What We Are Becoming: Creating Undetectable Suicide Kits
I have written about Philip Nitsckhe before. He is the Australian doctor who is obsessed with suicide machines and making sure that anyone who wants to kill themselves be able to do so, including--as he stated in an NRO interview--"troubled teens."
With the new "professional" look of the assisted suicide/euthanasia movement, one would think that Nitschke would be in bad odor. He is not, of course, remaining a hero to the movement's death-on-demand grass roots and usually invited to speak at the seminars and contentions that are held around the world on making oneself dead.
Now, Nitschke has made the news again--which seems is real raison d' etre. From the story:
EUTHANASIA advocate Dr Philip Nitschke is in Adelaide to launch a death device – components of which can be bought from hardware stores. As well as promoting the method as "flawless", the Darwin medic, 61, says it has the unique characteristic of being undetectable during autopsy--making it harder to prove suicide.This is apparently the result of his work to create a "peaceful pill," funded in the past by the Hemlock Society (now Compassion and Choices). How did he test it? On animals? On people? Why aren't the media curious?
The new process makes use of ordinary household products including a barbecue gas bottle--purchased at an Adelaide hardware store yesterday morning--which is then filled with another gas which is readily available.
Dr Nitschke has developed a process in which "patients" lose consciousness immediately and die a few minutes later. "So it's extremely quick and there are no drugs," Dr Nitschke said yesterday. "Importantly this doesn't fail--it's reliable, peaceful, available and with the additional benefit of undetectability."
Demonstrating the nihilism that has infected the West, he is increasingly popular:
Always divisive, Dr Nitschke was last week accused of "relentless self-interest and cruel insensitivity" by the family of a Perth woman who committed suicide using the death drug promoted by him.The alarm bells about the growing sickness of our culture are blaring. Culture of Death? What Culture of Death? Wesley, it is all in your paranoid imaginings.
But he maintains he is providing a public service--by empowering the sick and elderly with knowledge. Dr Nitschke has attracted his largest following so far this year--with 4000 people attending his workshops in Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.
Labels: Assisted Suicide. Philip Nitschke. Australia. Death on Demand. Nihilism. Culture of Death
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 1:28 PM
9 Comments
9 Comments:
Let me see... I'm here at work but I *have* to write about this because it's hitting the nail on the head.
Just a few hours ago, a male co-worker of mine I'll call "Donald" was giggling over an article he read. I don't know whether this was an internet article or if it was from the Houston Chronicle, but here's what happened:
A boy about 13 was put into an isolated in-school suspension for acting up. He was given a rope to tie up his pants with because school rules require that pants not be sagging or baggy, and according to one of my female co-workers with kids of her own, school nurses frequently give out ropes or other items when kids don't have belts to hold up their pants.
The boy hung himself.
Thirteen and dead from a hanging, and my male co-workers were *laughing* about it! I said, "He's dead and it's funny?" To which Donald replied, "Hey, ya gotta go sometime. It was his time." He thought it was amusing!
You wonder about the Culture of Death, Wesley - these guys aren't ultra-liberal left wing. These are nominal Christians (I use that term legitimately - they claim Christianity but have vocally expressed doubts), most of them former military men (Donald was in the Army before coming to work here at my oil company), are generally pro-life, and find this *funny!*
What culture of death, indeed. It's distressing enough to have to read about the kid's death (or hear about it in my case), but to have these guys giggling over it...
And now on to the connection to your story.
Even among these right-wing pro-gun pro-life types, there's an air of, "Well, when you're time's up it's up," meaning that however you die doesn't matter. The general population in this room at my job act like death is something to dismiss lightly. Assisted suicide doesn't even raise an eyebrow with them when Kevorkian comes up in conversation. One guy made a comment about how he hoped someone put him down like a dog when he got as old as another co-worker of ours, who's in his late 60's and near retirement.
The level of apathy is so high it's amazing to me that there's even a debate.
One of my online friends told me that it's the quality of the people I'm among - none of them are college educated (though one currently attends classes at a local junior college), most of them were in the military but a few got general or medical discharges, and she says that when you get around people who have a lower-class mentality, you're going to have thoughtlessness, and that's why they don't really have any formed opinions or care at all.
Bull****.
I don't think class has ANYTHING to do with it! I know lower class people who were right there helping Justice For All put up anti-abortion signs at my University (they weren't students, they were volunteers from the 3rd Ward). These guys don't care because they're being innoculated against empathy!
Tabs: There has always been a certain amount of fatalism in the thought, "Well, when your time is up, it's up."
But that isn't what your story represents or the phenomenon we are witnessing. It is a pulling away from community, I think. It is a loss in belief in the importance of life. It is anti humanism.
Well, it's wrong! Kids dying is never funny. Kids suiciding - that just breaks my heart! It's sick, is what it is, to deal with people who have kids of their own and don't care about someone else's child, who goodness knows what was going through his head when he hung himself. I'm somewhere between wanting to cry and wanting to shake them until they get it. Only I'm scared they won't ever get it!
As I sit here, wrestling with finals in a course that is paramount to my goals in life but is extremely difficult for me, to the point of causing great pain and frustration over the material, class accommodations, prejudiced educational environments and the like...I am struck by the fact that if people like this knew about the sufferings of people like me, who have NVLD-they wouldn't be outside their country's bureau of education demanding that accessibility to accommodations be increased-rather, they would advocate that assisted suicide be extended to us. They don't care about helping the handicapped get the resources to achieve their personal goals and alleviate social oppression. Indeed, that would hurt their cause.
P.S. This poor boy's situation was probably at least partially attributable to a disability of some kind. Unfortunately, the 2004 weakened version of IDEA allows teachers to isolate/remove from class students who are acting up from normal classes, even for several weeks, until that student's case can be "assessed" by his or her team. Of course, I need to read the article to confirm that suspicion, and irregardless, that boy was treated horribly and for someone to laugh at that is disgusting.
The callousness starts young, I'm afraid. I remember taking a class in eighth grade where we discussed the death penalty and were subjected to graphic displays of people who had been killed in the electric chair. Some of the students actually enjoyed seeing this, and when we discussed suicide for disabled people, those same people said that such people should kill themselves, going as far as to laugh about the possibility.
When I was in high school I had to deal with idiots talking about Stephen Hawking like that - one guy made the comment that the scientist (using a derogatory term for a person in a wheelchair) was just a lump and the computer synthisizer that he uses to speak was probably doing all the thinking for him. I don't like the guy's science all the time, but that's his *science,* and I recognize him as a brilliant scientist, but damn!
Wesley, I have three of those propane cannisters for our home barbeque. I'm taking them back to Home Depot tomorrow. I don't want you or anyone else worrying about me.
I have a feeling Nitzchke is using other people-getting them the right to kill themselves and helping them obtain the means to do it-for his own aggrandizement. I have my doubts that a guy like that really cares about those he's trying to help. If death were so good, some of his advocacy buddies would try it themselves.
PS to last comment. Are we now going to have to wonder if people are depressed when buying these cannisters, or that depressed people are up to something when they do? Geez. This is a culture of death.
the kid did have a disability. This happened at a special school where they locked him in what is akin to a prison cell with a rope. Honestly, people with disabilities get treated in ways that we would never allow for anyone else, including prisoners. It's disgusting. To read more about such treatment, I suggest the book, No Pity: People with Disabilities Forging a New Civil Rights Movement.
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