Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

TagAssisted Suicide

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Syringe with anaesthetic drug - Propofol, ready for infusion.

The Lies in New York’s Assisted Suicide Bill

New York is close to passing a bill to legalize assisted suicide. Having passed the assembly, it is currently being considered in the senate
Falsifying death certificates, for example, prevents transparency. Investigators will be unable to access the information they need to conduct independent studies. Read More ›
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Black dominoes chain on table background

Estonia’s Supreme Court Declares a Right to Suicide

At least these rulings candidly cut through the toxic smoke so often generated by assisted-suicide advocates
Such rulings demonstrate that the real goal/destination is a right to death by any competent person for any cause and assisted by anyone. Read More ›
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Beauty injection concept. Syringe with violet liquid for hypodermic injection.

New Jersey Program Aims to Prevent Suicide— Just Not All Suicides

In New Jersey, the self-terminations of people with a prognosis of six months or less ceases to be “suicide” when facilitated by a doctor
Yet terminally ill patients opt for assisted suicide typically because of issues such as fears of burdening family, losing dignity, not untreatable pain. Read More ›
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Surdose

Famed Ethics Prof Endorses Suicide for Old People in New York Times

Peter Singer supports suicide not just for those who are ill now but who fear that they might become so
Do the philosophers not understand how bigoted and anti-intrinsic dignity of life their relativistic assumptions are about when a life is worth continuing? Read More ›
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Vials with Sodium pentobarbital used for euthanasia and lethal inyecion in a hospital, conceptual image

Swiss Canton Liberates Suicide Tourism from Police Investigation

Suicidal people are increasingly abandoned to lethal assistance, with steps continually taken to make death easier to access
Predictably, assisted suicides are provided under ever-lessening oversight, to ever-expanding cadres of the eligible, leading eventually to death on demand. Read More ›
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Pharmacy Drugstore Checkout Cashier Counter: Mature Female Pharmacist and Young Woman Using Contactless Payment NFC Smartphone to Buy Prescription Medicine, Vitamins, Beauty, Health Care Products

Oregon Bill Would Allow Nondoctors to Prescribe Assisted Suicide

I suspect the categories of providers are expanding because most doctors have no interest in assisted suicide
Usefully, however, the Oregon bill also requires hospices to say whether they participate in assisted suicide, contrary to hospice founders’ intentions. Read More ›
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Syringe with anaesthetic drug - Propofol, ready for infusion.

Vermont Bill Would Allow Nondoctors to Prescribe Assisted Suicide

Initial assisted suicide laws are merely the launching pad for an ever-expanding prescribed death regime
“Strict guidelines” against abuse sell such laws to the public but they are never the ceiling of permissibility. The rules are loosened more and more. Read More ›
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Mountain Goats and Hidden lake, Glacier National Park, Montana USA

Montana Senate Passes Bill Outlawing Physician-Assisted Suicide

In a muddled legal situation, the bill declares assisted suicide to be contrary to Montana public policy, making a previous courtroom defense unavailable
Legislation like this must be carefully written because assisted-suicide activists frequently redefine terms and obfuscate crucial distinctions. Read More ›
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Syringe with anaesthetic drug - Propofol, ready for infusion.

Assisted-Suicide Death Ceremonies Becoming Normalized

I certainly believe we should all remember that we are going to die as a means of focusing our faith or concentrating on how to live better lives
By attending a suicide party or ceremony, we validate the decision and, in so doing, become complicit in that death. Read More ›
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White dove in flight with a cityscape background at sunset

Rita Marker, the Great Anti-Assisted-Suicide Champion, Dead at 83

I am convinced that in her time, Rita was the most effective anti-assisted-suicide/euthanasia champion in the world
Unlike organizations on the other side of this issue, anti-assisted-suicide work doesn’t have the backing of billionaires like George Soros. Read More ›
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blur image background of corridor in hospital or clinic image

28-Year-Old Woman Schedules Euthanasia Appointment in the Netherlands

It's shocking, but more and more people are choosing to die to escape any kind of pain

According to The Free Press, a shocking 5% of deaths in the Netherlands in 2022 were from euthanasia. Zoraya ter Beek, a 28-year-old woman from the Netherlands, was approved for euthanasia because of her struggles with mental health and is scheduled to die in May. It’s a dark and tragic story, but reflects how more and more people in the West are seeing death as the only way out of pain. Free Press reporter Rupa Subramanya writes, There won’t be any funeral. She doesn’t have much family; she doesn’t think her friends will feel like going. Instead, her boyfriend will scatter her ashes in “a nice spot in the woods” that they have chosen together, she said. “I’m a little Read More ›

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lost time memory, retro clock time at 7 o'clock with fade dissolve missing life history concept.

