Joint Elder Assisted Suicide in Switzerland to Avoid Widowhood

This article was published by National Review on September 26, 2025.

Wesley Smith

By Wesley J Smith

Once we decide that killing is an acceptable answer to suffering, the kind of suffering that qualifies us to be made dead continually expands. Now, an elderly British couple have committed joint assisted suicide at a Swiss termination clinic to avoid future widowhood and increasing fragility — in other words, to eliminate future suffering. From the Daily Record story:

A devoted couple who “couldn’t bear to be apart” have died together at a Swiss assisted dying clinic after sending emails to their relatives to let them know.

Neither Michael Posner, 97, nor his wife Ruth, 96, had a terminal illness, but had made the decision to die together because they were desperate not to be apart after 75 years of marriage.

This is far from the first such case as euthanasia consciousness has spread throughout the West. I even know of one joint euthanasia homicide in Belgium of an elderly couple who weren’t sick but worried about future widowhood. It was arranged by their son so the children could avoid future caregiving.

There was a time that joint geriatric suicides were considered tragedies. Now they are accepted by many without so much as a raised eyebrow. This is the “compassionate” world, favoring some suicides, that euthanasia advocates are conjuring.

More articles by Wesley Smith (Articles Link).

The feeling of being in the way and to have someone help cause my death, pervades my life

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

No assisted suicide.

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition received the following message from Marie M, who is one of our supporters. Marie has lived most of her life in Canada but was born in the UK. She wanted UK politicians who are debating a bill to legalize assisted suicide to read her message:

"You've no idea what it is like for us who are older and have, or even haven't, health issues. I'm in my 70s and have a number of health issues. When I seek help I have the feeling that our health system, which is poor, might expect me to give "my place" to someone healthier and younger, thus taking my place out of the running for healthcare by my deciding to commit suicide; that's what I feel constantly as I walk around, realizing that I might be regarded as being "too old." When I see a doctor or have a doctor attend me or go for a test or surgery in a hospital, it's really on my mind."

This expectation for a patient to be euthanized or medically assisted to commit suicide is already happening among some healthcare workers; this opens the gates to having euthanasia/assisted suicide thrust upon any of us. This is what approving it in a country can do to an ordinary person. This feeling of being, in the way, expected to commit suicide or have someone help me to, pervades my life.

Assisted suicide is now called MAiD, a term I refuse to use; it's a euphemism for "someone helping you to commit suicide." That is what I call it.

I was born in the UK and just about all of my relatives live there, so I have visited the UK quite often."

Thank you Marie

• Canadian physician sends Open Letter to the House of Lords (UK) (Link). 
• A lawyer witnessed coercive end-of-life conversation (Link).

Elder suicide in Switzerland has quadrupled in 25 years.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Swissinfo reported on July 10, 2025 that the elder suicide rate has quadrupled over the past 25 years. The data is upsetting but it should not surprise people considering that society has been telling the elderly that they are better off dead.

It is important to note that the Swiss suicide rates for people under the age of 65 have gone down over the past 25 years while the suicide rate for people from 65 to 84 has increased significantly and the suicide rate for people over the age of 85 has quadrupled.

Swissinfo reported:

Senior citizens were 42 times more likely to take their own lives in 2023 than people in other age groups, according to Swiss public broadcaster, RTS.

And the numbers are increasing: in the past 25 years, the proportion of over 85-year-olds in Switzerland who decide to take their life has quadrupled. Among 65- to 84-year-olds, this proportion has doubled.

In contrast, the suicide rate among the younger population has fallen by around 30% in the past two decades.

The increased suicide rate, in Switzerland, appears to be related to the acceptance of assisted suicide. Swissinfo reported on the question of whether suicide is linked to assisted suicide:

There is controversy among experts as to whether assisted suicides and unassisted suicides can be linked at all.

According to Pierre Vandel, head physician at Lausanne University Hospital, “it is possible to opt for assisted suicide without having suicidal thoughts”. However, he explains that some of his colleagues make no distinction in this respect.

Euthanasia organisations take a different view. “Conscious suicides are different from others,” says Jean-Jacques Bise, Co-President of Exit in French-speaking Switzerland.

The figures from RTS suggest that the two types of suicide could be linked. In very old people, the statistical curves of the two types of suicide cross at the beginning of the 2010s, an indication that from then on there was a shift from unaccompanied to accompanied suicides.

