The Economist Swoons over Death Doctor & His Suicide Machine

This article was published by National Review online on December 13, 2019.

By Wesley Smith

The mainstream media mostly went head over heels over Jack Kevorkian’s ghoulish assisted suicide campaign, rarely mentioning that his ultimate goal was to gain the right to conduct human vivisection on people being euthanized.

The Australian Kevorkian — Philip Nitschke — hasn’t advocated that. But he has traveled the world teaching people how to commit suicide, published a suicide recipe he invented made of common household ingredients, and pushed a pernicious death-on-demand philosophy. Now The Economist swoons over “the bad boy of the euthanasia movement,” touting his new suicide pod machine in a profile of a length few presidents have received. From, “A Design for Death:”

My host’s name is Philip Nitschke and he’s invented a machine called Sarco. Short for sarcophagus, the slick, spaceship-like pod has a seat for one passenger en-route to the afterlife. It uses nitrogen to enact a pain-free, peaceful death from inert-gas asphyxiation at the touch of a button. With the help of his wife and colleague, the writer and lawyer Dr Fiona Stewart, Nitschke is ushering the death-on-demand movement towards a dramatic new milestone – and their enthusiasm is palpable.

And he’s such a jolly fellow!

Nitschke and Stewart are much jollier than you’d expect the right-to-die movement’s only power couple to be. They’re full of – well – joie de vivre and arch banter about everything from Brexit to the roadworks that have denuded the front of their home of a beloved creeper. “If it’s not dead, boy is it doing a bloody good impression of being dead,” observes Nitschke, correctly.

And he’s so good at the suicide sales pitch!

It’s undeniable that Nitschke’s campaigns have exhibited a certain PR-savvy pizzazz. He is the originator, no less, of the euthanasia flash mob, which took place to celebrate his 70th birthday and 20 years of Exit International (soundtrack: Bon Jovi’s “It’s My Life”, naturally). When he announced plans for Sarco, it was dismissed by some, says Nitschke, as “a stunt, or some virtual creation in someone’s mind that didn’t have any prospect of physical reality.”

I can attest that the machine exists, having had the singular experience of reclining on a prototype at Nitschke’s workshop on an industrial estate in Hillegom, South Holland, amidst the incongruous spring blaze of the tulip fields. Plus, scratch the surface of his provocative patter and there’s a person – a patient – lurking behind each of his convictions.

I think we should be very clear about who, exactly, The Economist is touting. Nitschke, the nihilist, told NRO’s Katherine Jean Lopez that he wants suicide pills made available in supermarkets. Katherine asked Nitschke whether they should be available to “troubled teens.” Why, yes, he said. From Katherine’s NRO interview:

My personal position is that if we believe that there is a right to life, then we must accept that people have a right to dispose of that life whenever they want. (In the same way as the right to freedom of religion has implicit the right to be an atheist, and the right to freedom of speech involves the right to remain silent). I do not believe that telling people they have a right to life while denying them the means, manner, or information necessary for them to give this life away has any ethical consistency.

So all people qualify, not just those with the training, knowledge, or resources to find out how to “give away” their life. And someone needs to provide this knowledge, training, or recourse necessary to anyone who wants it, including the depressed, the elderly bereaved, [and] the troubled teen. If we are to remain consistent and we believe that the individual has the right to dispose of their life, we should not erect artificial barriers in the way of sub-groups who don’t meet our criteria.

Nitschke has taught elderly people how to get animal euthanasia drugs to use on themselves. He has repeatedly lied about those he counseled on suicide, such as that of Nancy Crick, who Nitschke falsely claimed to the media that she had terminal cancer. Nitschke wasn’t near her when she died to avoid criminal his own culpability, but his fans were — and they applauded when she swallowed the pills. When I traveled to Australia in 2001 to expose him about the above-quoted interview with Katherine, he accused me of lying in the media. He also used to sell plastic suicide bags to suicidal people until stopped by the Australian government.

The man is thoroughly reprehensible. No wonder the mainstream media is attracted to him like a magnet to metal. They love their transgressives!

Australia's Dr Death is watching his clients die by suicide.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition
 

Nadia Kajouji

In September 2014, a former Minnesota nurse, William Melchert-Dinkel, was convicted of assisted suicide in the death of Mark Drybrough from England and attempting to assist the suicide of Canadian teenager Nadia Kajouji. Melchert-Dinkel was a suicide voyeur who preyed upon suicidal members of a chat-room and counselled them to die by suicide on front of a web-cam.

