A Swiss assisted suicide clinic plans to help a healthy woman to die with her terminally ill husband, the Times Online reported today:
Dignitas founder plans assisted suicide of healthy woman .
The founder of the clinic, Ludwig Minelli, admitted that the clinic had helped people with mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and bipolar to die. People who are mentally ill are by definition, not able to make rational decisions in their own best interests or the interests of others (just as pople in a coma cannot make decisions in their own best interests). Therefore, while “assisted suicide” for a healthy, mentally well person may be a murky area, “assisted suicide” for someone with schizophrenia is a clear-cut case of wrongdoing.
There are no indications that the clinic tried to talk the woman out of it, offered counselling, or tried treatment for depression.
The Swiss authorities are not cooperating with the clinic, so the “patients” have to get the necessary paperwork done in Britain.
Ludwig Minelli described suicide as a “marvellous opportunity” that should not be restricted to the terminally ill or people with severe disabilities. Critics said that the plans highlighted the risks of proposals to legalise assisted suicides in Britain for people in the final stages of a terminal illness.
The Dignitas clinic in Zurich claims to have assisted in the deaths of more than 100 Britons. The Zurich University Clinic found that more than a fifth of people who had died at Dignitas did not have a terminal condition.
The concept of a “slippery slope” is justly mocked in the area of drug decriminalisation, but with euthanasia, it seems justified.
Once you let people start killing other people, the range of justifiable deaths expands without end.
source: the Corner