BBC's Pro-Death Propaganda

A BBC special by the renowned British author Terry Pratchett has caused a stir in the UK. Shown Monday night, "Terry Pratchett: Choosing to Die," included footage of a patient ingesting lethal medication and dying in a Dignitas clinic in Switzerland, where aid in dying is legal. Nearly 900 viewers contacted BBC to complain. The show caused a furor that reached the state level; several peers are accusing the station of taking a side in the aid in dying debate, one of the more contentious issues in Britain at the moment. Aid in dying is not legal in the UK. Terry Pratchett, diagnosed with Alzheimer's, is a vocal advocate for the right to die.

Last year Kier Starmer, the Director of Public Prosecutions, ruled that it was legal to assist a patient in their death, a decision that was the result of a court case brought by multiple sclerosis sufferer, Debbie Purdy, in 2009. Purdy asked the courts to allow her partner Omar Puente to assist her travel to Switzerland when she decided to end her life -- without risking court action when he returned.

(h/t Mrak)

Qaddafi on Switzerland.

Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi has called for the nation of Switzerland to be dissolved because assisted suicide is legal there. At Foreign Policy, an excerpt from the Der Spiegel interview:

SPIEGEL: Don't Libyans also have secret accounts in Switzerland?

Gadhafi: Yes, there are also Libyans who have such accounts, and many of them have also died in unexplained ways. All around the world, the families of these people are going to sue Switzerland. And one more thing: Switzerland is the only country that allows euthanasia. Why does only Switzerland do that?

SPIEGEL: Medical euthanasia is also legal in the Netherlands. And, it cannot go unmentioned that Libya has previously had citizens killed abroad who were said to be disloyal.

Gadhafi: But we are talking now about Switzerland. It is possible that among the Libyans who you are asking about -- and who died abroad -- there were also some who died because they had secret accounts in Switzerland.

SPIEGEL: And you are seriously maintaining that Switzerland as a state ordered the killing of these people?

Gadhafi: The investigations will show this. And this brings me back once again to the phenomenon of assisted suicide. A large number of people have been deliberately eliminated under this pretext. Switzerland maintains that these individuals expressed the desire to take their lives. But in reality it was done to get at their money. More than 7,000 people have died like this. I am thus calling for Switzerland to be dissolved as a state. The French part should go to France, the Italian part to Italy and the German part to Germany.

Ashes and Compassion.

Dignitas, the Swiss assisted suicide organization, should be penalized according to the law if they wrongfully disposed of cremation ashes. If they promised the dying and their loved ones that their ashes would be scattered in the lake, Dignitas should have had the proper permission and methods down.

But a couple of notes: how we treat the dead should be according to how they wish to be treated (and within legal parameters). Not all cultures and people see value in ashes, ashes are not unhealthy or polluting (urns are another issue), and I don't see scattering ashes into the lake to necessarily be disrespectful, as many are claiming as a sign that Dignitas is really just a killing machine without compassion.

Here's Wesley J. Smith's take on the incident, however, posted at The Human Future, the personal site of Jennifer Lahl, national director of the Center for Bioethics and Culture Network (a Medical Right organization) where Smith is a special consultant:

Ah, those compassionate people atDignitas, the Swiss assisted suicide clinic that will make you dead for about $10,000. Allegedly, they dumped the ashes of former “clients” in a lake. From the story:

BOSSES of Swiss suicide firm Dignitas were facing jail today after the discovery of up to 300 urns containing human remains in a lake. British “suicide tourist” ashes are believed to be in some of the caskets found at the bottom of Lake Zurich by police divers. Authorities were first alerted in 2008 when Dignitas staff were caught pouring the ashes of 20 clients into the water.

But “piles” of urns bearing the logo of the company’s cremation service have now been found by chance on the lake bed. Dignitas boss Ludwig Minelli now faces up to three years jail and a £3,000 fine for carrying out unauthorised burials.

So, facilitating the suicides of these people is perfectly fine, but burying them wrongly–that gets Minelli in trouble! The word irony fails to adequately characterize the situation–particularly as the country’sSupreme Court created a constitutional right to assisted suicide for the mentally ill.

Assisted suicide advocates often claim the mantle of compassion–as Minelli often has. But as with Kevorkian, that is often a mask for indifference and abandonment.

British Doctor First to be Charged Under New Assisted Suicide Guidelines

An excerpt from the article in the Telegraph:

Dr Irwin has written a letter to Keir Starmer QC, the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), effectively inviting criminal charges within weeks, for which the former GP could be jailed for up to 14 years.

Dr Irwin, who admits he had accompanied two other previous strangers to the Dignitas clinic to help them take their own lives, wants to make a test case out of his assistance in helping Raymond Cutkelvin to commit suicide three years ago.

Mr Cutkelvin, 58, a post office clerk from north London who was suffering from advanced pancreatic cancer, chose to die in the "suicide clinic" in February 2007.

Mr Cutkelvin is one of some 140 terminally-ill Britons who have died with the help of Dignitas, which was founded in 1998. In Switzerland, "suicide clinics" are legal despite widespread criticism internationally and internally.

Just two months ago, Mr Starmer clarified the Suicide Act of 1961 which makes it an offence to assist a suicide. He published six "public interest factors against prosecution" and 16 "public interest factors in favour of prosecution".

Interview with Debbie Purdy.

Scotland on Sunday has a lengthy profile/interview with Debbie Purdy, the British MS sufferer who won a case last summer that allows her husband Omar to travel to Switzerland with her - and not face prosecution - should she choose to end her life. Here's a clip from the article:

It's the irony of Purdy. The multiple sclerosis sufferer is associated with the right to die campaign but displays a vitality that epitomises the best of living. Last year, she successfully challenged the 1961 law on assisted suicide in the House of Lords. The Scottish Parliament is currently considering a bill to legalise assisted suicide but such moves have been resisted in England. Attempting suicide is not illegal, but helping someone to take their own life is. A blind eye has often been turned to those assisting the terminally ill, but Purdy wanted concrete clarification. Her victory resulted in the director of public prosecutions in England and Wales laying out the conditions under which prosecution would and would not be likely to happen. In Scotland the Lord Advocate has declined to do the same.

