Another Final Exit Death Reported
Apologists for assisted suicide, such as the Los Angeles Times editorial board, pretend that the Final Exit Network is a fringe group that does not reflect mainstream assisted suicide advocacy, rather than, as I have clearly demonstrated here, at SHS, within the very heart of the assisted suicide movement. FEN activists have been arrested in one case, and new deaths undertaken with their participation are coming out all the time.
Here's the latest, of a depressed elderly man tired of living. From the story:
Max Lom was depressed. His eyesight had failed. Simple tasks, like reading the newspaper, had become an exercise in futility.The 88-year-old Sarasota man wanted to die, although physically, he was healthy, according to his daughter.How is this facilitated suicide any different than what happens in Oregon, Washington, and now Montana? Lom used helium and a bag, in Oregon death doctors prescribe intentional overdoses of drugs. Different medium, same result.
Last May, he swallowed a handful of pills in the hope of never waking. It didn't work, but the suicidal thoughts lingered, his daughter said.Shortly after, Lom began communicating with Final Exit Network, a national organization whose members provide support to those seeking a "peaceful end." Lom was found dead Jan. 4 from breathing helium gas with a plastic bag over his head, a Sarasota County Sheriff's Office report said. Family members are outraged at the group, as Lom wasn't terminally ill or suffering...
Lom's daughter, Helen Lom, believes the group essentially convinced him to take his life. Final Exit Network officials have denied any involvement in Lom's death."They might not have put the hood over his head, but they basically gave him the recipe book," said Helen Lom, who lives in Switzerland.
Don't give me that nonsense about Lom not being terminally ill. That limitation is a stage managed pretense to get people to accept the principle that having doctors (or others) assist the suicides of people based on "choice" and killing as an acceptable answer to human suffering. As a logical species, once that principle is swallowed by the population, the pretense of terminal illness is quickly forgotten and you get the Netherlands and Switzerland--in which the depressed and mentally ill people are allowed assisted suicide, and doctors even give out a book teaching patients how to kill themselves when they don't technically qualify for euthanasia.
The real debate we should be having is whether suicide clinics should be legalized help anyone with a non transitory desire to be made dead. Everything else--as so much of our corrupted public discourse these days--is disingenuous and a premeditated act of intentional misdirection.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 10:56 AM
13 Comments
13 Comments:
Sadly, this does not surprise me at all. The elderly are already treated like crap in our society, so this is just another sign of that problem.
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An 88 year-old man who was going blind decided to end his life, botched the job the first time he tried, and accomplished the objective in a clean, painless way the second time around. His family is saddened, and you are scandalized. However, the idea of ending his life was obviously his own, and not Final Exit's. Who knows, but that without advice on how to do it effectively he might have bungled the job a second or third time and ended up a vegetable. The unfortunate thing is that there was no cure for the loss of eyesight that triggered his decision. Apparently, in his opinion, life was no longer worth living in those circumstances. Now, who should be the arbiter of that?
Absolutely. There is no excuse for the attitude of this society toward the right of the elderly to continue to live. I believe Lom's daughter.
"Fringe" group? Well isn't that what murderers are?
Non-transitory desire to be made dead? It becomes non-transitory when it is fulfilled.
HW: How do you know that these are the facts? Obviously, apparently, etc. are not sufficient. We don't know that the death was clean and painless. From what his daughter says, and based on context and circumstance it is more likely that she did say it that she did not, it is, however, reasonable to conclude that the family is more than saddened, it's outraged. If FEN didn't exist, it couldn't be blamed, and we don't know whether this man would have tried even the first time if it hadn't been for FEN. As for who should be the arbiter, it's God, and I'm saying that as someone who's not even "religious." Murdering oneself is murdering somebody.
Which places assisted suicide under the rubric of murder.
HW-in a world where the blind, disabled and elderly are already treated like garbage, it's so nice to know that there are compassionate people who will facilitate their suicides. (By condoning it, you are helping to create a culture that tolerates it and are thereby playing a small role in facilitating it.) Whatever happened to the Samaritans hotline for depressed people instead?
SAFEpres: It might just be that after 88 years of life he didn't feel he'd be missing too much by taking his leave. People react to depression in different ways; some cry out for help, and others pull their own plugs. I don't pretend to understand the workings of other peoples' minds. I honestly believe that people are capable of making their own decisions about what they want to do with their lives. What you may see as a bad decision someone else may see as a perfectly reasonable course of action. Why will you not respect their rights to continue or discontinue their lives on their own terms?
HW: Because no one has that right. Birth and death are beyond our own determination. It's ungracious.
HW-because people who are depressed have a medical condition that requires treatment and it is discriminatory not to provide that treatment based on the person's age and circumstances. It is prejudiced to say, "I, Meghan Schrader, should be prevented from taking my own life if I become suicidal, but 88 year old people should not." It has to do with legitimate rights, like the human right to recieve compassionate intervention if one is in despair, illness, etc. When you don't intervene in such matters, you take those human rights away.
HW: That makes sense in a reasonable atmosphere. But we don't have a reasonable atmosphere, and that's why it's dangerous to those who have the even greater right to live.
People often ask me if, as an astrologer, I can tell "what sign" someone is by looking at them. Usually not, though Capricorn often markedly shows up on the face, and Sherlock Holmes was on the right track in saying "I never guess," and I never even try, and I don't even think in those terms when I look at someone. But I once watched another astrologer correctly assess the birthday, and I mean to the day, not just the sun sign, of every person at a large dinner party in a restaurant, and all the waiters, waitresses, etc.; he would have a field day with THIS guy. One thing anyone can tell, though, is this type; they often tend to have the look this guy does. How kindly, how self-content. FEH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
SAFEpres: Bravo. It's the same kind of discrimination that kills the elderly and the disabled when they don't even want to die.
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