William Melchert-Dinkel

Now, an Australian euthanasia leader, Philip Nitschke, known as Dr Death, has created a private live streaming service to enable him to watch his suicidal clients die by lethal drugs.

According to Tom Place, writing for the Australian Associated Press and Daily Mail Australia, Nitschke used the private live streaming to watch two clients die in May by his new suicide method. He claims that other clients have also agreed to let him watch their suicide deaths.

Nitscke says that his motivation is to ensure that his new suicide method will provide a "good and timely" death.

Protest of Philip Nitschke.

Nitschke, who has been involved with many controversial suicide deaths, lost his medical license in 2015 for his involvement in several controversial suicide deaths. At that time he was being investigated for his role in 20 deaths.
 
Recently Nitschke was challenged by a woman whose father died after receiving suicide advice from him.

In 2010, I wrote an article asking the question: Is Philip Nitschke different than Melchert-Dinkel? It seems more clear than ever that Nitschke has a suicide fetish that he is feeding with his new live stream death service.

Australian euthanasia promoter, Philip Nitschke, challenged by woman whose father died after receiving suicide advice.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

As reported by Gary Adshead with News9.com.au, a woman, whose father died by suicide after being assisted Dr Philip Nitschke, challenged Nitschke at a pro-euthanasia Exit meeting.

Adshead reported that a woman named Candice confronted Nitschke, during the pro-euthanasia meeting stating:

"There are young people who have died, people with depression," she argued back. "It's wrong, it's totally irresponsible, he's a doctor, it's wrong."

Candice continued:

"Apologise for what happened to my father,"

"The information you put out kills people who are not in a rational state of mind to make that decision."

Candice then spoke to the media afterwards and stated:

her father was in his 60s when he took his life two years ago, after seeking advice from Mr Nitschke's Exit International group that advocates legalising voluntary euthanasia and assisted suicide. 

She said her father was suffering from depression, but he had no terminal illness.

Nitschke has been involved with many controversial suicide deaths. Nitschke lost his medical license in 2015 for his involvement in several controversial suicide deaths.

Suicide is never elegant or stylish. It is always a tragic loss.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Nick Goiran, a Liberal MLC from Western Australia, responded to an article published by The Sunday Times on August 4, that accused Goiran of being cruelly indifferent to Western Australians taking their life.

Goiran was published in The Sunday Times on August 11, clarifying what he actually said, concerning suicide, and his position opposing euthanasia.

Goiran, who was a member of the Western Australian End of Life Choices committee, stated that he does not encourage or endorse suicide but suicide is a choice that is available to Western Australians.

Goiran wrote:

the report went on to say: "While the final choice, of suicide, is a choice that is available to Western Australians, it is certainly not a choice which the State encourages or promotes. In fact suicide prevention policies and programs have had long standing bipartisan support, as every life in this State matters.

Those who follow Goiran's political career will know that Goiran not only part of the End of Life Choices committee, he wrote a 248 masterful minority report, undermining the support for legalizing euthanasia in the "official" report.

Goiran commented on the antics of euthanasia campaign Philip Nitscke, who promotes suicide with his new suicide machine. Goiran writes:

We have a significant suicide problem in WA and this is no time for dangerous mixed messages. The world's first 3D-printable suicide machine has been on show in Australia. Exit International's director and suicide machine inventor, Philip Nitschke, said he hoped the machine will appeal to those seeking an "elegant and stylish" death under Victoria's new euthanasia laws.

He then quotes Dr Michael Gannon, the past president of the Australian Medical Association who said:

"I have serious concerns about a community where we make arbitrary decisions about whose life is valuable enough to continue and whose should be ended under the law."

Goiran then concludes:

Suicide is never elegant and stylish. It is always a tragic loss.

Thank you Nick.

This is a link to the minority report written by Nick Goiran titled: License to care not to kill.

Suicide promotion websites linked to euthanasia activist.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Euthanasia activist, Philip Nitschke, has been selling suicide information, devices and drugs, online, for years.

A recent article published by The Sun newspaper concerns school kids buying, online, lethal death row drugs to die by suicide. This is not only a phenomenon in the UK but it is a world-wide tragedy and it is not new. I have written about this problem on several occasions. Exit International may also have set-up a suicide promotion website in Canada.

