"Peaceful Pill" Suicide Pill Making Party
This is an article from Exit International's news letter, a very pro euthanasia group from Down Under. It describes the making of the so-called "peaceful pill" suicide concoction.
For those who don't know: Philip Nitschke was in charge of this little project. He was paid thousands of dollars by the Hemlock Society (now merged into the new organization Compassion and Choices) to research on and develop the suicide concoction.
Nitschke has advocated making the peaceful pill available to troubled teens and in supermarkets. Some assisted suicide promoters will claim that Nitschke is on the fringe. Baloney. He is a big star in the international euthanasia movement, and indeed, was a major presenter at the recent bi-annual Convention of the World Federation of Right to Die Societies in Toronto.
There are two major strains of assisted suicide advocacy, although they often merge and blend. There are the ultra sophisticated types (Barbara Coombs Lee, head of Compassion and Choices), who speak in soothing tones of compassion and promote a "medical model" in which doctors would be allowed to assist suicides or euthanize patients, and pretend it will be limited to the already dying. Then there are those interested in hyper control (Derek Humphry, Nitchke), who are fascinated by suicide machines and concoctions, and more candidly espouse a more widely accessible "death with dignity." But remember, these apparently different approaches are just the right and left arms of the same movement.
As a side note: I was once approached by a very nice lady who was in the Hemlock Society. She knew of my work and asked, "Mr. Smith, how do you envision your death?"
I responded: "I don't know ma'am. I'm still trying to envision my life."
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 11:08 AM
17 Comments
17 Comments:
"I responded: "I don't know ma'am. I'm still trying to envision my life." "
This is a wonderful response!
deep toad: Not sure. Perhaps because of illness. Perhaps because of life's disappointments. Perhaps, a desire to be dead when the right excuse comes along (as happened with a friend of mine, whose suicide first got me interested in the assisted suicide issue).
On a slightly different note: I heard from someone today who owns "peacefulpill.com." He wanted me to know the domain was up for sale. There is always a way to make a buck.
I think people are fixated on death because they are terrified of dying a "bad death." I'm pretty frightened of that myself--specifically, of being dehydrated to death.
So suppose you're terrified like that, and suppose you have no ethical objection to suicide, then you would naturally start thinking, "Hey, I can make sure this really terrifying thing doesn't happen to me [being trapped in your body after a stroke, lying around half-alive, dying slowly in pain, or whatever your particular nightmare is] if only I can get the right to kill myself or be killed in some quick, humane way. Cool."
If you separate it from the fact that it's just _wrong_, it makes a kind of twisted sense. How many of us _wouldn't_ want to fall asleep one night and die peacefully in our sleep? I imagine most of us would. So these guys think they can just *make that happen* for themselves and others and avoid all the nastiness of illness, slow death, etc., all the unpleasantness. It's just those bleepity-bleep theocrats (thats us, folks) who stand in the way of all this _peace_ for everybody and freedom from fear.
A seductive vision.
I might just add that it's a great irony that this "peaceful" vision has led _directly_ to an increase in less pleasant deaths and deathbeds. For example, it has led to the objectionable portions of the Cruzan decision and hence to increased slow deaths by dehydration. It has led, as I believe Wesley has pointed out elsewhere, to neglect of comfort care like care of bedsores. After all, if a lady's bedsores get too bad, we'll just bump her off with a lethal injection. Why take care of her? And so forth. Even from a utilitarian point of view (which is not my p.o.v. anyway) the right-to-die movement has caused far more human suffering than it's eased.
And it has turned abandonment into "compassion" and respect for "choice."
Deep Toad:
"How do you suppose some people become so fixated on death?"
I have an insane fear of death that's triggered by a chemical imbalance in my brain. Exercize, anti-depressant medication, and counciling from my parish priest have reduced it down to nil.
Still, for a while there I was suicidal because the notion that there might be nothing after this life depressed me so much that life didn't seem worth living at all. Part of me wished to die so that I could "get it over with," since life seemed pointless, and yet I was still terrified of dying.
Fortunately, I couldn't shake my faith in God, so I chose to get help and am now quite satisfied with life and have no severe fears. But the massive anxiety attacks would strike me at any time, made work almost impossible, and I wasn't able to enjoy my life in any way. Nothing was good anymore.
Now take someone who's on the brink of death. About half the folk I've seen in hospice have some kind of approaching death vision (and you may believe what you will of that) and find contentment and ease in both living and dying. They're not afraid to live the last days of their lives because they're not afraid of death, oddly enough.
When you lose your fear of death, you realize you can live fully because the "worst" thing that happens is you die, and that's not so bad.
The other half were divided among those who had intellectual reasons not to worry so much, and those who were stark raving terrified of dying. Many of them were severely depressed because they had not fulfilled some life dream, or they hadn't been as close to a child as they wanted, or they saw their lives as wastes. They were afraid of dying, and yet death brought home the point that they had lived "useless" lives and, thus, then wanted to die.
It's a bizarre paradox, but it's true. You want to hurry up and get it over with because the pain of realizing your time is up is more than you can take.
Fortunately, most people, with proper medication and counseling, can overcome their depression and reach a point where they don't want to die, after all. The suicidal tendencies go away.
Now, this is inconvinent for several reasons. First of all, these people are a financial drain on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, their insurance companies, and the family members "stuck" caring for them.
Then there's the emotional drain that the people around them suffer. Doctors have terrible burn-out, as do nurses. That's why there are never enough nurses.
Then there are those who take the noble ideal of organ donation and distort it, because we simply don't have enough organ doners for all the people who really need them. The need is so great that you start weighing one life against another - "this guy is going to die and his heart is in excellent condition, and I have this girl over here who's younger and who needs a heart. He's dying anyway, so why shouldn't her needs be more important than his?"
You have the misguided types that genuinly feel that someone who is close to death and that severely depressed shouldn't be forced to live if they really feel they have nothing left to live for.
Then you have folks who believe in population control. Take, for example, the Church of Euthanasia and The Voluntary Human Extinction Program (http://www.vhemt.org/):
"The Church of Euthanasia advocates what many think of when they hear about VHEMT for the first time: suicide for Earth's sake. Founder Chris Korda, in their newsletter Snuff It, (4) encourages those who are truly serious about saving the planet to kill themselves. Also offered are several creative ways to help the cause of voluntary human extinction." As for the VHEP, here's a quote from the website, responding to a question by a visitor for information on suicide:
"Sure, I could [find you websites advocating suicide]. I could do an internet search and come up with a couple of good URLs which will link to all the other sites. But, although I respect everyone's right to end their lives, I don't care to participate in the process unless I'm convinced it's the best way to go. I'm definitely not convinced in your case. If you proceed in that direction it'll have to be without my help."
This was the least pro-suicide statement on that website, and most of the commentary against suicide dealt with the fact that 1) suicide by itself won't diminish human numbers enough, and 2) after mass deaths, the human population rebounds. At best, these groups are ambivilant, and at the most extreme they recommend self-destruction. (One website I came across had a debate going on about whether AIDS victims who suicide should be allowed to be canabalized, the pro-group saying it would ease the spread of AIDS, and the con-group saying too many young people would be infected, and only adults should be allowed to suicide.)
Finally, you have the philosophical approach. There are folks who view suicide as a "good" thing because they believe they have a rational basis to back up their opinions. Some of them propose euthanasia for non-persons, then go off and spend bookoos of money to support their frail and aging mothers (Singer), while others, believing the dying have an obligation to be cut up into little bits to further scientific inquisition, while alive but dying no less, go off and commit murder (Kevorkian).
Aside - before anybody says that Kevorkian never killed anyone himself, let the record show that he was imprisoned when he actually manipulated the machine that killed his last "patient," so, yes, he did commit murder.
Now, all these groups look at the least defended members of our society - the elderly, the very young, the disabled, the mentally retarded, etc. - and don't see people. They see a means to an end, being whatever their political motivation/monitary motivation/ecological motivation might be.
I actually rank the Organ Doner Group as more insidious than the rest because philosphers and ecologists at least have a total blanket disregard for most human life, and you know where they stand. People who want to harvest organs from a living but unconsious person for the sake of another are doing more than playing God - they're deciding who matters, and whoever doesn't matter doesn't have the right to live.
All these groups see a sick, dying, or injured person, and see opportunity, not a person. It's easy to encourage the ill to die. They frequently feel useless. They don't have any kind of power. They're looked down upon by the rest of society.
My favorite line in response to this mentality is from a Fred Small song, TALKING WHEELCHAIR BLUES: "Well, as for you, you're just temporarily able-bodied."
Indeed.
...I wanted to write a brief response and I end up with a half-hour lecture. Oy vey.
Oh, Happy Chanukah to all the Jewish readers on Secondhand Smoke, by the by.
Tabs: Wow.
There is so much you bring up. I don't think the assisted suicide advocates see others as a means to an end. They are rigidly into personal control. To put it harshly, they want what they want and they don't care who gets hurt.
This point is very important about some of the other issues we discuss here. "Now, all these groups look at the least defended members of our society - the elderly, the very young, the disabled, the mentally retarded, etc. - and don't see people. They see a means to an end, being whatever their political motivation/monitary motivation/ecological motivation might be."
I think many would be shocked and angered by that comment. But when you dig beneath the justifications, I think you are right. And to get there, they dehumanize the weak, create, as it were, disposable caste's of people.
And indeed, a happy and blessed Festival of Lights to all of our Jewish friends.
I think Tabs is on to something about fear of dying.
I would just put in a word that I think fear of life is also a motivator for suicide and advocacy of suicide.
I struggled a lot with suicidal thoughts (isn't "ideation" the new jargon term? :-)) during a severe post-partum depression quite some years ago. My feeling there was a great fear of life--of responsibilities and just all of life sort of stretching out ahead, looking very long.
I still feel from time to time as though life is almost too long, too "much," even an easy life like my own. There's an odd sense in which just embracing life--having kids, for example, and raising them, and living one's life out to the end--takes courage. There are so many unpleasant possibilities that loom in the mind of the over-imaginative.