The article examined the differences between men and women. The article states:

The figures also show that there are stark differences between men and women. Until the early 2010s, women took their own lives much less frequently than men.

Since then, the number of assisted suicides has also risen sharply among women, and women almost exclusively end their lives in this way of their own accord. In contrast, there is still a comparatively high proportion of unassisted suicides among men.

“Men express their feelings less than women,” explains psychiatrist Pierre Vandel. That is why it is more difficult for them to recognise suicidal thoughts and help them in time. This explains the tendency of men to take their own lives more often without support.

In America, a similar phenomenon has occurred. Like Switzerland the highest suicide rate in America is among the elderly. Similar to Switzerland, the suicide rate among the elderly was much lower in the past. There is significant proof that the suicide rate in Oregon is directly connected to the acceptance of assisted suicide.

There have been several studies that have examined the connection between suicide, euthanasia and assisted suicide. Most studies suggest that suicide rates increases when assisted suicide and euthanasia are normalized.

More articles on this topic:

• Suicide deaths increasing in America. Elderly Americans now have the highest suicide rate (Link).
• US suicide rates are now highest among the elderly (Link).
• Suicide contagion (Link).
• Legalizing assisted dying can actually increase suicides (Link). 
• Suicide rates in jurisdictions that have legalized assisted suicide are not decreasing (Link).
  

Peter Singer endorses elder suicide.

This article was published by National Review online on April 14, 2025

Wesley Smith

By Wesley J. Smith

Peter Singer, the internationally influential emeritus bioethics professor from Princeton, is known as a moral philosopher — which in his case is an oxymoron. Not only has he repeatedly endorsed the moral propriety of infanticide, but he has also yawned at bestiality and suggested experimenting on cognitively disabled people rather than animals if they are not “persons,” among other ethically depraved opinions.

Singer and another philosophy professor — Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek — just took to the opinion pages of the New York Times to endorse geriatric suicide. It seems a noted 90-year-old psychologist named Daniel Kahneman committed assisted suicide last year at one of Switzerland’s death clinics. Kahneman wasn’t seriously ill or debilitated but feared the infirmities that he believed were coming, so off to Switzerland he flew. Singer and Lazari0-Radek heartily approve.

Peter Singer

Before Kahneman killed himself — and knowing what he planned — Singer and Lazari-Radek interviewed him on their podcast. At his request, the interview did not discuss the looming suicide — Kahneman died just a few days later. But Singer and Lazari-Radek noticed he wasn’t seriously ill or debilitated. From “There’s a Lesson to Learn from Daniel Kahneman’s Death:”

Despite his advanced age, he was still capable of research and writing and could still enlighten audiences on how to make better decisions. Apart from his intellectual gifts, he was healthy enough to participate in friendship and family life. Why did none of this give him sufficient reason to continue to live?

Do you see the problem with that attitude? Do the philosophers not understand how bigoted and anti-intrinsic dignity of life their relativistic assumptions are about when a life is worth continuing? It is as if one must earn the privilege of remaining alive and is very close in substance to the geriatric disdain expressed by the bioethicist Ezekiel Emanuel when he wrote in The Atlantic that he wanted to die at age 75 because “living too long is also a loss. It renders many of us, if not disabled, then faltering and declining.”

No matter. Singer and Lazari-Radek think that being made dead when one wants to die is “dignity:”

Professor Kahneman signaled concern that if he did not end his life when he was clearly mentally competent, he could lose control over the remainder of it and live and die with needless “miseries and indignities.” One lesson to learn from his death is that if we are to live well to the end, we need to be able to freely discuss when a life is complete, without shame or taboo. Such a discussion may help people to know what they really want. We may regret their decisions, but we should respect their choices and allow them to end their lives with dignity.

Of course, it is important to talk freely about wanting to commit suicide. Indeed, anyone in that situation should — so they can be helped with unequivocal suicide prevention and other interventions. Besides, sometimes “shame,” “taboo,” and worry about stigma can save lives if they prevent people from doing the deadly deed.

And get this. At the bottom of the column, the Times added this addendum:

If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources.

What a sick joke. One way to help suicidal people continue living is to not publish pro-suicide opinion pieces!