Isobel Narayan

The Sun reported:

An inquest in 2013 heard how Isobel Narayan, 16, killed herself with the Death Row execution drug she had researched online on suicide forums and acquired by post. 

She was said to have suffered a "crisis of confidence" a month before her death and even typed up a list of reasons why she should kill herself. She later drank a lethal concoction of the drug - mixed with a mouthwash before going to bed. 

The A-level student, from Didsbury, Manchester, was found dead the next day by her devastated parents. 

Manchester Coroner Nigel Meadows said it was a "matter of public concern" she was able to obtain the drug.

It concerns me that the Sun article also promotes Nitschke. Nitschke is referring to websites that take money from people without sending the lethal drugs, the article misconstrues his comment as condemning websites, like his, who will sell suicide to anyone.

This is a difficult topic knowing that this article may lead to depressed people obtaining suicide drugs online. 

Nitschke makes money by selling suicide. He calls it freedom, when in fact he is ending the freedom to live for depressed people, including teens.

Special Report: A Scourge of Death Doctors.

This article was published by The American Spectator on January 30, 2019

Wesley J Smith

By Wesley J Smith

Jack Kevorkian has his unworthy successors.

Assisted suicide sure brings out the medical bottom feeders. Jack Kevorkian was the most notorious of these — let’s call them “death doctors” — assisting the suicides of some 130 people during the 1990s. Not only did he help sick, disabled, and (at least 5) healthy despairing people kill themselves, but he did it in a particularly crass fashion, such as having them inhale carbon monoxide from a canister in the back of his old, rusty van.

As a pathologist, Kevorkian did not treat living patients after medical school and was thus hardly qualified to medically counsel the many sad people who sought him out. (One wag, whose name escapes me now, quipped that Kevorkian was the most successful serial killer in history because victims came to him.) Nor was he primarily concerned with alleviating suffering. Rather, as described in his book Prescription Medicide, Kevorkian’s “ultimate aim” was a license to engage in human vivisection, i.e., “the performance of invaluable experiments or other beneficial medical acts under conditions that this first unpleasant step [assisted suicide] can help establish.”

Jack Kevorkian

The point of his ghoulish desire was pure quackery:

[K]nowledge about the essence of human death will of necessity require insight into the nature of the unique awareness of consciousness that characterizes cognitive human life. That is possible only throughobitiatric research [Kevorkian’s name for experimenting on people being euthanized] on living human bodies, and most likely centering on the nervous system… on anesthetized subjects [to] pinpoint the exact onset of extinction of an unknown cognitive mechanism that energizes life.

Good grief.

Despite this — and more — Kevorkian became a media darling, supported by 60 Minutes— including the time he aired a video of himself murdering ALS patient Thomas Youk by lethal injection. (I can still see the late Mike Wallace asking repeatedly, “Is he dead yet? Is he dead yet?”) Kevorkian was also a special celebrity guest at Time magazine’s gala 50th anniversary party, where Tom Cruise ran up to shake his hand. At the end of his life, he received $50,000 per speech — not bad for a failed physician who couldn’t land a position at the end of his medical career.

The Australian doctor Philip Nitschke is another suicide-pushing ideologue par excellence. Not only has he held “how to kill yourself” training seminars around the world, but he was paid by the Hemlock Society (now, Compassion and Choices) to concoct a suicide brew made of common household products called the “Peaceful Pill.” In an interview with Kathryn Jean Lopez of National Review, Nitschke said that Peaceful Pills should be made available “in supermarkets” to “anyone who wants it, including the depressed, the elderly bereaved, the troubled teen.”

Philip Nitschke

Until Australia legally prohibited it, Nitschke sold plastic “Exit Bags,” to be put over one’s head while committing suicide. He was involved in several suicides of people who were far from seriously ill. One was cancer patient Nancy Crick, who made breathless news down-under when Nitschke announced at a news conference that he would counsel her on how to commit suicide. He claimed that Crick had terminal cancer. But when her autopsy showed no recurrence of the disease, Nitschke casually admitted he had known she wasn’t terminally ill all along.

Nitschke has also been implicated in the suicides of people who acted upon his advice to purchase an animal euthanasia drug with which to kill themselves. In his most recent death-promoting PR stunt — for which Newsweek praised him as the “Elon Musk of assisted suicide” — Nitschke conjured a futuristic-looking suicide machine that kills with liquid nitrogen and, he brags, can double as a sleek and luxurious casket.

The California physician Lonny Shavelson is the latest entrant in this infamous death doctor medical society. When California legalized assisted suicide, the formerly part-time emergency room doctor and photo journalist announced he was opening a suicide practice where he would confirm a terminal diagnosis and prescribe poison pills for just $2000.

Think about this: As an ER doc, Shavelson is not a trained specialist in treating cancer, ALS, kidney disease, or any of the many other conditions that can lead to a terminal diagnosis. Indeed, he might be incompetent in creating actual treatment plans for such patients or dealing with the myriad situations — including depression — that can arise in such serious circumstances. But as we saw with Kevorkian, death doctoring isn’t about providing proper care. Rather, its sole purpose is getting people dead.

One would hope that a doctor who deals in suicide pills would at the very least exhibit sterling character. Shavelson also fails that basic test. In A Chosen Death, he wrote about watching the leader of a local assisted suicide advocacy group murder a disabled man named Gene, a lonely alcoholic who was partially disabled by a stroke.

To fully understand Shavelson’s utter cravenness, permit me to describe the scene at some length. As Shavelson describes it, “Sarah” had previously assisted a close friend to commit suicide, telling the author that she found the experience tremendously satisfying and powerful, “the most intimate experience you can share with a person.… More than sex. More than birth… more than anything,” including being present for “the deliveries of my four grandchildren.”

A committed death fundamentalist, Sarah wants again to enjoy the intense rush she experienced facilitating her friend’s death, and so she jumps at the chance to help kill Gene when he contacts her for suicide assistance — which was a felony, by the way. He tells Shavelson, who asks to observe Gene’s death for recounting in his book.

Sarah comes to Gene’s home and prepares a poisonous brew, saying, “O.K., toots, here you go,” as if she were handing him a beer.Gene drinks the liquid and begins to fall asleep, with Sarah holding his head on her lap. She puts a plastic bag over his head. But then, suddenly, faced with the prospect of immediate death, Gene changes his mind. He screams, “I’m cold!” and tries to rip the bag off his face. But Sarah won’t allow it. From Shavelson’s account:

His good band flew up to tear off the plastic bag. Sarah’ s hand caught Gene’s wrist and held it. His body thrust upwards. She pulled his arm away and lay across Gene’s shoulders. Sarah rocked back and forth, pinning him down, her fingers twisting the bag to seal it tight at his neck as she repeated, “the light, Gene, go toward the light.” Gene’s body pushed against Sarah’s. Then be stopped moving.

There is a word that describes what happened to Gene: murder. The right, proper, ethical, and human thing for Shavelson to have done would have been to knock Sarah off the helpless man and then quickly dial 911 for an ambulance and the police. But Shavelson did nothing:

“Stop, Sarah” raced through my mind. For whose sake, I thought — Gene’s, so intent on killing himself? The weight of unanswered questions kept me glued to my corner. Was this a suicide, Gene’s right finally to succeed and die? Or was this a needless death encouraged by Sarah’s desire to act? Had Gene’s decision to have me there, to tell me his story, given me the right to stop what was happening — or, equally powerful, the responsibility not to interfere? Or was I obliged by my very presence as a fellow human being, to jump up and stop the craziness? Was it craziness?

Let me help: It was a cowardly abdication of responsibility by Shavelson and the abandonment of a weak and vulnerable man who fought the best he could to live. Adding to the intensity of the wrong, from what a reader can determine in his book, Shavelson never reported the killing to the police.

These days, Shavelson devotes himself to death doctoring, although I have little doubt that he will one day write a book about his suicide adventures. It is a cold business. From a recent story on assisted suicide in the Atlantic:

The patient takes the first drug, which Shavelson separates out from the rest of the mixture, and then Shavelson sits down at the bedside and reads aloud questions from the state’s required report. After about 30 minutes, he asks: “Are you ready to take the medications?” He mixes the drug cocktail and the patient drinks it.

“Usually, they go silent after taking the medication,” he says. “They’ve said what they’re going to say by that time.” For a few minutes, patients usually continue to sit silently, their eyes open. “And then, very, very slowly, they’ll close their eyes.”

