The proponents of assisted suicide tell us only the terminally ill will qualify for assisted suicide, but life is terminal, isn’t it? And dead people are so much cheaper than living ones, especially if they can be expected to need costly care in the near future.
A Swiss assisted suicide group has formally announced that it will assist people in committing suicide on the basis of suffering related to age alone, regardless of the state of their health.
The article points out that Switzerland’s laws do not restrict assisted suicide to any group, but that the private groups that assist in suicide make their own rules. Previously these have required very stringent probing of the patient’s motives, basically restricting the practice to the very ill. The article quotes a spokesperson from the group who says that such a process is burdensome for old people and should be relaxed.
In a stunning inadvertent acknowledgement of the slippery slope, the spokesman for the assisted suicide provider acknowledged that Swiss doctors’ ideas of what constitutes a valid reason for assistance in suicide have expanded over time. ‘”Prescriptions for the [life-ending] medicine come most often from the family doctors,” he said. “That shows that the medical profession is more understanding now of what it means to go on like this.”
The Swiss Medical Association expressed concerns that healthy people may be pressured to assisted suicide because they are old.
ttp://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/may/26/swiss-exit-assisted-suicide-elderly-not-terminally-ill