Mainstream Publication Endorses Suicide

The Politico story violates media guidelines and does a profound disservice to our society.
Such reporting tells people with dementia that their lives are not worth living. This is very wrong. Politico’s editors should be ashamed. Read More ›
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World War II airplane on formation

The Transhumanist Delusion of the Nazis

"All the Light We Cannot See" shows what can happen when the delusions of transhumanism join forces with an appalling ideology.
The Nazis were keen on creating a superhuman race with unsurpassable physical, intellectual, and (ironically) moral qualities. Read More ›
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Medical drip in hospital corridor

Assisted Suicide and the Dangers of “Word Engineering”

When radical policies are proposed, the first step is to change the lexicon to make it seem less extreme, even mundane.
If people don’t kill themselves because of concern about stigma, isn’t that good? I mean, shouldn’t we want fewer people to commit suicide? Read More ›
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Lit up black modern hallway

The Technocracy Continues to Grow

We live in a time where individual freedom is under material threat from an emerging technocracy
We live in a time where the most important policy and personal decisions are going to be made not by us but for us by “the experts.” Read More ›
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Laboratory technician checking CDC specimen submitting form, laboratory testing for SARS-CoV-2 COVID-19 Coronavirus disease infection,global pandemic crisis,swab collection patient specimen procedure

CDC Neglects to Include Assisted Deaths in Official Suicide Report

Assisted dying is a form of suicide, regardless of the ways our culture has euphemized the term
The term suicide defines what is done, not why. In other words, assisted suicides are as much suicides as jumping off a bridge. Read More ›
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Hallway the emergency room and outpatient hospital. 3d illustration

The Small Steps That Lead to Dystopia

Revisiting a 1993 article warning about the future of assisted suicide

Editor’s Note: The following piece was originally published in Newsweek in June 1993. Today is my 76th birthday,” the letter began. “Unassisted and by my own free will, I have chosen to take my final passage.” Suicide. My friend Frances died in a cold, impersonal hotel room after taking an overdose of sleeping pills, with a plastic bag tied over her head suffocating the life out of her body. Frances was not a happy woman. She had family troubles. She suffered from chronic lymphatic leukemia and was facing the difficult prospect of a hip replacement. She also had a chronic nerve condition that caused her to feel a burning sensation on her skin. But Frances was lucid, aware and involved. Read More ›

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Hospital through the eyes of patient

Patients Opting for Euthanasia in the Face of Painful Circumstances

Receiving assistance takes a long time. But to be made dead? Not so much.

So much compassion! A disabled woman with quadriplegia named Rose Finlay in Canada has asked to be euthanized because she is destitute, and the disability benefits she applied for would not arrive in time for her to be properly housed and cared for. From the CBC story: A quadriplegic woman in Bowmanville, Ont., has applied for medical assistance in dying (MAID), saying it’s easier to access than the support services she needs to live her life comfortably. Receiving assistance takes a long time. But to be made dead? Not so much: The single mother of three boys previously supported her family with earnings from disability advocacy work through her company, Inclusive Solutions. That’s also how she could afford to hire her own support Read More ›

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Beauty injection concept. Syringe with violet liquid for hypodermic injection.

This Country Just Legalized Euthanasia

The law isn't even limited to those who are terminally ill

Alas. The president of Portugal just signed into law a bill legalizing euthanasia by lethal injection. It is not limited to the terminally ill — which is at least honest, since that is not what euthanasia/assisted suicide is really all about. From the Reuters story: The law specifies that people would be allowed to request assistance in dying in cases when they are “in a situation of intense suffering, with definitive injury of extreme gravity or serious and incurable disease.” It establishes a two-month gap between accepting a request and the actual procedure and makes psychological support mandatory. Strict guidelines and all that jazz. Not only are they unlikely to be strictly enforced but will soon be redefined from protections to barriers, Read More ›