Latest news with #assistedsuicide
The Independent
3 days ago
- Health
- The Independent
Euthanasia activist who was arrested over suicide pod death ‘takes his own life'
A right-to-die activist who was arrested over the first reported use of a 'suicide pod' has died by assisted suicide, according to the device's inventor. Dr Florian Willet, 47, was detained last year in connection with the death of a 64-year-old woman on suspicion of 'inciting and abetting suicide' and a 'strong suspicion of the commission of an intentional homicide'. After two months in custody, he was released in December after police ruled out the possibility of an intentional homicide. Exit International director Dr Philip Nitschke, the man behind the Sarco pod, said the accusations caused serious psychological problems for Dr Willet. Dr Nitschke told Dutch news outlet Volkskrant that Dr Willet died last month by suicide. 'When Florian was released suddenly and unexpectedly from pre-trial detention in early December 2024, he was a changed man,' Dr Nitschke said. 'Gone was his warm smile and self-confidence. In its place was a man who seemed deeply traumatised by the experience of incarceration and the wrongful accusation of strangulation.' The activist's friend, Laura, told the Dutch outlet that he had changed after the detention. 'This friendly, positive man had changed into an anxious, suspicious person who no longer trusted even his best friends,' she said. 'He lived in his own world. He became increasingly distant from his friends.' Dr Willet, head of euthanasia advocacy group The Last Resort, was released by authorities in the northern Schaffhausen region after the apparent first use of the Sarco suicide capsule, a sealed chamber that releases gas at the press of a button. Authorities no longer suspected intentional homicide, but a 'strong suspicion of the crime of inciting and abetting suicide' remained, a statement from Swiss prosecutors said. Although an autopsy report from experts in neighboring Zurich was not yet available, investigators no longer suspect intentional homicide, though there is 'strong suspicion of the crime of inciting and abetting suicide," the statement said. Swiss law allows assisted suicide so long as the person takes his or her life with no 'external assistance' and those who help the person die do not do so for 'any self-serving motive,' says a government website. While active euthanasia of someone else is illegal, supplying the means of dying is legal as long as the person administers it themselves.
National Post
21-05-2025
- Health
- National Post
FIRST READING: Quebec radio host says assisted suicide is 'solution' for the mentally ill
Article content Canada is already on track to have the world's highest rate of deaths caused by assisted suicide, and Quebec is easily the province that has most enthusiastically embraced the practice. Article content Health Canada's most recent figures on MAID are from 2023, and in that year assisted suicide was responsible for 7.2 per cent of total Quebec deaths — about one in every 14. Article content That was the same year that the head of a Quebec MAID oversight body, the Commission sur les soins de fin de vie, warned that the province's health-care system no longer saw assisted death as an 'exceptional' option, or even as a last resort. Article content 'We're now no longer dealing with an exceptional treatment, but a treatment that is very frequent,' Michel Bureau said at the time. Article content In recent months, Quebec has even taken the step of expanding MAID eligibility into areas that are still technically considered homicide under federal law. In October, Quebec Justice Minister Simon Jolin-Barrette told doctors that they could start administering MAID to unresponsive or mentally incompetent patients, provided the patients had signed an 'advance directive' to that effect. Article content Article content Even under Canada's rather permissive MAID laws, euthanizing an unresponsive patient qualifies as homicide, and the federal government has rejected Quebec's pleas for an exemption. Article content Nevertheless, Jolin-Barrette said the province's prosecutors would simply be ordered not to enforce the Criminal Code in cases involving the doctor-assisted death of an unresponsive patient, provided the death was 'provided in compliance with wishes expressed in a free and informed manner.' Article content Article content Article content Article content The saga of the C-19 rifle used by the Canadian Rangers is very close to the platonic ideal of why Canada is chronically unable to acquire good kit for its armed forces. Until the debut of the C-19, the Rangers were one of the last armed forces on earth still using the bolt-action Lee-Enfield .303 rifle, a firearm that dates back to the First World War. Instead of simply buying a newer gun, the Canadian government insisted on a designed-in-Canada replacement that took years and ultimately cost $5,000 per unit. And apparently these new guns are already breaking: The wood stocks quickly began cracking in the extreme cold of the Arctic. Article content Article content Although Mexico has always been the primary fentanyl-smuggling threat to the United States, a new U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency report has highlighted Canada as a 'growing concern' given the high number of fentanyl 'super-labs' that the RCMP keep busting. The gist of the report is that if the U.S. is successful at stemming the flow of Mexican-origin fentanyl, drug cartels might be able to pick up the slack via Canadian branch operations. 'These operations have the potential to expand and fill any supply void created by disruptions to Mexico-sourced fentanyl production and trafficking,' it reads. The political implications for this, of course, are that the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump keeps citing fentanyl as the reason why he's slapping trade tariffs on Canada. Article content
Daily Mail
15-05-2025
- Health
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE Fresh blow to assisted suicide bill as Government admits errors in crucial impact assessment
