Culture & Ethics
Medicine
Group-Funding to Pay for Swiss Suicide?
Have we become such a degraded and life-disaffirming culture that an Internet fundraising site is hosting a request to group-fund a one-way trip to a Swiss suicide clinic?
Apparently so. From the pitch at the site, to which I won’t link, since I don’t want to indirectly aid this effort:
I am 66 years old and now disabled, with debilitating pain which was caused by having a tumour removed from my spine, permanently damaging my nervous system. Medical experts have advised me that there is no longer any treatment available to alleviate my pain.
The money is needed to fund my decision to terminate my life at the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland, and in turn save the [National Health Service] huge costs in my long term care. I believe that the limited NHS funds could be better spent on people with the prospects for recovery.
This could well be a ruse. The fellow wants what amounts to about $40,000. Suicide clinics, as I understand it, charge about $10,000. But with demand high, maybe prices have inflated.
So far, two suckers takers. What ghouls. I hope this is performance art.
Photo: Matterhorn, by chil, on Camptocamp.org; Derivative work: Zacharie Grossen (Camptocamp.org) [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons.