Time's expert of choice, Nitschke, counseled an Australian woman named Nancy Crick in her suicide. For purposes of public acceptance, pre-death, Crick was considered a cancer patient. After she killed herself, an autopsy revealed that she was, in fact, cancer-free.
Nitschke is not alone. Dignitas is a euthanasia clinic that operates in Switzerland. Earlier this month, its founder, Ludwig Minelli, a human-rights lawyer, stated clearly that there should simply be no limits on suicide. "It is without conditions," he said. "A human right is without any conditions except capacity."
If we don't question the issue of assisted suicide and its seeming acceptance as an almost casual reality by the media, we're going to realize quickly that we have moved way beyond debating extraordinary care and the legality of assisted suicide in terminal cases. They sure have at Dignitas. Mentally ill patients have been assisted in their suicides there. "Suicide is a very good possibility to escape a situation which you can't alter," Minelli told the BBC.
What's next, an organization with centers in every city dedicated to helping end human life?
If this sounds like an overly dramatized slippery slope, then those who can should recall where we were about a half century ago on the issue of abortion.
Minelli is currently working to help a Canadian woman kill herself alongside her husband. George has heart disease, and she wants to avoid the heartache of losing him.
George's wife will suffer a deep and painful lose when her husband dies (naturally or otherwise). But her life will not be over. And there's something sick -- verging on terminally so -- about a society that instead of working to affirm life's value makes it easier to end it at any and then all stages.