Assisted suicide is an ugly, wasteful, disgusting thing...in more ways than just its obvious immorality. This London Times piece (yes, it's the same paper that ran Alois Geiger's disturbing pro-abortion, pro-euthasnasia piece that I posted yesterday) shows the Dignitas' ghoulish guerrilla operation as being anything but dignified....Dignitas, which says that it is a nonprofit organisation, has not published its figures since 2004. Its rationale is that it is driven by its members (6,000 have signed up, 700 from Britain) and their desire to control the nature of their death. Yet even Ludwig Minelli, its director, admits that he rules like a “benign dictator”.
There is talk, too, of a “Dignitas Clinic”, which conjures images of crisp Swiss efficiency, mountain air, a kind of peace. The reality is rather more shabby. While the organisation maintains a solid air-conditioned head office in a dormitory suburb of Zurich, the location of the assisted suicides is constantly changing. The present address is a second-floor apartment at Ifagstrasse No 12, an urban wasteland about 15 km (9 miles) from Zurich. Down the road is the Globe brothel, which is garlanded with a dozen flags representing the different nationalities of the girls inside. Near by, a Caribbean club, a Greek internet café and, next to the suicide apartment, a place where you can change your car oil.
Switzerland allows assisted suicide by a nondoctor provided that it is not done for profit...
...Gerhard Fischer, of the Evangelical People’s Party, a powerful voice in the German-speaking part of Switzerland, said: “It has got out of control. I’m a farmer but I have to take a course before I so much as inject a calf, yet you don’t need anything at all to send a human to his death. It has become a business.”...
...It was the Waste Disposal, Water and Energy Department that sent a warning to Dignitas about the human remains in Lake Zurich. And it is the local housing authorities that keep Dignitas on the run. Again and again, landlords or councillors have complained that Dignitas, which rents accommodation using the names of individuals, is transforming residential space into commercial space.
The real reason is clear: after someone has killed himself, the police are informed. The coroner and a doctor arrive, watch the video that has been shot shortly before in which the would-be suicide makes clear he is acting of his own free will. Testimony is taken. An “unnatural death” is entered on the forms. While this is going on, an ambulance, usually paid for by the family of the recently deceased, is standing outside, blue lights flashing, ready to carry the body to the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Zurich in case a postmortem examination is ordered – and then to join the queue for cremation. It is the remains that are not claimed by families or friends that Dignitas is thought to be dumping...
