Friday 6 March 2009
Swiss-assisted-suicide-clinic: the solution for many, but is it right?
A British elderly couple have committed suicide in the famous assisted-suicide-clinic in Zurich, Switzerland, the Independent has reported today.
According to the Independent, 80-year-old Peter Duff, and 70-year-old Penelope Duff; Peter's wife, are believed to be the first British couple to commit suicide in the Swiss Clinic. They were also believed to have been suffering of cancer since 1992.
However this is not the first time a British citizen commits suicide in the Swiss assisted suicide clinic; according to the BBC News Channel about 100 British citizens have already committed suicide in the famous clinic, including a paralysed Rugby player.
When I read this news in the Metro, as I was on my way to the class room, I was chocked and pretty soon amazed by the terrible news. I just can't believe that someone can just end his very own life and still take the life of the person who is closest to you and who has loved you for so long.
I do not agree with the fact that people are considering suicide as an option to end long-term-painful illness. I have never been through a painful illness myself, but I have been very close to someone who suffered from a terrible illness, and I am sure that if that person had thought of committing suicide, I would have not been what I am now and nor would I have achieved half the stuff I have achieved now.
The thing with suicide is that when you commit it, you are not only finishing the greatest gift you've ever been given - your life - but you're also affecting and damaging the lives of those who are closest to you and the lives of those who love you as well.
Independent article used to write this story:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/british-couple-die-in-suicide-pact-at-swiss-euthanasia-clinic-1638632.html
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Theres a difference between suicide when because your upset and euthanasia when you are suffering terribly and only have a couple of years left when you are in so much pain you can't do anything anyway.
ReplyDeleteSometimes it is easier on the people you love so you will not be a burden or you do not want to be a burden.
Assisted suicide is better than ages of suffering. Also, it doesn't necessarily damage the lives of those closest to you if they support you, which they may well do.
ReplyDeleteHaven't blocked me very well by the way.
Thank you both for your comments. I appreciate the effort you've taken to write them.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I do believe that suicide is not a solution for anything. Yes you will suffer if you got a terminal illness and those around you will suffer too, but committing suicide is like giving up everything you got. It's like giving up fighting for your life and letting all your loved ones suffer the results.
I believe that committing suicide isn't brave at all. That's just my opinion though. I respect the opinions of other people - even of those who believe that committing suicide is a solution. I just hope others respect my opinion too.
You are calling it suicide which is completely putting the wrong message to it.
ReplyDeleteIt's euthanasia,some people can't fight for there lives because it is terminal and don;t you think these people talk to there families before they make these decisions.
If the family wants the person to suffer unbarebly for two more years just so they can be with a person who can't even talk to them that is selfish also.
Well I know for a fact that the 2 elderly couple who committed suicide in the Swiss clinic did not talk to their family before they went there. In fact, they lied and told their friends that they were gonna go on holiday.
ReplyDeleteAnd please don't hate or take this personal. I'm just expressing my opinion and saying what I believe it's right!
I would say it is selfish to assume that a person can;t have control over their own life.
ReplyDeleteWhatever religion you are, it should never block the right as a human to make your own choices.
You know, I strongly believe that committing suicide is sending everything to hell and giving up everything you got. I believe that when you commit suicide you're telling to world that when things get hard, there's no other way but to give up.
ReplyDeleteYou know, after Christopher D'Olier Reeve - one of the most remarkable superman actors ever - was paralysed, he helped many people with paralysis. He even donated his body - while he was alive - to scientists who were doing research on how to cure paralysis.
And you know what, he lived every single minute of his life like if it were the last one. Of course he was paralysed yeah, but that didn't stop him from enjoying the rest of his life. Because he knew he had people around him who loved him.
Had he given up on his life and committed suicide, scientists and many people had never had the opportunity to be helped.
Typically, it's more complicated than that.
ReplyDeleteFor a start, you seem to have problems with the meaning of the words 'terminal', 'euthanasia' and 'in accordance with their wishes'. Loaded, emotive terms aren't in-depth analysis - they're rhetorical tactics, along the lines of Bill O'Reilly and the Daily Mail.
Secondly, your comparison with Reeve doesn't really work. According to your own link , these people did have fulfilling and active lives before the cancer took over. I doubt these people could have done these things if they were idiots, and I'm willing to bet that they put a lot of thought into their decision.
While I accept this is a contentious issue, the basic idea of freedom is that people can do whatever they want, so long as they don't harm another while doing it (well, not without that person's consent anyway).
These people made a measured decision to spare their families from the indignity of seeing them die from a horrible illness. They avoided a horrible, miserable and painful end.
Now, unless you think they somehow deserved such horror, how can you condemn their decision to avoid it?
So you're saying that because you're passing through a horrible moment and you're suffering from a horrible illness - yes it is a horrible illness that no one should suffer from. But it is something no one should be ashamed of. Cancer just happens and you gotta deal with it logically, not irrationally - all you gotta do is kill yourself to "release" your loved ones from the "shame" of having cancer? I think you're being simply selfish.
ReplyDeleteYou know something, I'd rather say that someone closed to me had cancer and lived with it for many years, and for many years fought against it, and never gave up, rather than saying that someone closed to me gave up on his/her life and committed suicide because he/she had cancer.
If you ask me; there is something more shameful than having cancer, and it is giving up, stop fighting it, and killing yourself. And I'm sure many people - religious and non-religious - would think the same way I do.
No I'm not saying that, and your obtuseness on this issue is getting annoying.
ReplyDelete'Terminal' has a specific meaning and it is that you will die. Pretending otherwise. or talking about solvable situations is disingenuous at best.
My question still stands - how can you justify demanding the horror of continued, painful and ultimatelly unnstoppeable end from someone just because of your personal, untested beliefs?