Shavelson asks intermittently, “Are you still there?” At first, patients usually say yes, or nod. Within five or 10 minutes, they stop responding to the question. Then Shavelson will gently touch their eyelids. “When people aren’t deeply unconscious, they’ll sort of have a twitching response,” he explains. Within 10 or 15 minutes, the twitching response disappears, and patients enter a deep coma.

Using a heart monitor, Shavelson tells caregivers as a patient’s pulse slows and oxygen levels drop. “We wait a little while, and then I say, ‘Ah, the patient’s now dead.’”

Giving people poison to drink isn’t practicing medicine.

Death doctors don’t need to be good physicians. They don’t need to be specially trained in treating a patient’s underlying medical condition. They don’t need experience in spotting depression, signs of coercion, or mental illness. They don’t even have to be caring human beings. They just need a license to prescribe lethal drugs and/or be otherwise willing to help suicidal people take their own lives. What a disgrace to a venerable profession.

Award winning author Wesley J. Smith is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute’s Center on Human Exceptionalism and a consultant to the Patients Rights Council. His latest book is Culture of Death: The Age of “Do Harm” Medicine.

Euthanasia Advocate Backs Convicted Husband

This article was published by HOPE Australia on December 6, 2018

Euthanasia advocates have shown how far they would push euthanasia and assisted suicide laws if legalised in Queensland, giving no weight to financial motivations for helping someone to take their own life.

Last month, a judge sentenced Queensland’s Graham Robert Morant to ten years in prison for counselling his wife to kill herself, and then assisting her to do so.  He found that the motive for the crime was the $1.4 million that he stood to receive under insurance policies he had taken out in her name.

I

Jennifer Morant

n sentencing Morant to ten years imprisonment, Justice Davis sent a message to the community about the gravity of the crime of counselling a person to commit suicide, commenting that it was even more serious than assisting a person to do so.

Despite the clearly shocking nature of the crime and its motive, euthanasia advocates have sprung to his defence, calling the sentence “totally inappropriate.”

Bizarrely, Exit International’s founder Philip Nitschke argued that Morant’s actions of counselling and assisting his vulnerable wife to suicide in order to inherit $1.4 million an “act of love.”

According to the ABC, Nitschke said:

"Exit staff remember Jenny as being lovingly cared for by her husband, who was considered to be as kind, considerate and as compassionate as any husband could be… The severity of the sentencing for this act of love is totally inappropriate."

Kind, considerate, compassionate.  That’s how euthanasia advocates describe a man who a court found spent years encouraging his wife to take her own life and helping her to do so in order to financially gain from her death.

The real agenda of euthanasia advocates is clear.  That they are willing to hail as a ‘loving husband’ a financially-motivated man who a jury found – beyond reasonable doubt – to have counselled and aided his wife (who was not terminally ill) to take her own life shows how far they are wanting to extend the reach of euthanasia and assisted suicide.

Any safeguards included by Queensland legislators won’t be welcomed by euthanasia advocates; they will be constantly trying to undermine them so that the Graham Morant’s of the world not only get through, but are hailed as kind, considerate, compassionate husbands.

Morant will appeal his conviction, using emails allegedly sent from his wife to Exit International as evidence that she was determined to die.  He will also appeal the length of his sentence.

• Australian man convicted of assisting his wife's suicide for $1.4 million.

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.

Euthanasia drug Execution drug controversy.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

I have always wondered why the same drug cocktail can be both controversial and promoted at the same time. We are shocked when a drug cocktail is used for capital punishment or suicide but promote the same drug cocktail when used for euthanasia.

The first story concerns a drug company that filed a lawsuit to stop the use of a drug that it produces being used for executions in Nevada.

The ACLU wrote, concerning this drug cocktail that Nevada was planning to use a risky and experimental drug cocktail to execute a prisoner. The article explains the side-effects of using this drug cocktail and it concludes:

A government that would risk torturing someone to death is not dispensing justice or serving the public good. It is deeply troubling that Nevada government officials are barreling ahead with execution when the chances of torturing Dozier are so high.

It is important to know that the same or similar drug cocktails are used for euthanasia and the ACLU supports euthanasia.

For clarity, I oppose capital punishment and I believe that the state should not have the right to kill, or be involved with killing its citizens. At the same time I believe that medical professionals should not have the right to kill or be involved with killing their patients.