Maybe I'm projecting, but I suspect a lot of people feel this way. And the end portions of life are some of the ones that people are most afraid of. Even apart from suffering, there's embarrassment, dependency, loss of privacy, all the rest of it. People are afraid of life.
One problem I have noted is that many in society have accepted the cannard of the human "burden." Some of us believe that if we can't do for ourselves, we shouldn't be around to do at all.
I believe doing for others is one of the great human traits. And that allows the one being done for, to give a great gift: receive care graciously. When we can care, we should. When it is our turn to be cared for--as it will be for almost all of us unless we get hit by a train firts--receive it in such a way that it blesses everyone.
If we all do that, we create a perpetual motion machine of love.
Do you think, Wesley, that there's any gender difference regarding the fear of "being a burden"? Do you find that women seem more worried about this than men, or vice versa?
I might predict women would worry more about it than men, because women are naturally bustlers, wanting all the time to be doing stuff for other people, running the show, and are embarrassed profoundly by being taken care of.
I might suspect that a man would dislike the various indignities of old age and the loss of privacy but that the sheer fact of needing more care per se would not bother a man as much as a woman.
I have seen no studies on this, but anecdotally, I would say women. They are the care givers. Men are used to being cared for.
Wesley:
"Tabs: Wow."
Heh. I talk too much. Even when I'm not talking I talk too much.
"I don't think the assisted suicide advocates see others as a means to an end. They are rigidly into personal control. To put it harshly, they want what they want and they don't care who gets hurt."
I generally lump them in with the "philosophicals" because they have their reasoning behind what they want, whatever it is, and I do think they see others - and themselves! - as a means to an end. They want what they want, exactly, but they want it for themselves. It's ultimately greedy, so much so that they objectify themselves as well as others. "It's my body and I have the right to do with it as I please," is something I hear all too often, as if the body were some hunk of meat you happened to own. That's a form of objectification that goes beyond the pale.
I don't mind if you disagree, but I can't think of any better way to put it than that people who advocate suicide and think that they should participate should their bodies fail them have a total disregard for themselves as anything but something they own, which is very weird to me.
"...I think many would be shocked and angered by that comment. "
So?
People need to be shocked and angered. Ever read the novel A COOL MILLION? I wish I had a copy on me so I could quote directly, but one thing that I loved was seeing the looks on my classmates' faces as they read that black men are aware of their iferiority and that's why the love to rape white women, and that the Jews were in league with the Communists to disrupt the American way of life. Most of them didn't get that the author himself was a Jewish man who was opposed to racial segregation. They didn't understand that they were supposed to be shocked and angered, so that they could wake up and realize that this is exactly how they feel.
It's horrifying to come face to face with yourself and see the monster in the mirror. The first thing we do is recoil, because we know that thinking is bad. The second thing we do is lash out, because we don't want to be identified with that monster.
I go through that almost every day. My monsters are different, but the only way you better yourself is to face that monster down and conqure him, and you can't do that if you're not forced to confront him.
People who advocate euthanasia, abortion, infantacide, forced sterilization of the mentally handicapped, and eugenics, see the weak and helpless as a means to an end. They don't care about these folks because these folks aren't them. They are selfish, thoughtless, and cruel.
If anybody is offended by that, GOOD. I'm not sorry. Take a good look at that monster in the mirror. Be offended. Then do something about it. Because you wouldn't be offended by that if you didn't know that monster was lurking in the shadows.
Lydia:
"I would just put in a word that I think fear of life is also a motivator for suicide and advocacy of suicide."
Yes, the two go hand in hand. I hadn't even thought about that angle; thanks for bringing it up.
I'm sorry that you have had to go through those thoughts. It's hell on the inside, I know. I haven't ever had a baby so I don't know what your situation was like, but I know it sucks and I hope that you never have to feel that way again. I also hope that the joy in your life balances those rotten times. You're a nice person and I love reading your responses.
Thanks, Tabs. :-)
The most important practical thing I've learned through that experience and lesser struggles with depression is never to neglect the physical angle. Way too often people assume it must be something in their past or something they need to "get to the bottom of," and they neglect obvious physical causes like medication they might be taking that has depression as a side effect or sleep deprivation. I've decided in the end that almost all of the troubles I've had with depression are largely physiological in origin--not enough sleep being a huge case in point. There isn't always something one can do about it--hormonal causes, for example, are not always amenable to treatment. But even just _knowing_ that it's something physical and will pass is very helpful and has stopped me from wasting time, fear, and energy looking for "deep" mental problems or causes.
But God is very, very good.
So we don't need a peaceful pill. :-) (Triumphantly bringing it back on-topic!)
This article did NOT, to my disappointment, mention how to actually make the Peaceful Pill. It only mentioned about members who got some Pentobarbital in Mexic. Why doesn't anyone seem to have the guts to buy the Peaceful Pill Handbook and post the receipe for the Peaceful Pill somewhere? I sure would appreciate the receipe-- for reasons that are none of anyone's business but my own!
Thereby illustrating its perniciousness.
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