Sometimes really loving someone means unequivocally supporting them in living — not in suicide — even when they can’t see a way forward themselves. But that is not the “lesson” taught by Singer and Lazari-Radek’s column. Rather, their opinions — and its publishing by one of the world’s most influential newspapers — promote the West’s devolution into a pro-suicide culture. The victims of such a nihilistic mindset will be the elderly, people with disabilities, the mentally ill, and the seriously sick in an ever-widening swath of premature deaths.

Legalizing assisted suicide may increase the rate of other suicides

Elder suicide rates continue to rise in the United States.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Suicide is always a tragedy.

An argument used to legalize assisted suicide is the idea that assisted suicide will prevent some suicide deaths (deaths of despair) but the data indicates that where euthanasia and assisted suicide are legal suicide rates don't decrease or remain steady but in fact increase.

The assisted suicide lobby have published articles justifying the assisted suicide deaths of elderly people and people with disabilities. Does the promotion of assisted suicide lead to a suicide contagion effect among older Americans?

 

According to the National Institute of Mental Health the American suicide rate in 2021 was 14 deaths per 100,000.

It is concerning that in the past few years, the suicide rates have become highest among older Americans. According to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, in 2022, Americans over the age of 85 had the highest suicide rate with 23.02 deaths per 100,000 people which was up from 22.39 in 2021 and those aged 75 to 85 had the second highest suicide rate with 20.26 suicide deaths per 100,000 people which was up from 19.56 in 2021.

More importantly, historically, 2019 was the first year that Americans over the age of 85 had the highest suicide rate. I am convinced that the rapid increase in suicide rates among older Americans is related to the promotion of assisted suicide.

States that are debating assisted suicide need to know that in nearly every jurisdiction, states that have legalized euthanasia or assisted suicide have also experienced higher suicide rates.

The suicide rate in Oregon, where assisted suicide has been legal for more than 20 years, in 2021 was 19.5 suicide deaths per 100,000 people as compared to 14.0 suicide deaths per 100,000 nationally. 

It is important to note that in states that have legalized assisted suicide, such as Oregon that the assisted suicide deaths are not included in the suicide data.

Suicide rates have also increased in the Netherlands where euthanasia has been legal since 2002.

Professor Theo Boer, who is a former euthanasia case reviewer in the Netherlands, published an article titled: Be careful what you wish for when you legalize active killing. Boer explains:

the percentage of euthanasia of the total mortality went from 1.6% in 2007 to 4.2% in 2019, the suicide numbers went also up: from 8.3 suicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 2007 to 10.5 in 2019, a 15% rise. If we would include the deaths through assisted suicide in patients considered to be at risk of committing suicide (psychiatric patients, people with chronic illnesses, dementia patients, elderly and lonely people), the total increase in self chosen deaths over the past decade would be closer to 50% than to 15%. Meanwhile in Germany, very similar to the Netherlands in terms of religion, economy and population, the suicide rates went down by 10%.

The difficulty with suicide data is that there are many factors that affect suicide rates. Nonetheless, several studies have indicated that legalizing assisted suicide is associated with a suicide contagion effect.

Considering the fact that elder Americans now have the highest suicide rates. It is likely that the promotion of assisted suicide for elderly people and people with disabilities has affected the suicide rate among those groups.

What is most concerning is the silence concerning the increase in the elder suicide rate. Suicide is always a tragedy.

More articles on this topic:

• Suicide deaths increasing in America. Elderly Americans now have the highest suicide rate (Link).
• US suicide rates are now highest among the elderly (Link).
• Suicide contagion (Link).
• Legalizing assisted dying can actually increase suicides (Link).

"Completed Life" debate in the Netherlands. Assisted suicide based on being 75

This article was published by National Review online on November 10, 2023.

Wesley Smith

By Wesley J Smith

Once a society embraces killing as an answer to suffering, the “suffering” that qualifies for termination never stops expanding.

The Dutch have decades of experience with this. Since lethal-injection euthanasia became decriminalized — and then, formally legalized — the killable caste has expanded from the terminally ill, to the chronically ill, to people with disabilities, to babies born with serious medical conditions, to the mentally ill, etc., etc., etc. And, as a plum to society — and an inducement to be killed — euthanasia is sometimes conjoined with organ harvesting.

The normalization of medical homicide corrupts people’s thinking, which explains why huge majorities in a Dutch poll now support allowing euthanasia for a “completed life.” From the NL Times story:

Voters are much more progressive about the D66 bill to allow assisted suicide for people who feel their life is complete than the political parties themselves. A massive 80 percent of voters believe that people should be able to get help in dying when they feel they’ve come to the end of their life, Trouw reports based on a Kieskompas poll of almost 200,000 people.