Another article concerns a probe into euthanasia drugs that may have been illegally imported into the United States. The article states:

The solution in question, called "...," contains ..., which is used in lethal injection cocktails. The trade of ... is highly regulated by European Union anti-torture directives and is subject to strict export restrictions. 

(I omitted the name of the drug to prevent promotion of these drugs)

Don't get me wrong, it is very concerning that euthanasia drugs may have illegally entered the United States, but the concern from the drug company is that these drugs may be used for capital punishment. The fact is that this type of drug is being used for euthanasia.

Everyday I receive euthanasia related news stories. Tragically, stories about veterinarians who use euthanasia drugs to die by suicide are not uncommon. There have also been stories about euthanasia drugs being stolen from veterinary clinics. One euthanasia activist promotes buying euthanasia drugs from veterinary suppliers in the third world.

Suicide is always a tragedy. Sadly veterinary workers have one of the highest suicide rates. Some studies indicate that the euthanasia of animals is a contributing factor to the high suicide rate.

If you are experiencing suicidal thoughts please seek help. Contact Your Life Counts.

I ask the question, how can drugs be considered risky, experimental and a form of torture in one circumstance, and a human right when it is used for euthanasia?

Every human person deserves to be treated with dignity, care and respect, but the state should never have the right to kill its citizens. At the same time medical professionals should never have the right to kill their patients. 

Current attitudes toward euthanasia are delusional. Killing people or encouraging people to self-kill is wrong.

Alex Schadenberg comments on suicide activist, Philip Nitschke.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

A CTV News report by Avis Favaro explores the controversial assisted suicide activist, Philip Nitschke. Favaro interviewed Nitschke during his recent tour promoting suicide techniques and information. Nitschke sells suicide information and devices world-wide. Nitschke told Favaro:

"...Many of us, including myself, think death and dying is a right," he told the small crowd who gathered to hear him. 

Nitschke's controversial campaign has already played a role in ending at least one life in Canada: Adam Maier-Clayton. 

The 26-year-old suffered from intractable depression, anxiety and a condition called somatic symptom disorder, and campaigned for medically assisted death for those with mental illness. He couldn't obtain assistance in dying because his condition wasn't considered a terminal disease.

Favaro also interviewed me. Even though I had much to say in our half hour interview, Favaro reported:

But some watching Nitschke's crusade are alarmed, including euthanasia prevention advocate Alex Schadenberg. 

"The reality is that Phil is a very dangerous man," he says.
Schadenberg says Nitschke is really just a businessman preying on vulnerable people. 

"…He is providing information and selling it online; he is funding his whole campaign with that, and people are dying."

Nitschke is an incredibly dangerous man who makes money from selling suicide advice and devices.

• Irresponsible media articles promote Nitschke and suicide.
• Suicide is a symptom of mental illness, not a cure for it.
• Family challenges $1.8 million Will bequest to euthanasia group, after their father died by suicide.

Irresponsible media articles promote Nitschke and suicide.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

"Dr Ted"

I am shocked by the media promotion of Philip Nitschke's new suicide device. Nitschke is being compared to prominent persons and his suicide device is being promoted as an easy and painless death. A previous death device was sold by Nitschke through a fake beer brewing company.

Nitschke lost his medical license in Australia for providing suicide instructions to people with mental health issues and to a man who was suspected in the death of his wife. 

Nitschke has been a world-wide euthanasia promoter for many years and is connected to pro-suicide counseling service that included a youth suicide counseling component where he encouraged young people to contact him with the image of a teddy bear known as "Dr Ted."

It is one issue that Nitschke is so cavalier about providing pro-suicide counseling and advice; it is another issue that the media are promoting his suicide device and ideology.

Last year the World Health Organization (WHO) updated their guide: Preventing suicide: a resource for media professionals. The summary of the WHO guide states:

• Don't place stories about suicide prominently and do not unduly repeat such stories,
• Don't use language which sensationalizes or normalizes suicide, or presents it as a constructive solution to problems,
• Don't explicitly describe the method used,
• Don't provide details about the site/location,
• Don't sensationalize headlines,
• Don't use photographs, video footage or social media links.

Most of the media reports have broken all of these guidelines in their report about Nitschke's death machine.

A Psychiatrist sent me an email with the following comment about Nitschke's death machine:

This is a terrible development (particularly for our psychiatric patients).