I believe you haven't read the article quite well. The two elderly couple who went to the assisted-suicide-clinic were not terminal. And it has been recently discovered that they might have had a change to live.
ReplyDeleteIf you wanna justify you wanna justify your future actions by committing suicide, that it fine with me. As long as you don't tell the world that suicide is the solution, because it's not.
I believe you haven't read the article quite well. The two elderly couple who went to the assisted-suicide-clinic were not terminal.
ReplyDeleteFrom the article you linked to:
Peter Duff, 80, and his wife Penelope, 70, are believed to be the first British couple to have ended their lives at the clinic in Zurich. They were both suffering from terminal cancer.
If you wanna justify you wanna justify your future actions by committing suicide, that it fine with me. As long as you don't tell the world that suicide is the solution, because it's not.
ReplyDeleteI didn't, so you can dump that strawman.
What I'm asking, and still waiting for an answer on, is how you can justify putting your beliefs over a person's right to choose how to live their life. How you can tell these people who have suffered where you have not, that they are wrong and you are right.
Also, I just noticed - you're the only person in this thread and the news article to use the word shame, scare-quoting it like it's from someone else. Putting words into others mouths, how...shameful.
I'm justifying it simply by saying to you that giving your life, the most beautiful gift we got, and committing suicide just because you can't take it anymore, is more shameful than living a life of suffering and living every minute trying to live one more day. Like I've said before, assisted-suicide should not be a solution to anyone.
ReplyDeleteAlright, I made a mistake. The elderly couple were in a terminal condition, yes, I admit it. But at least they had enough strength to go all the way to another country. It wasn't like they were in hospital dying. Was it?
And according to you, how should you justify assisted-suicide as a solution?
You actually want to force people to live painful, numbered lives when they have no opportunity to do more than live another day, and with no real odds of improving?
ReplyDeleteYou sick bastard.
Oh, and you still don't get to ask questions of me until you provide your 'evidence'.
You actually want people to give up on their lives and send to hell all they have and all their loved ones around them? You sick-cold-hearted bastard.
ReplyDeleteAnd I'm not giving you any evidence of anything because I don't have to. I've made my point across all the comments I've written and the article itself.
Para 1: Lame strawman is lame
ReplyDeletePara 2: You know, I wondered if you'd get to that point...
How cheap of you!
ReplyDeleteto be fair, it doesn't surprise me. I always knew you were this type of person, someone who assumes that the argument is over, and most likely won by 'you' and 'you' say it is.
It's like what we learned in class last semester mate: In an argument, the first person to mention Hitler, usually looses. The same thing can be applied here: The first person to declare victory on the other, is the looser.
But before you even insist you won, find, I'll say: Congratulations!
The thing is, and you better answer this question because if you don't, I'll assume all you've been arguing about will be pointless.
ReplyDeleteHow is assisted suicide a solution? How is it, that by taking your own life, and leaving your loved ones behind to cry and living with the fact that someone closed to you took his own life, how is that a solution? I'll tell you what, that's a pretty sick solution.
Nelson Mandela could have taken his own life while he was in prison and and no one would have cared about him anymore, he was considered a terrorist anyways, but no, he carried on living his life and once he was out of prison, he became the first back president of South Africa and made radical changes in his country. Not changes that benefitted him, but changes that benefitted everyone.
I'll give you another example of why I believe suicide is not a solution: Christopher D'Olier Reeve - one of the most remarkable superman actors ever - was paralysed, and even after that he helped many people with paralysis by donating some of the money he had already earned before and by donating his body - while he was alive - to scientists who were doing research on how to cure paralysis. Why didn't he just kill himself? Another person in his position would have done it. After all, to the eyes of many, he had nothing to live for.
I'll tell you why, because even after he was paralysed, he had found something else to live for, a cause that did help many, a cure for paralysis. And Although he didn't find it, that did not stop him from living his life fully and from enjoying what he had left until the day he died. And I'll say this again, suicide is for cowards.
It's like what we learned in class last semester mate: In an argument, the first person to mention Hitler, usually looses. The same thing can be applied here: The first person to declare victory on the other, is the looser.
ReplyDeleteI always knew you were this type of person, someone who assumes that the argument is over, and most likely won by 'you' and 'you' say it is.
"I get to declare you to be a bad person, so I win! I win! I win!"
Hey, didn't we cover ad hominems in that lesson? Yes, I'm pretty sure we did. Well, I did - I don't know what you were doing.
Also, the Hitler thing is called a Godwin.
As you were the person saying that you were right in what you say, I'm not really sure what this has to do with me.
Still lame.
The thing is, and you better answer this question because if you don't, I'll assume all you've been arguing about will be pointless.
ReplyDeleteAnd I'm not giving you any evidence of anything because I don't have to. I've made my point across all the comments I've written and the article itself.
What goeth around cometh around...
And assume what you like - it's all you were going to do anyway.
"I get to declare you to be a bad person, so I win! I win! I win!" Puttin words on other people's mouths again Mark? Bad boy! I'll tell you what, you're gonna get in trouble if you do that when you become a journalist mate!
ReplyDeleteMan, you must be suffering some serious whiplash from all that hypocrisy
ReplyDeleteBye-bye, little Zebra. Enjoy working for Faux News - you two deserve each other.
Hahaha... You're stupidly funny! I assure you it must be very painful not being able to recognise that you lost and that you can't come up with a reason to say that suicide is a solution. Hahaha... You funny joke.
ReplyDeleteOh and don't worry, I won't work for Fox. It's not my kind of news network. I recommend before you say something about someone, you got to know that person first. Because when you don't do that, you just end up looking like an idiot, just like you're looking like at the moment.