Only 10 percent of respondents disagreed with the statement that people who consider their lives complete should be able to end their lives with professional help. The other 10 percent of voters had no opinion on the matter.

The first focus of this idea are the elderly:

The bill would allow people over 75 to decide when to die with professional help if they feel they’ve reached the end of a completed life. Added to the bill is a six-month process in which they have to meet with an “end-of-life counselor” at least three times.

Note well that the concept of the “completed life” need not involve any physical illness, disabling condition, or psychiatric malady at all. It could include loneliness, boredom, fear of future widowhood — joint-euthanasia killings of ill spouses are allowed in the Netherlands (also Belgium and Canada), death of an adult child, you name it. In other words, “completed life” euthanasia would allow the healthy elderly to be terminated.

And why should eligibility be age-directed? Once the concept of the “completed life” is accepted, why not open the death option to younger people? Indeed, doesn’t every suicidal person believe their life is completed? In theory, there is no limiting principle.

Euthanasia corrupts public morality and the human conscience. The same progression into the culture of death will happen here if we don’t resist the siren song of “death with dignity.” It’s only logical.

Those with eyes to see, let them see.

The Suicide Rate is Rising even though the CDC Undercounts Suicides by Not Including Assisted Deaths

This article was published by the National Review online on August 15, 2023.

Wesley Smith

By Wesley J Smith

2021 was among the worst years ever for suicides in the U.S., with 2022 looking to have been even worse. According to the CDC, in 2021, 48,183 people killed themselves. That number is projected to increase to 49,449 for 2022 once the data are tabulated.

That’s a terrible tragedy. But it is even worse than that because assisted suicides are not included in the suicide statistics.

Why? Because the laws legalizing assisted suicide in most states — which is euphemistically referred to as “medical aid in dying” (MAID) or “death with dignity” — redefine a doctor-prescribed overdose as other than what it is: suicide. Indeed, most of these laws require doctors to lie about the actual cause as the underlying disease on death certificates rather than the reality of an ingested overdose of barbiturates. Some laws even define these suicides as natural deaths. And states do not include assisted deaths in their own suicide statistics.

You can call a dung beetle a butterfly, but it remains a dung beetle. The term suicide defines what is done, not why. In other words, assisted suicides are as much suicides as jumping off a bridge.

I checked the most recent state statistics of assisted-suicide deaths compiled in the ten states and D.C. where doctors prescribe death legally — available at this link. The reporting from the states is not complete, but close enough to get an idea about the total assisted-suicide toll. I found that in 2021, close to 1,400 people died by assisted suicide in the U.S. That means the actual number of suicides in the U.S. in 2021 was just under 50,000 and will surpass that number in 2022.

The CDC’s statistics do not mention assisted suicide. That’s a mistake. Normalizing suicide as an answer to suffering caused by illness, studies have shown, normalizes and increases suicides more generally.

The CDC should add “aid in dying” to its suicide statistics and include that category of people who should receive prevention services. Doing otherwise will only make our suicide tragedy even worse going forward.

Similar articles:

• Suicide deaths increasing. Elderly Americans have the highest suicide rate (Link).
•  Suicide contagion (Link).

Yale professor calls for mass suicide for Japanese seniors and mandatory euthanasia

By James Schadenberg

Yusuke Narita

On February 12, 2023, the New York Times published an article by reporters Mokoyoko Rich and Hikari Hida about controvesial statements made by an assistant professor of economics at Yale named Dr. Yusuke Narita regarding the burdens caused by Japan's rapidly-aging society.

Dr. Narita believes that the only solution to relieving the financial strains caused by Japan's aging demographics is the mass suicide of the elderly. He also believes it is possible that euthanasia will become mandatory. As the New York Times reports:

"I feel the only solution is pretty clear," [Narita] said during one online news program in late 2021. “In the end, isn’t it mass suicide and mass ‘seppuku’ of the elderly?” Seppuku is an act of ritual disembowelment that was a code among dishonored samurai in the 19th century.

Last year, when asked by a school-age boy to elaborate on his mass seppuku theories, Dr. Narita graphically described to a group of assembled students a scene from “Midsommar,” a 2019 horror film in which a Swedish cult sends one of its oldest members to commit suicide by jumping off a cliff.

