Who is the Final Exit Network?

Who are the Final Exit Network? | NRL News Today: FEN is a group who aids and counsels suicide, and who will journey with a person to assist in in completing a suicide as part of their Exit Guide Service.

'via Blog this'

What are they really up to?

Wesley Smith writes: "As I watch Compassion and Choices (once the Hemlock Society), it appears to have a couple of long term goals. First and foremost, of course, is the complete legalization of assisted suicide throughout the country, supposedly restricted to the terminally ill under guidelines. Then, the guidelines and limitations would soon be attacked and streeetchhhed–evidenced by the organization explicitly opposing the very guidelines in Montana (after a court ruling creating a constitutional right to assisted suicide, later vacated), that it had bragged about establishing in Oregon.

"Second, its leaders hope the assisted suicide advocacy group can become the Planned Parenthood of death, complete with public funding and imbedding into the political ruling Establishment.

"Third, it hopes to use “mandatory information” laws about palliative care to promote the death agenda, evidenced by the original proposal in California under AB 2747, which, among other provisions, would have required doctors to put the terminally ill into artificial comas and then dehydrate them to death on demand. That broader agenda was temporarily scaled back after AB 2747 hit a wall of resistance, with a law eventually passed requiring doctors to give palliative care information to their terminally ill patients."

Derek Humphry's suicide advice

In a recent blog post, staunch assisted-suicide activist Derek Humphry released detailed instructions on how to procure the lethal drug Veterinary Nembutal (pentobarbital) in "the backstreets of poorer neighbourhoods" of Mexico and Peru. Humphry says that one bottle is lethal, but two should be purchased for good measure. He gives prices and instructions on how to kill oneself "with speed and absolute certainty" using Nembutal. He warns against visiting Mexican border towns because of drug gang violence. Peru, however, "has proved successful for shoppers." Humphry also suggests Thailand - but advises to "watch out for the notorious fake drugs there."

New UK pro-death society

A new right-to-die society has sprung up in the UK. The Society for Old Age Rational Suicide (SOARS) wants to press the case for assisted suicide for people who are not terminally ill. “After eight or nine decades, many people rightly decide that their lives have been fully lived, and now they have a life which, for them, has finally become too long,” its website declares. The leader of the group is 79-year-old Michael Irwin, who is now being dubbed “Dr Death” by the British media. He is a controversial figure who was deregistered as a doctor after he helped a friend to die in 2005. He admits having helped several people to commit suicide. Telegraph

Editor: Makes me want to come up with a more appropriate acronym -- SORES, Suicide of Rebellious Elderly . . . help me out.

Assisted-Suicide advocate makes his book available to libraries free of charge

Assisted-Suicide Blog - Weblog of Derek Humphry, Founder of Hemlock Society Derek Humphry's well-known assisted-suicide manual "Final Exit" will now be distributed free to US public lending libraries upon request.

Dignitas founder is millionaire

A newspaper investigation has raised new questions about Dignitas and whether Ludwig Minelli, its founder and director, makes profit from his “mercy killings.” Mr Minelli, who said he would take no salary from Dignitas when opening the clinic 12 years ago, has insisted that his wealth comes from an inheritance, left by his mother. But the cost of a simple suicide at Dignitas has risen from £1,800 in 2005 to £4,500, fuelling suspicions that the clinic may not be sticking to Swiss laws that are supposed to prevent people “selfishly” profiting from assisted suicide. The cost of the clinic’s full service, including funerals, medical costs and official fees, is as high as £7,000. Andreas Brunner, a Swiss prosecutor, has accused Mr Minelli, and Dignitas, of hiding behind Swiss privacy laws to refuse publication of their accounts for the last five years. Telegraph

Roadside Controversy Looms With 'Right to Die' Billboards

Final Exit Network is putting up billboards to let you know that you have the “right to die.” The controversial non-profit announced plans to put up billboards along highways in California, New Jersey and Florida, promoting what president Jerry Dincin calls “the last civil right of the 21st Century” -- the right for a person to determine his or her own death in certain medical situations. The billboards, which will feature the slogan “My Life, My Death, My Choice,” are reportedly funded in part by volunteer donations to FEN. Newsfeed

Nitschke announces North American tour dates

This fall Australia's Dr. Death will be in various North American cities to promote suicide by selling his books, devices and information online to anyone and everyone. There is no surprise that he is not having a workshop in Washington State this time. His last workshop in Bellingham Washington resulted in a criminal complaint based on the fact that he was providing information as to how an attendee could kill her spouse. Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Dignitas: Kill them all!

Dignitas is again in the news, and it shouldn't be such a surprise to the media because Dignitas is doing exactly what it has always said it was doing: Helping anyone who wants to to kick the bucket. The latest flap involves Dignitas’ providing a suicide kit to a 39 year-old Spanish man with severe psychological problems.

