23 year old has assisted suicide in Switzerland

[Evenstar]

Here news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/hereford/worcs/7676812.stm

This is terribly sad, I wonder how much help and support this family were given in the wake of their son's accident.

I have no issue with him wanting to kill himself. Well I do have issue with it but it was the way he felt and although I can't understand it (as I have never been there) I can't really judge. Besides people kill themselves for all manner of reasons and it is rarely understandable.

What I do have issue with though is that there were people prepared to help him do it. That I cannot comprehend.

2Shoes but perhaps at that time he felt he was in a prison. And rather than supporting him to get to a place where he could accept what had happened to him, his family felt the only way out for him was death.

I am going to go out on a limb here and say that there is one disability that would make me contemplate suicide, and that would be if I lost my hearing. And yet being deaf is not a dreadful state to be in - people with no hearing live perfectly independent lives. But for me, to never hear again, to never sing, or play my keyboard or write or speak to my ds or anyone else would feel as if my life had ended. And I don't know if I would want to live like that. But if it happened then I would have to try. And I would hope that there would be people willing to support me while I changed my way of living rather than waiting to accompany me to Switzerland.

Well precisely SC - it is tragic, but some people know when they have had enough - pprobably more so those younger who cannot imagine a time when things can change. It's maybe like being 20 and suddenly waking up one morning and finding you are 70; all the hopeful things, the firting with numerous pretty girls at with your sporting prowess as your card, all that mostly probably for a yoing man - then what would come after...to him, it;s all just been taken from hik - and in a way he is correct. That's a hell of an adjustment. I for one feel, that out of a tragic situation as this, that the sufferng has ended, at least for him, and then by the same token, for his parents and loved ones. He is at peace.

Sorry Herbietea, I posted before seing your post. It says a lot I think. You had a reason not to give up - your two children, For someone like this, the very thoght of coufrting somebody, nevr mid sucessfuly doing so and going on to have kids with them would have been a massive mountain.

FWIW, there is a great film about the para-olymipcs US basketball team - it's only a few years old which really shows how hard it is for a young mans ego to have to deal with this - and these are men who still have the use of their arms (interstingly, their penises still had function - all of them, though sensation was never discussed but discovery of this fact lifted theior spirits immesurably). This is a sad stiry, and everyon eis of course entitled totheir opinion - but judging is a further step that we should all take pause before doing perhaps.

so 18 months is long enough in your opinion?

"I honestly think it's possible that given a lot more time he might have eventually felt that his life was worth living"

I think the truth is that, given time, he would have succeeded in killing himself following one or more botched attempts.

I don't think his family thought there was no hope for him other than death, i think they supported him in his decision. I can't imagine he just said "right, I'm going to Switzerland to die" and they said "Oh, OK then."

What is missing from the story is what lengths they went to to change his mind. We don't know if they persuaded him to wait a further X amount of time and he then said "OK, I've waited and it's not better." We don't know the details of his 3 previous attempts, who found him, dealt with it, patched him up etc. We do know that his mother says he would simply have starved himself to death if he hadn't gone go Switzerland. Is that better than the dignified end he chose? Or maybe he should then have suffered further the indignity of being force fed on top of all the other things he felt trapped by.

It's terribly sad. Awful and horrendous. I wouldn't wish being in that position on anyone be it "victim" or family. It was, however, his choice. If that's how he felt, who are we to say he should have felt differently? Someone further down mentioned similarities to abortion - in the same way that I don't personally hold it as an option, I wholeheartedly defend a person's right to choose. This young man made a choice for his life and what he thought acceptable.

move away from this young man.
and just talk in general. do you think that a clinic should assist a person to die 18 months after an accident?

I think assisted suicide is wrong anyhow. Especially if the condition isn't terminal.

'Someone further down mentioned similarities to abortion - in the same way that I don't personally hold it as an option, I wholeheartedly defend a person's right to choose. This young man made a choice for his life and what he thought acceptable. '

Bravo, Dragon!

I couldn't agree more.

For me the issue isn't that the poor man killed himself or that his family helped him to do it. It was their justification for doing so, i.e. the life of a disabled person is (to use their words) "second class".