“Whether that’s a good thing or not, that’s a more difficult question to answer,” Dr. Narita told the questioner as he assiduously scribbled notes. “So if you think that’s good, then maybe you can work hard toward creating a society like that.”

At other times he has broached the topic of euthanasia. "The possibility of making it mandatory in the future," he said in one interview, will "come up in discussion".

The article claims that Dr. Narita has developed a large following in Japan, partially due to his provocative statements. He has hundreds of thousands of followers on social media and frequently appears on Japanese online shows. The New York Times reports:

A growing group of critics warn that Dr. Narita’s popularity could unduly sway public policy and social norms. Given Japan’s low birthrate and the highest public debt in the developed world, policymakers increasingly worry about how to fund Japan’s expanding pension obligations. The country is also grappling with growing numbers of older people who suffer from dementia or die alone.

The comments made by Dr. Narita calling for the mass suicide of the elderly are disturbing and reflective of a mind that's been distorted to see vulnerable groups as being a mere problem that must be dealt with, as opposed to groups of persons who worthy of being treated with dignity and respect. 

Dr. Narita's predictions of mandatory euthanasia are shocking but not without historic precedence. Societies have never been immune from reducing vulnerable groups to "undesireables". As seen in the eugenics and euthanasia programs of the 20th century, human rights are sometimes ignored to "deal with" the financial strains attributed to these groups. Dr. Narita is not the first person to suggest euthanasia as a method to reduce healthcare spending, nor will he be the last.

 Further reading:

• Japanese dystopian euthanasia film "Plan 75" (Link).
• Canada has become a world leader in euthanasia (Link).
  
• Canada's health care savings attributed to euthanasia (Link).
  

Study uncovers euthanasia deaths based on loneliness in the Netherlands

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) on December 7, 2020; titled: Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Suicide in Patients With Multiple Geriatric Syndromes examines 53 euthanasia deaths based on multiple geriatric syndromes (MGS) in the Netherlands. 19 of the 53 MGS euthanasia deaths listed loneliness as a primary reason.

Article: Diane Meier responds to the study uncovering euthanasia for loneliness in the Netherlands (Link).

The study authors, state that the Dutch Euthanasia Code defines a geriatric syndrome as degenerative in nature, often occurring in older patients. MGS syndromes are defined as:

sight impairment, hearing impairment, osteoporosis, osteoarthritis, balance problems, or cognitive deterioration, the Dutch RTE guidance for physicians states that these geriatric syndromes may cause unbearable suffering without the prospect of improvement “in conjunction with the patient’s medical history, life history, personality, values and stamina.”

The study examines 53 MGS euthanasia deaths. 41 were female, 28 lived independently, and none of them had life-threatening conditions. 34 cases had visual impairment, 28 cases had hearing loss, 25 cases had pain and 22 cases had chronic tiredness. All of these euthanasia deaths were over the age of 80 and 41 were over the age of 90.

I understand that MGS means that these people claim to have multiple impairments, but chronic tiredness is often associated with treatable health conditions or depression.

It is concerning that 33 of the deaths were triggered by an incident such as (eg, a fall, an infection, a hospitalization, or the loss of a close relative). It is normal that someone will be upset after an incident, but with good care, a person will often feel better physically and emotionally after a few weeks. It is also concerning that 11 cases indicated that they wanted to die because of fear of falling. It is understandable that a senior will fear falling, but lethal injection is a rejection of proper care.

Disability discrimination is self-evident in the analysis. 44 of the 53 euthanasia deaths listed loss of mobility as a primary reason for wanting to die. It is understandable that an active person will be upset when they lose mobility, even if the loss of mobility is temporary, but dying by lethal injection in conjunction with loss of mobility clearly indicates negative attitutes towards disability. People with disabilities should take notice.

Further to that the study indicates that in 19 of the MGS euthanasia deaths, that loneliness was a primary reason. 

We live in a culture of loneliness, but the loneliness is not solved by killing the lonely person. I understand that MGS refers to multiple conditions, nonetheless, loneliness and despair is solved by caring and being with, not lethal injection.

It is important to note that 40% of the MGS euthanasia deaths were carried out by the Netherlands euthanasia clinic. The euthanasia clinic carries out euthanasia deaths that other physicians have rejected. This is also the reason why the euthanasia clinic carries out most of the psychiatric euthanasia deaths.