The new guidelines make Purdy confident that her husband, musician Omar Puente, would not be prosecuted if he helped her travel to the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland, where patients are helped to die. MS is not terminal, but it is progressively debilitating. Purdy had argued that, without legal clarification, she would have to terminate her life prematurely when she could still travel unaided.

More than 100 people have travelled to Dignitas from Britain without any prosecutions. So was this part of the intellectual argument – and a bit of emotional blackmail – rather than the reality of Purdy's situation? Absolutely not, she insists. There is no guarantee about prosecution. The only person ever charged, though the case was dropped, had a Polish surname. "That was a worry." Puente is not white and middle-class. He's black and Cuban. "In 2008 I joined Dignitas because I was losing the ability to travel by myself, and that was terrifying. If we hadn't won in the House of Lords, I'm not sure I would have got to the European Court, which would have been the next stage, because I probably would have gone to Dignitas. I thought I was losing physical ability more quickly than has actually been the case. And that would have been a terrible mistake."

Purdy has become synonymous with an issue. We know what she stands for but not who she is. Now, she has written a book, It's Not Because I Want to Die. The title sums her up. "I don't think anyone should be in favour of assisted dying. But neither should they be against it. It's not the right choice for everybody, but it should be a choice to explore." It's an important distinction. To understand Purdy's attitude to dying, you first have to grasp her attitude to living.

The Suicide Tourist.

Last night PBS aired a special by Frontline that chronicles the journey of Mary and Craig Ewert to Switzerland for his assisted suicide. Craig is diagnosed with ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease for five years and has decided to end his life in Switzerland, the only country where it is legal for non-residents to use legal assisted suicide. The special is called "The Suicide Tourist."

It's a grey morning here in New York and a thin spring-like snow is falling. The wind is whipping flakes and rain against the window here by my desk.

I've been wondering at the sadness that's come to me these past few weeks as I finished up my hospice volunteer training and spent a shift at the in-hospital hospice unit where I hope to be a regular volunteer. Watching the Frontline show this morning, I realize that the pace with which I move through my project on end of life care (the book, tentatively titled "to each his own death") has it's own unique rhythm. The emotion surrounding the issues of end of life care, assisted suicide, hospice care, are heavy; emotions we tend, as individuals, to avoid because of this weight. And I find the same feelings I had during the death of my own loved ones makes the subject much more important and present. I sit at my desk to work and my mind wanders to other tasks, seeks an escape from what I need to write. I have to work to bring back my concentration.

"The Suicide Tourist" is respectfully shot and poignant. It clearly, through Craig Ewert's words, makes the case that he sees AS as the most humane option. He explains that the respirator is "playing God" just as much as he is when ending his own life. He could, he says, choose death or death with suffering. He rationally accepts the former and tells a parable:

A monk is being chased by a tiger. He comes to the end of a cliff and lowers himself over the edge, hanging onto a tree root. The tiger above him paces and waits for him to tire, to come back over the cliff edge, so that he can eat him. The monk looks below and finds that there is another tiger, too waiting for him, to eat him. Growing on the side of the cliff, the monk notices a strawberry bush and on the bush is the most beautiful strawberry. He plucks the perfect strawberry from the bush and eats it and it is the most exquisite strawberry he has ever tasted.

Ewert wants to live in the moment, to love life, and yet to face the fact that death comes.

The footage of his death is surprisingly peaceful. He must drink the medication himself. He must switch off the respirator that maintains his life himself. He doesn't have the strength in his hands to do so but the Dignitas social worker holds up the switch so that he may close it with his teeth. He does not hesitate. He has been firm in his decision for months. Mary rubs his feet as he drinks the phenobarbital that will make him sleep then die.

Then she moves up to sit on the bed with him and touches his hands as he falls asleep.

I realized, watching the end segments, that my tears weren't for Craig Ewert but for Mary, who has cared for Craig for years, brushing his teeth, scratching his eyebrow, attending to all the needs that we are so accustomed to doing for ourselves. She walks out of her hotel in Switzerland alone, with an empty wheelchair, to return home to her two adult children and a new sort of life.

You can watch the entire segment at PBS here. Please write to tell me what you think.

Switzerland and Assisted Suicide.

There's been a rumble in Switzerland for months. Many politicians are concerned that their country will become an assisted suicide vacation spot and want to shut down the laws that make AS legal. Talk has been made of simply making it illegal for foreigners to travel to Switzerland for that purpose. But today, a report from RT that says maybe the country wants to end the legality of AS altogether:

Aeschbacher, a Swiss lawmaker, says that when the legislation on euthanasia was first conceived 70 years ago, it did not foresee special clinics helping people die. He says that it is therefore in need of an update.

“It terrifies me that Switzerland could make those changes,” says Debby Purdy, who lives in the UK and suffers from multiple sclerosis.

Purdy is not packing her bags for Switzerland, but says she wants to have the option to do so if her pain becomes unbearable.

In Britain anyone helping Purdy to end her life could be sentenced to up to 14 years in prison.

“It’s not that I think it should be an easy option, but I think if people suffer unbearably, only the person who's suffering can decide whether it is bearable or unbearable – doctors can't tell you that your pain is being managed fine. If you're in pain, you're in pain,” Purdy says.

Thus, before the issue of assisted suicide makes it to the inevitable referendum, the Swiss government and the public have a few important questions to answer.