I share the concerns of my Psychiatrist friend and I recognize that many suicidal people are not receiving the psychiatric or social support that they need and may feel compelled to contact Nitschke. Nitschke is a disturbingly dangerous man.

• Suicide promotion has led to more youth suicide in Australia.
• Australian Medical Association expels Nitschke.
• Australia's Dr Death is being investigated in 20 deaths.
• Suicide is a symptom of mental illness, not a cure for it.

Victoria Australia parliament consents to euthanasia

This article was published by Mercatornet on November 23, 2017

By Michael Cook

If consent is so often manipulated in sexual matters, why not in ‘voluntary assisted dying’?

The Australian state of Victoria will soon legalise assisted suicide and euthanasia. On Wednesday, after a marathon 28-hour debate, the bill was finally approved in the upper house. A few amendments need to be ratified by the lower house next week, but that is expected to be a mere formality.

So, from June 19, 2019, just 18 months away, patients who have a life expectancy of less than six months, whose illness is incurable and causes intolerable suffering, are over 18 and live in Victoria will be able to request “voluntary assisted dying". 

Legalisation in Victoria has ominous implications for other Australian states and territories. Similar bills have failed only by the narrowest of margins in South Australia, Tasmania and New South Wales. The “dying with dignity” lobby will be strengthened everywhere.

Premier Daniel Andrews has consistently argued that the new law is the safest and most conservative scheme in the world.

Whether that is true or not, the law can always be amended to make it less restrictive at some stage in the future. Its six-months life expectancy requirement can be amended to 12 months; its lower age limit of 18 can be changed to 12; its exclusion of mental illness as grounds for assisted dying can be waived. Australia’s most notorious euthanasia activist, Dr Philip Nitschke, has already complained commented that the law is far too conservative.

“It’s one of the world’s most unworkable end-of-life laws, which really won’t address the needs of a growing number of people who want control at the end of life. It’s not going to change the growing demand by elderly people to have access to their own choice.”

The cornerstone of safe “voluntary assisted dying” laws everywhere is consent. “Conservatives” like Daniel Andrew insist on consent. “Radicals” like Philip Nitschke insist on consent. All supporters are sure that people who take advantage of the law will make a rational, fully informed decision to choose to die.

But there is another area of life where the notion of rational, dispassionate, fully informed consent is being shredded – sex. For decades the fundamental rule of sexual encounters between men and women was clear: women had to consent. Non-consensual sex was rape and was clearly criminal.

• She was euthanized without consent. They decided.

What the Weinstein saga shows is that powerful men easily manipulate consent; there are vast grey areas in which Yes and No lose their clarity. Actress and former investment banker Brit Marling, who was molested by Weinstein, penned an perceptive analysis for The Atlantic in an article titled “Harvey Weinstein and the Economics of Consent”:

The things that happen in hotel rooms and board rooms all over the world (and in every industry) between women seeking employment or trying to keep employment and men holding the power to grant it or take it away exist in a gray zone where words like “consent” cannot fully capture the complexity of the encounter.

Because consent is a function of power. You have to have a modicum of power to give it. In many cases women do not have that power because their livelihood is in jeopardy ...

Can anyone seriously believe that consenting to dying will be less complex than consenting to sexual encounters? No one is more vulnerable than the seriously ill, not even the Hollywood starlets victimised by Weinstein.

You have to take into account their depression, their demoralisation, their greedy relatives, their sensation of being a burden, their poor or non-existent palliative care, their social isolation, their bullying carers and a host of other pressures.

And despite the fact that the “casting couch” had been joked about for decades, the full horror of how powerful men in Hollywood manipulated “consent” did not emerge until now. Women were too afraid or ashamed to talk about it.

How long will we have to wait for similar stories to emerge from the legalisation of “voluntary assisted dying”?

Even longer? At least Weinstein’s victims are still alive to voice their complaints. The victims of euthanasia no longer have voices.

Michael Cook is editor of MercatorNet.

Euthanasia lobby confirms elder abuse risk – but doesn’t seem to care

This article was published by Mercatornet on September 5, 2017

Paul Russell

By Paul Russell - The director of HOPE Australia

The Netherlands legalised both euthanasia and assisted suicide in 2002. The data shows an overwhelming preference for euthanasia. In 2015, there were 6672 euthanasia deaths and only 150 assisted suicide deaths; the total comprising at least 4.5% of all deaths.