One of the euthanasia deaths was not approved by the Regional Euthanasia Review Committee as not meeting the due care criteria and more information was requested in 9 of the deaths. The Regional Review Committee reviews the cases after the death, therefore, even though the committee determined in at least one of the cases that the criteria had not been met, the person was already dead.

These people are not dying, but die by euthanasia based on multiple conditions related to old age. I suggest that this criteria, in fact, opens the door to euthanasia based on "completed life."

 The Netherlands Regional Review Committee's are more thorough in their examination of the deaths than what is happening in Canada, nonetheless, the system is not designed to protect people at a vulnerable time of their life, since the review is done after the person died, not before.

The study opens the wider discussion of how society should respond to the feelings and conditions that led to these 53 people with MGS conditions to seek death by lethal injection. The study states:

Suffering not only is a matter of pain and other physical symptoms but also has psychological, social, and existential dimensions. In addition, suffering has a temporal dimension: it can be triggered by becoming aware of what the future holds. The present analysis shows that fearing the future, fearing further physical decline, becoming more dependent, or losing control over the situation are important aspects of suffering. This finding is in line with previous research.

I completely agree with this analysis. Suffering has a psychological, social and existential dimension.

In my 21 years of experience speaking to people who wish to die or nearing death, I have learned that fear of future suffering (not usually current suffering), loneliness, loss of hope and a sense of abandonment are strongly driving the wish to die. The answer is a caring response, a genuine concern for the person, and an assurance that their life has value.

This study examines data in a way that has not been done before. When reading the study I felt that the presentation of the data was somewhat thorough, but presented in a manner to normalize or justify these euthanasia deaths. I also recognize that this study will be used by politicians in the Netherlands to justify euthanasia for "completed life."

This study does show us how people, with MGS are being abandoned to death. People don't need to hear, YES I will kill you, they need to hear, you are important and your life has meaning.

The Washington Post Boosts Elder ‘Rational Suicide’

This article was published by National Review online on June 24, 2019.

Wesley Smith

By Wesley Smith

The media abandoned unequivocal opposition to suicide long ago. Most publications editorially support legalizing assisted suicide, and the news sides — such as the New York Times and the Associated Press — have even gone so far as to run stories lauding suicide/euthanasia “parties,” at which people celebrate the life of the host just before their death by overdose or lethal injection. PARTAY! Friends and family were so supportive, don’t you know!

Now, the Washington Post moves the ball another few yards downfield in a story from Kaiser Health News that furthers the normalization of “rational suicide” for the elderly by treating it as a respectable topic of discussion–rather than lamenting suicidal desires by oldsters as a serious mental health problem requiring unequivocal prevention efforts by a loving community. From, “As Seniors Go into Twilight Years, Some of them Privately Mull Rational Suicide:”

New Jersey recently became the eighth state to allow medical aid in dying, which permits some patients to get a doctor’s prescription for lethal drugs. That method is restricted, however, to people with a terminal condition who are mentally competent and expected to die within six months.

Patients who aren’t eligible for those laws would have to go to an “underground practice” to get lethal medication, said Timothy Quill, a palliative care physician at the University of Rochester School of Medicine. Quill became famous in the 1990s for publicly admitting that he gave a 45-year-old patient with leukemia sleeping pills so she could end her life. He said he has done so with only one other patient.

Quill said he considers suicide one option he may choose as he ages: “I would probably be a classic [case] — I’m used to being in charge of my life.” He said he might be able to adapt to a situation in which he became entirely dependent on the care of others, “but I’d like to be able to make that be a choice as opposed to a necessity.”

Quill is deemed a hero in assisted-suicide circles. He’s apparently now expanding his advocacy to include people who are not terminally ill who want to commit “rational suicide.” And why not? Once we accept assisted suicide for the terminally ill, why not others who want to escape current or feared future suffering? Shouldn’t they also have the right to die in the “time and manner of their own choosing?”