It doesn't matter what I think 2 shoes. He made his decision and was supported in that. No one held him down and forced him to drink whatever it is they provide. You can't make generalisations, each case is a very personal one and this man made his decision based on his feelings and his beliefs. We can't force our feelings onto him and any other person in the same position will make their own choice base on their feelings and beliefs.

As I said, I doubt very much he said "I want to die" and everyone said "righty ho, let's go off to Switzerland. We will most likely never know the decision making process and what was said and done to deter him.

No, his family said he did not want to live a second-class existence. They did not say they thought every disabled person was second class, they said what he believed. "a welcome relief from the 'prison' he felt his body had become and the day-to-day fear and loathing of his living existence" What he was experiencing sounds pretty second rate to me compared to his previous life which was full of physical stuff. That is not the same as thinking a disabled person's life is second rate - life is what you make it.

No one forced him to kill himself, he would have had the option to back out at any point. It wasn't so much assisted as facilitated.

I just hope assisted suicide doesn't become legal here. Its the thin end of the wedge.

The thin end of what wedge exactly?? I hope it does become legal to allow people some dignity.

I'll campaign to my last breath for it to become legal here.

I think "life at all costs" is wrong.

Legal or not, it happens here anyway.

I think denying adults a choice is wrong.

if it becomes legal before long you'll have people being pressurised to do it either by their own worries about being a burden or their family. And those who cannot decide for themselves will have families/state deciding for them.

From 'Not Dead Yet'
The longest experience we have with assisted suicide is in the Netherlands, where active euthanasia as well as assisted suicide are practiced. The Netherlands has become a frightening laboratory experiment because assisted suicide and euthanasia have meant that ?pressure for improved palliative care appears to have evaporated,? according to Herbert Hendin, M.D., in his Congressional testimony in 1996. Hendin was one of only three foreign observers given the opportunity to study these medical practices in the Netherlands in depth, to discuss specific cases with leading practitioners, and to interview Dutch government-sponsored euthanasia researchers. He documented how assisted suicide and euthanasia have become not the rare exception, but the rule for people with terminal illness in the Netherlands.

?Over the past two decades,? Hendin continued, ?the Netherlands has moved from assisted suicide to euthanasia, from euthanasia for the terminally ill to euthanasia for the chronically ill, from euthanasia for physical illness to euthanasia for psychological distress and from voluntary euthanasia to nonvoluntary and involuntary euthanasia. Once the Dutch accepted assisted suicide it was not possible legally or morally to deny more active medical (assistance to die), i.e. euthanasia, to those who could not effect their own deaths. Nor could they deny assisted suicide or euthanasia to the chronically ill who have longer to suffer than the terminally ill or to those who have psychological pain not associated with physical disease. To do so would be a form of discrimination. Involuntary euthanasia has been justified as necessitated by the need to make decisions for patients not [medically] competent to choose for themselves? (Hendin, 1996). Hendin describes how, for a substantial number of people in the Netherlands, physicians have ended their patients? lives without consultation with the patients.

"I hope that one day I will get the chance to speak to this lady and ask if she had a son, daughter, father, mother, who could not walk, had no hand function, was incontinent, and relied upon 24-hour care for every basic need and they had asked her for support, what would she have done?!

his mother said this(seeing as people don't want a general discussion) she described how my dd used to be and most of the young people I know.
so i judge her and how she reacted to her sons disability.

same here 2shoes. She described my dd.
How long afetr assisted suicide becomes legal will it be before 'expected suicide' and mercy killings takes off.

Has anyone answered the question as far as how he got through the Dignatas screening process?

While I don't agree with what they are doing, am fairly sure it's a medically reputable organization...

In Holland, doctors now kill disabled babies. That is what happens when assisted suicide becomes legal. They even try it here.
Then imagine elderly people in expensive care homes....families feel burdened, state is burdenend, same with sick or disabled poeple who need better living conditions, better end of life care, dignity and control in their lives, proper respite for families not being pressurised to kill themselves and that pressure will come.