires the organisation at its 2009 meeting, to take a vote on whether their statutes shall be amended to add “being tired of old-age” to the prevailing EXIT eligibility criteria for offering members end of life assistance.

(Source: Summary of the Minutes of the 26 April 2008 General Membership Meeting, pages 18-19 of the organisations EXIT INFO publication, Issue 2, 2008.)

Tags: Switzerland

Dr Iain Kerr, a family doctor in Glasgow, UK, was found guilty of misconduct after prescribing the pills to an elderly patient with osteoporosis, who went on kill herself using other drugs.

On July 24, 2008 the General Medical Council (GMC) suspended the 61-year-old from practising medicine for six months after a two-week hearing in Manchester.

Campaigners said the case highlighted the “moral ambiguity” surrounding
cases where a patient asks for help to end their life.

But the medical profession Continue Reading »

Tags: Doctor Kerr

Derek Humphry, journalist and author, founder of the Hemlock Society USA, has written a memoir of his life in England during World War 11, his career in journalism on the London Sunday Times and the Los Angeles Times, and how he came to launch Hemlock. Author of five books on euthanasia, this is a gutsy tale of varied life experience which you won’t want to miss. Get it on digital download or hardcopy only at the ERGO Bookstore.

Tags: Assisted Suicide, Derek Humphry memoir, hemlock society, Journalism, Journalistic ethics, right to die

It is not unusual for families to face a huge dilemma over whether to help a loved one die, be it in terminal illness, degenerative conditions, or simply unbearable, extreme old age. Who amongst us will pull the plug? Who will take the responsibility of even being present in moral support?
I have read in old books that Eskimos years ago had a way of helping to die which perhaps resolved this. A rope was put around the dying person’s neck and fed out through the roof of the igloo. Then all family and friends went outside and together pulled on the rope. Thus the act was a mutual responsibility. Of course I cannot vouch for this story, and it certainly no longer takes place, but it does convey a message.
Similarly, I heard first hand of the death of a long-time tetraplegic by joint action. He had for years wanted to die — and for which action he had supporters — but they were afraid of breaking the country’s strict taboos and punitive laws on assisted suicide. Additionally, there had been publicity about his wish to die, thus his death would be bound to attract attention.
So his friends concocted an extensive plan for sixteen people Continue Reading »

More than half of Americans would rather die than live with a severe disability, according to a survey, Reuters reports.
In the online poll commissioned by Disaboom, a Web site and social network for people affected by disabilities, 52 percent of the 1,000 “nationally represented” adults chose death over losing the ability to live an independent life.
Disaboom, which launched the survey to better understand people’s perceptions of disabilities, said more than 54 million Americans — 1 in 6 people — live with some form of debilitating Continue Reading »

Tags: disabled persons

The Swiss Cabinet is set to clarify whether the rules for Switzerland’s assisted suicide organisations need to be updated.
In particular, it will look at issues relating to the care, counselling and documentation that euthanasia groups provide people seeking to end their lives. It will also discuss whether groups should be permitted to help healthy people kill themselves.
On Wednesday, cabinet instructed the justice ministry and the Federal Police to prepare a report on the controversial issue by early 2009.
The relatively new practice of providing people with easily available helium to end their own lives rather than prescription sodium pentobarbital has raised questions Continue Reading »

Tags: helium

Supporters of a so-called “Death With Dignity” initiative turned in an estimated 320,000 signatures on July 1, 2008, to the Secretary of State’s Office, virtually guaranteeing that Initiative 1000 will be on the November ballot in Washington State, USA.
If passed, it would permit physician-assisted suicide for dying adults who are residents and meet the guidelines.
The intended law will be similar to the one in Oregon which has been operating successfully for the past ten years.

Tags: Washington State

It is well to be aware that there are persons in America who troll this blog and my ERGO Listserv looking for people in distress, and then approach them and offer to help them to die for a price.

Hard evidence of this emerged in a recent television documentary, ‘Reverend Death’, distributed by Channel 4 TV in the UK. I assume it will shortly be screened worldwide.

Euthanasia for hire is repugnant, illegal, and damaging to our cause.

Some people wonder why in my book ‘Final Exit’ I am against the use of guns to end one’s life. The vast majority of American men who commit suicide use a gun. That’s their business.
ERGO’s campaign (as was Hemlock’s) is for peaceful self-deliverance or physician-assisted suicide for the terminally or hopelessly ill competent adult person who is
1. Too ill to leave the house or get out of bed;
2. Would like to die in the presence of loved ones, saying last goodbyes and thank yous;
3. Is too caring a person to inflict on others the awful job of cleaning up the brains and blood;
4. Wouldn’t want a loved one to have the shock of finding the body of a shot person;
5. Would prefer a tranquil death in bed, favorite armchair or garden seat by an overdose of lethal drugs or inhaling helium inert gas when they are ready to go.

It’s all a matter of choice………
– ———-Derek Humphry, Oregon Read Memoir

Tags: guns