In fact, this story reminds me very much of the pieces ubiquitously published about assisted suicide in the 1990s, which would present quotes from opponents (often, yours truly), but focused the emotional heart of the narrative on people who just wanted to “die on their own terms” and the compassionate doctors who wanted to help them, but couldn’t because of the cruel laws. Indeed, the the emotional heart of this story is on seniors who want to kill themselves before falling ill or becoming debilitated:

To Lois, the 86-year-old-woman who organized the [suicide discussion] meeting outside Philadelphia, suicides by older Americans are not all tragedies. A widow with no children, Lois said she would rather end her own life than deteriorate slowly over seven years, as her mother did after she broke a hip at age 90. (Lois asked to be referred to by only her middle name so she would not be identified, given the sensitive topic.)…

Carolyn, a 72-year-old member of the group who also asked that her last name be withheld, said they live in a “fabulous place” where residents enjoy “a lot of agency.” But she and her 88-year-old husband also want the freedom to determine how they die.

A retired nurse, Carolyn said her views have been shaped in part by her experience with the HIV/AIDS epidemic. In the 1990s, she created a program that sent hospice volunteers to work with people dying of AIDS, which at the time was a death sentence.

She said many of the men kept a stockpile of lethal drugs on a dresser or bedside table. They would tell her, “When I’m ready, that’s what I’m going to do.” But as their condition grew worse, she said, they became too confused to follow through.

“I just saw so many people who were planning to have that quiet, peaceful ending when it came, and it just never came. The pills just got scattered. They lost the moment” when they had the wherewithal to end their own lives, she said.

See what I mean? A story written like this about, say, teen suicide, would evoke outrage.

And here’s a bitter irony: After helping normalize the idea of elder suicide as empowering, the story ends with the phone number of a suicide prevention hotline. That’s just a sop after potentially putting lethal ideas into readers’ heads.

If you doubt me, catch this bit:

Carolyn said when she and her neighbors met at the cafe, she felt comforted by breaking the taboo.

Yes, by all means, we must break “taboos,” as if that’s all opposition to suicide is about.

We are becoming a pro-suicide culture. I predict that in five or ten years, stories about “rational suicide” for the elderly won’t present any opposition voices at all.

Promoting ‘Rational’ Elder Suicide

This article was published by National Review online on September 6, 2018.

Wesley Smith

By Wesley Smith

September 10 is World Suicide Prevention Day. I used to call the annual event “Invisible Suicide Prevention Day” because it is so often ignored in major media.

But perhaps we should change that name to “World Prevent Just Some Suicides Day.” A mere five days prior to the big event, two columns were published in major newspapers that, at the very least, present elder suicide in a sympathetic light or, one could even say, praise it with faint damnation.

The first is from the New York Times by “The New Old Age” columnist Paula Span. In “A Debate Over ‘Rational Suicide,'” Span seems sympathetic to the argument that we should empower some elderly people to kill themselves. Oh sure, she expresses concerns — an elderly suicidal person could be mentally ill, the slippery slope, etc. — but her prime focus is supportive, unsurprising as she has also been favorably disposed toward suicide-by-self-starvation for seniors. From her essay:

The size of the baby boomer cohort, with the drive for autonomy that has characterized its members, means that doctors expect more of their older patients to contemplate controlling the time and manner of their deaths.

Not all of them are depressed or otherwise impaired in judgment. “Perhaps you feel your life is on a downhill course,” said Dena Davis, a bioethicist at Lehigh University who has written about what she calls “pre-emptive suicide.”

“You’ve completed the things you wanted to do. You see life’s satisfactions getting smaller and the burdens getting larger — that’s true for a lot of us as our bodies start breaking down.”

At that point, “it might be rational to end your life,” Dr. Davis continued . . . “We ought to start having conversations that challenge the taboo” of suicide, she said.

However heated the arguments become, as religious groups and disability activists and right-to-die proponents weigh in, there’s agreement on that point, at least. Reflexively negative reactions to an older person’s mere mention of suicide — Don’t say that! — shut down dialogue.

This is more that a mere “taboo.” Social disapproval of suicide is important and rational. It saves lives.

True, a “Don’t say that!” response isn’t helpful. But unequivocal loving and empathetic suicide-prevention efforts are. In all cases! That’s not the same as “dialogue.” It is treatment.

Meanwhile, in the Orange County Register, columnist David Whiting depicts elder suicide as a matter of “taking control” and “reasoned suicide.” His mother overdosed on animal sedatives obtained from Mexico — a suicide method pushed by the odious Australian suicide fanatic, Phillip Nitschke. Only she apparently found out where and how to obtain the poison in the New York Times.