Oops. Or maybe not. All the chatter about “transparency,” policies to “protect,” rigid controls to ensure that no “mistakes” are made is all smoke and mirrors on the way to the only goal the pro-death crowd have always wanted: Assisted suicide and euthanasia on demand and available for anyone, anywhere, at any time. Disability Matters

The truth about FEN

The Final Exit Network claims that authorities are "persecuting" FEN members in Georgia and Arizona. That is a gross distortion. The authorities in Georgia and Arizona initiated investigations after complaints by concerned relatives that the apparent suicides of their loved ones were aided and encouraged by FEN members. That's not "persecution" — it's "doing your job." Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Logic’s Undignified Death: The Fundamental Incoherence Of Assisted Suicide Laws

If there really is a right to die, why should the scope of who is permitted to commit suicide be limited to the terminally ill, or those who are in pain? If one begins with the premise that there is a “right” to die, then it follows logically that all suicide should be legalized. But the assisted suicide camp will never make this claim, because surely they realize that our society would (rightly) not countenance a culture in which doctors are permitted to off anyone who is having a bad day. True/Slant

Logic’s Undignified Death: The Fundamental Incoherence Of Assisted Suicide Laws

If there really is a right to die, why should the scope of who is permitted to commit suicide be limited to the terminally ill, or those who are in pain? If one begins with the premise that there is a “right” to die, then it follows logically that all suicide should be legalized. But the assisted suicide camp will never make this claim, because surely they realize that our society would (rightly) not countenance a culture in which doctors are permitted to off anyone who is having a bad day. True/Slant

Website claims to present the Christian case for euthanasia

Christians Supporting Choice for Voluntary Euthanasia does not even take acknowledge "thou shalt not kill" in it's "Bible Facts" section. It says "the term 'sanctity of life' appears nowhere in the bible," yet affirms "that God has created human beings" and people are "made in the 'image' of God," but it's only so they can "make their own decisions and to accept responsibility for themselves and their neighbours." Yet, the sanctity of human life is a doctrine derived from these very truths!

One proponent goes on to claim, "It's not 'playing God' to seek freely to control the direction of my life, and it's not 'playing God' to seek freely to control the mode of my dying. For a Christian, God is not honoured by a person (made in the 'image' of God) abdicating her autonomy and freedom of will and passively submitting to 'fate'." So, by doing the very opposite of what God says, we somehow honor Him? "Submitting to fate"? No, we submit to a sovereign God.

HBO Movie on Jack Kevorkian Premiers Saturday

The new HBO movie glorifying the life of assisted suicide advocate Jack Kevorkian starring Al Pacino premiers on Saturday. You Don't Know Jack, the biopic on the man who was eventually imprisoned for killing a disabled patient on national television, is already drawing criticism. Attorney and author Wesley J. Smith says the movie presents a revisionist history of Kevorkian and his killing more than 120 people in assisted suicides. LifeNews

Australia's "Dr. Death" visits San Francisco

Philip Nitschke will bring his suicide seminar to the Buddhist Center in San Francisco, where he will teach attendees how to kill themselves. Shouldn't there be limits to assisted-suicide permissiveness? Not according to Nitschke, who bluntly takes assisted-suicide advocacy to its logical conclusion. If we each own our bodies, he says, and if self-termination is an acceptable answer to human suffering, then assisted suicide shouldn't be restricted to limited "subgroups," such as the dying. Indeed, in 2001 interview with National Review Online, Nitschke asserted that "all people qualify ... including the depressed, the elderly bereaved, the troubled teen." SF Chronicle

‘Dr. Death’ Nitschke Sells Euthanasia to China

For more than a decade, Philip Nitschke says he taught thousands in the Western world how to end their lives “without making a mess of it.” Now, he wants to bring that knowledge to China, where even the talk of death is taboo. Bloomberg

You Really Don't Know Jack

Fox News' Neil Cavuto last week introduced Kevorkian as a "Michigan physician who claims to have assisted in the suicides of at least 130 terminally ill people from 1990 to 1998."
Physician? Not the kind who treats patients. As for the risible notion that his victims were terminally ill, well, it collapses in the harsh light of a New England Journal of Medicine analysis of the autopsies of 69 Kevorkian cases. . . . President Obama cannot be happy that Kevorkian gave a quasi-endorsement of ObamaCare. "The death panel makes it sound so negative," he grimaced. In the same hour, Kevorkian spoke up for Michael Jackson's doctor, as he dryly observed, "The patient got what he wanted." JWR

Why the assisted-suicide movement is winning

The assisted-suicide movement has come a long way in just a couple of decades. . . . When members of the social and political elite associate themselves with assisted-suicide groups as openly as they would with charities like the United Way, we have reached a new cultural moment. National Review; see also The Creeping Culture of Euthanasia

Canadian doctors aim to revise law on euthanasia

Canada's continuing debate on the right to die, prodded by court cases and proposed legislation, seems to be heading for a new round this fall according to a report the Quebec College of Physicians may recommend Canada's Criminal Code be revised to permit a form of medical euthanasia in strictly controlled circumstances. A right-to-die private member's bill sponsored by Bloc Quebecois MP Francine Lalonde is also due for debate, leaving both sides of the contentious issue gearing for a busy fall. Canada.com

Top conductor and wife latest to die at Dignitas

Sir Edward Downes CBE was conductor emeritus of the BBC Philharmonic orchestra and Lady Joan Downes was a former ballet dancer and choreographer. News of their deaths last Friday became public when their children released a statement yesterday. Sir Edward, 85, had been losing his sight and hearing, while his 74-year-old wife had been suffering from terminal cancer. Christian Institute