In recent years the discussion about ‘life ending actions’ has turned to assisted suicide for ‘completed life’; where a person over a certain age may declare that they wish to end their lives even though they may have no serious medical issues.

Debate has raged back and forth on this new development for some years. An expert committee recommended that changes to the law not proceed, but there remains support from within government and some of the minor parties.

Reports in 2016 suggested that the government had drafted legislation. Health Minister, Edith Schippers, has said that "because the wish for a self-chosen end of life primarily occurs in the elderly, the new system will be limited to them”. The lower age limit is rather arbitrary with debate ranging from 60 to 70 years of age.

Legislation is expected to be introduced in late 2017. It is expected to take the form of a new law rather than an amendment. This seems to be because the existing provisions require medical opinion and support whereas this new form of assisted suicide may have more in common with the mail or online order system made notorious by the Australian activist Dr Philip Nitschke and his organisation, Exit International.

But this is not the first time that such a move has been put forward. As with all of these debates, there’s a long lead-in time while the discussion of the agenda looks to forge a beachhead of public opinion.

In 1991, Dutch Supreme Court Judge, Huib Drion, argued for “The self-chosen end for old people,” over the age of 75. He suggested a two-stage process where a person would self-administer a substance that would have no immediate effect that could be followed up later by the second stage substance that would react with the first and bring about death by suicide. The idea became known as “the Drion Pill” though no such pill was ever developed.

The publication of his paper in a newspaper, NRC Handelsblad, in 1991, sparked a significant controversy with letters of support for many weeks and Drion receiving a great deal of public attention.

The World Federation of Right to Die Societies (WFRTDS) also picked up on the idea as did its Dutch counterpart the Dutch Right to Die society (NVVE) and the former Dutch health minister Els Borst who was instrumental in the introduction of the 2002 euthanasia law.

In 2003, the WFRTDS adopted a name change to their policy support for Drion’s idea, calling it, instead, “The Last Will Pill” and noting that the resonance of the use of Drion’s name limited the association of the idea to the elderly. WFRTDS sees its application more broadly than that.

Both Drion and the WFRTDS are clear in the distinction between the practice of euthanasia in Holland and this new proposal.

The rhetoric is eerily similar to Nitschke and Exit: current euthanasia and assisted suicide laws are medical models that only partially give voice to autonomy. As NVVE chief executive officer Rob Jonquière, pointed out: 

“People want the right to choose to end their life independent of doctors or illness.”

This independence from any medical model has implications. As observed already, there are similarities in the proposals to the modus operandi of Exit and Philip Nitschke.

Another Dutch right-to-die club, The Co-operative Last Will, are also pushing this barrow. They seem willing to sail close to the edges of the law in advocacy and information in a similar way to Exit. They are promoting “a new drug” but refuse to identify it.

“The stuff is legally available and deadly in pure form. It has already been used by people who wanted to commit self-exploitation. There have also been several murders committed by the means.”

This is dangerous talk. As we have seen with the Nitschke methods, people who are not otherwise ill and people who suffered depressive illnesses have been caught up in the hype with devastating personal and family consequences. The reference to murders is chilling: clearly people have been tricked into consuming the drug.

Again, like Nitschke (who once said: “There will be some casualties…”), The Co-operative Last Will organisation is frank about the possible collateral damage:

“The Cooperative Last Will and its members (3,500 people) point out the existence and functioning of the new drug. The club realizes that it involves the risks. An extreme consequence could be that children give the means to their old and wealthy parents because they want to claim their inheritance.

"That kind of criticism is to be expected. But the sale of rope is also not forbidden, and so people rob themselves of life, "says a spokeswoman.” (Emphasis added)

A glib retort and hardly apposite. Robbing oneself of life is suicide – elder abuse to death is murder. But who would ever know.

But collateral damage it will be. Far from stopping Dutch “right-to-die” types in their tracks, such an acknowledgement seems more about deflecting criticism than it is about protecting Dutch citizens from abuse.

One wonders if the Zeitgeist had not been infected this past 20 years and more with the Dutch strain of the euthanasia virus if there might have been more pause for thought. Given that Drion’s infamous idea predates Dutch euthanasia by a full decade; perhaps not!

Paul Russell is director of HOPE: preventing euthanasia & assisted suicide, which is based in Australia.