From “Some Aging Seniors Are Stretching the Legal Bounds of Death with Dignity by Taking Control of their End of Life“:

Along with an unknown number of other seniors, Alice Whiting made her way to Tijuana and bought a bottle of veterinary pentobarbital, the gold standard of poisons, the same brew that has been used in putting convicts to death.

With a little sleuthing, I discovered that she found her “where and how” in a 2008 New York Times article that is more “how to” than necessary.

Rather than being upset with the Times for giving his mother a map to obtain lethal pills, Whiting seems supportive of his mother’s suicide:

Me? I wish I could have dinner with Mom tonight, and I don’t subscribe to what I consider Mom’s early death.

But I do subscribe to the idea that we should be allowed to control our end of life. Moreover, I subscribe to shedding light on something in the shadows.

But he isn’t just shedding light. Whiting does not advocate increased vigilance over the mental health of our elders or improved efforts to combat elder suicide. Rather, he concludes on a suicide-positive note:

Two months later, my father asks for every detail about his wife’s death. It becomes painfully clear he has struggled for weeks to understand what happened.

We talk for a very long time. I conclude, “Mom went out exactly the way she wanted and she loved you very much.” Dad smiles.

Experts and medical journals state risk factors for suicide include depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, personality disorders and substance abuse.

But they don’t mention anything about aging or a reasoned life lived in full.

This is very dangerous stuff for the elderly and indeed, any suicidal person struggling to remain on earth.

Suicide is contagious. That is why the World Health Association has warned the media against publishing articles that sympathetically depict suicide, describing the methods used in detail, or otherwise presenting it in a positive light. That caveat is increasingly ignored, as in these cases.

Let’s hope World Suicide Prevention Day advocates explicitly for the lives of our elders, no exceptions. And let’s hope the Times and other media pay as much attention to prevention efforts as they do to the promotion of some suicides.

How Contemporary Society Promotes Elder Suicide

This article was published by National Review online on June 20, 2018

Wesley Smith

By Wesley Smith

I have worried and written about the growing normalization of elder-suicide, brought on in part — obviously, that is not the whole problem — by assisted-suicide advocacy and frequent media applause of such deaths among the elderly.

That opinion receives a peer-reviewed boost in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. The authors — two UCSF medical professors — warn about increasing “rational” elder suicides, by which they mean self-killing “in the absence of diagnosed psychiatric illness.”

Three forces are, in the authors’ view, contributing to this worsening phenomenon. First, “neo-liberalism. From, “Social Causes of Rational Suicide in Older Adults,” (my emphasis):

Neoliberalism changed human relationships within society from a civil sphere that enshrined a commitment to social solidarity and collaboration among fellow citizens to that of a universal market where human beings are pawns in calculations of profits and losses. Rather than emancipation and freedom, the markets created atomization and loneliness.

Second, technology and transhumanist ideology:

Technology companies, eager to “disrupt” everything from the way we drive to the way we dry clean, has declared their intention to conquer death itself by “curing aging” and “solving death.” . . . The declaration of aging as a disease, pathologizes aging as an entity to be shunned and avoided, in oneself and others. . . . 

Concerns about overly aggressive care at the end of life and of unrelenting suffering have in part fueled advocacy for PAD [physician assisted death, a.k.a. assisted suicide] with many people seeing aggressive medical interventions and unrelieved suffering at the end of life as avoidable only through premature self-inflicted death.

Many people don’t know that they have the absolute legal right to refuse such high-tech interventions.

Which brings us to assisted-suicide advocacy:

The growing acceptance of PAD and its legalization in six U.S. states and the District of Columbia plays an important role in changing attitudes toward rational suicide. An ethical concern of those opposed to PAD is the potential for the “slippery slope” whereby legalization of PAD and greater acceptance of PAD as a result of that legalization initiates a trend in social perceptions toward acceptance of rational suicide, something that was previously ethically unacceptable. We believe that the legalization and increasing acceptance of PAD was a necessary societal precursor to the rationalization of suicide in older adults.

The authors reach a strong conclusion:

Clinicians should also feel empowered to speak up against ageism and recognize it in themselves. Acceptance of the idea of rational suicide in older adults is in itself ageist. It implicitly endorses a view that losses associated with aging result in a life that is not worth living.

Indeed.

May the authors’ strong warning in a very respected professional journal be the vanguard of desperately needed focused push-back at the professional level against our metastasizing culture of death.