As you may have heard, an American traveled to Switzerland two years ago and enjoyed the Swiss’ openness to assisted suicide. After paying a nonprofit the 10,000 Swiss francs (about $8,300), Craig Ewert drank a glass of water laced with sodium pentobarbital and died within 30 minutes. He had a motor neuron disease and under Swiss law had a right to kill himself. The reason this is new news is that British television just showed the suicide on one of their networks in the past week. It looked like a man falling peacefully asleep.
As the AP article notes, the only criteria for assisting a suicide are that the person “suffers from an illness that inevitably leads to death, or from an unacceptable disability, and wants to end their life and suffering voluntarily.” Some people believe that such services do a disservice, by making the option of suicide too readily available to people whose pain and suffering cannot be measured by current medical science. And yet people around the world are seeking out Swiss assisted suicide services:
But demand continues to grow, Dignitas says, and its membership has reached nearly 6,000 over the past decade. Some are merely supporters of its work, others intend to die with its help when the time comes.
The government is weighing rules that could spell the end for “suicide tourism,” which James Harris of London-based Dignity in Dying, would only mean more agonizing suicides, often botched.
Bernard Sutter, a spokesman for Exit, Switzerland’s largest assisted-suicide group, which only helps Swiss residents, says other countries should change their laws.
At the end of the day, I think such services are needed as one possible option for people who are suffering from a terminal medical illness or such pain and suffering that traditional pain killers don’t reach (or, especially in America, doctors are afraid to prescribe the amounts of painkiller needed for fear of overzealous prosecutors). If I was in such pain — day in, day out, with no sign of medical relief — I would welcome such a humane and dignified end.
In America, we too often value quantity over quality. Give me more, more, more!! But some people do value quality, and perhaps more importantly, a life that can be lived without neverending pain. If that’s not possible, assisted suicide is an option that should be more widely available (not requiring a trip to one of the two states that allow it in the U.S. — Oregon and Washington), as long as it remains carefully administered by an organization and doctors who ensure only people who suffer from a terminal medical illness (e.g., not depression) or are in severe and unending physical (not emotional) pain have access to it.
Read the full article: Death on TV reveals a Swiss haven for suicides
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6 Comments to
“Swiss Suicide Tourism”
You said that only terminal illnesses and physical pain should help a person qualify for an assisted suicide and suffering from emotional pain / depression should be discounted. My question is, what if it is a long-lasting depression / unending emotional pain? Not just a figure of speech, but literally lasting years. Why should physical pain be valued so highly over emotional pain?
It seems like we are trying to help people to see that emotional pain can be just as debilitating as physical pain, yet by saying we would deny these people the right to an assisted suicide we would be contradicting ourselves. Why would we tell someone that there is nothing we can do for their physical pain any longer so it’s okay to kill theirself, but deny it to someone why has been through therapy / medication / etc without relief. You nailed it in your post - life should be about quality rather than quantity, so is it really fair to make someone who is miserable emotionally live out a longer life than someone who is miserable physically?
I think this is a very good question and one which takes us into a very gray area. Because one of depression’s symptoms is increased suicidality, we have to be careful about using a disorder like depression itself as a reason.
As you say, though, what if a person has tried all treatments and continues to suffer from it, painfully, for years on end… For that, I have no answer.
Dr. Grohol,
Thank you for being honest with your answer.
CC
Thank you Dr Grohol very much indeed for supporting in general the work of EXIT International and Dignitas Switzerland. In the Mellbourne Age today in Australia, one story was about non English speking Australians suffering malnutrition in ‘Homes’, because nobody went to the trouble of hiring interpreters to find out their specil dietary needs. One home gave Italian elders spaghetti once a month, thinking that would satisfy them. Many NESB people cannot tolerate sausages, peas etc. What sort of life is that???
I think that is a very interesting and mature view you take to assisted suicide and i would have to agree with you. It would be hard for someone with a terminal illness because they just don’t know when their time is up. They spend their lives waiting and suffering. I think it would give them some relief to know exactly when they are going to die. Although it may be frightening, i’m sure it would be a better alternative to living year after year in fear of their death.
Hi, as a licensed psychologist who works with elderly and disabled people in a nursing home, I can tell you that I am amazed at how even people in chronic pain value their life. These people believe in a spiritual value to their life, even with great suffering. I feel a tremendous amount of spiritual growth from helping these people endure and grow. They believe they are preparing to go to a better place. The staff in the nursing home do all they can to alleviate their pain. People think nursing homes are bad places but they enable people to have quality of life because there are activities and socializing there set up for disabled/dying people. Having said all this, I would not deny someone the choice to end their lives in dignity. However, people contemplating suicide should consider spiritual counseling. After all, if there is a lesson to be learned through the suffering, wouldn’t it be better to get it over with now? The lesson will be learned in another life if not in this one. I wouldn’t want to come back unless I had to!
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Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 16 Dec 2008