Troubled plans to legalise assisted suicide have suffered another blow as the Government quietly admitted it had got key figures wrong. On the eve of the controversial legislation returning to Parliament, the official forecast of how many people are likely to seek to end their own lives was corrected – but MPs were not alerted. The final page of the Impact Assessment carried out by the Department of Health and Ministry of Justice, which was controversially published late on the day of the local election results, was updated to state: 'Since publication on 02 May 2025, two errors have been identified and corrected.' It explained that the wrong period of time was used to collate figures of recent assisted deaths in Oregon and so the prediction for England and Wales was incorrect. Under the revised figures, up to 647 deaths are expected in the first half-year of the scheme rather than 787 and 1,078 applicants are expected instead of 1,311. Campaigners told the Mail the that error highlighted the 'chaotic' nature of the legislation, which is being led by backbench Labour MP Kim Leadbeater in a Private Members' Bill rather than by the Government. She has repeatedly made major changes to the plan, such as removing the role of High Court judges to approve applications, and has continued to table amendments to it until this week. Labour MP Melanie Ward told the Mail: 'This shows just how chaotic this whole process has been. 'With the bill being amended by supporters just days before it is debated and the impact assessment being quietly corrected, MPs on either side of the debate can't really know what they are being asked to vote on. 'It calls into question again whether this bill is fit for purpose and whether this private members' bill process is suited to deal with such significant and profound matters of life and death.' In another setback, leading social care organisations described the proposed law change as 'unworkable, unaffordable and naive'. The Coalition of Frontline Care for People Nearing the End of Life told Sky News its members were worried about the impact on staff who look after terminally ill people. It comes after the Royal College of Psychiatrists said it had 'serious concerns' about the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill and the Royal College of Physicians said there were still 'deficiencies' in it. And a former supporter of the bill broke ranks to say he will now abstain because he does not feel he should 'be God', in a fresh sign of MPs' growing doubts about the major social change. Karl Turner became the first Labour MP who backed the bill at its first Parliamentary hurdle last year to publicly say he will no longer vote in favour. He told the Telegraph: 'I used to be very liberal, but I just don't think – I'm going to sound like I'm religious, I'm not particularly – but I just don't think I should be God at the minute. It's not my job. I've got enough on my plate.' Tory MP Charlie Dewhirst who previously abstained said he would vote against. And former minister George Freeman also said he would change sides, telling Times Radio the bill risked creating a 'suicide culture'. Bill architect Ms Leadbeater insisted that it is much stronger since she replaced the proposed sign-off by a judge with a panel featuring psychiatrists and social workers. She told LBC radio: 'Having a more holistic approach, a more patient-centred approach, I think, is much, much stronger.'
Telegraph
13-05-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
In the name of progress: eugenics then, euthanasia now
Progress may be the most dangerous two-syllable word in politics. Slapped on to all sorts of monstrosities it has become a means of justifying inadequate arguments and evading scrutiny. To the unthinking politician, if an issue constitutes progress it is inevitably part of a wider move towards enlightenment, is an inherently good step and, crucially, must happen sooner or later. The belief means identifying barriers to progress; and, by extension, viewing their removal as a social good. This isn't a modern outlier or bug but a longstanding feature of progressive thought. It was in the name of progress that the Fabian and socialist eugenicists – from Beatrice and Sidney Webb to Bertrand Russell and Marie Stopes – advocated the sterilisation of the disabled and sick during the 20th century. It was in the name of progress that George Bernard Shaw supported 'the socialisation of the selective breeding of man', even, chillingly, proposing the euthanasia of the mentally ill and other members of the 'unfit' classes via 'extensive use of the lethal chamber'. In short; a very dangerous word indeed. This isn't just a history lesson either; the groups these people supported still exist. Dignity in Dying, the main advocacy group for assisted dying, was founded by a member of the Eugenics Society and was known until 2006 as The Voluntary Euthanasia Society. In our own day, the same concept is being invoked once more as a sort of unanswerable force. The debate over assisted suicide is intensifying on both sides of the Border this week, as Kim Leadbeater's Private Members' Bill returns to Parliament and Holyrood MSPs voted in favour of a similar Bill proposed by Lib Dem Liam McArthur. In her efforts to champion her Bill on social media, the former is emerging as someone with Van Gogh's ear for diplomacy; both tactless and self-aggrandising. This week she dismissed opponents as 'scaremongering and ideological', while quoting praise of herself from a supporter, describing her as a 'social reformer'. At least irony hasn't been assisted with its death. The inconvenient truth is that, in this case progress involves the sidelining and rejection of the very people whose needs it claims to advance. The Royal College of Physicians recently published a statement warning that the Bill's 'deficiencies' render it unsafe for patients and doctors. Was this 'scaremongering'? Every user-led disability group opposes the change, as do a majority of palliative care professionals. Are they 'ideologues' too? If Leadbeater is foolish and groups like Dignity in Dying malign, there is a third and more complacent category of argument invoking the consistently-disproven concept of 'the right side of history'. It is telling that despite supporting assisted suicide in principle, former Scots Tory Leader Ruth Davidson couldn't quite endorse the parallel Bill before Holyrood in its current form. Instead, in a column this week, she urges MSPs simply to trust that they will be able to iron out any problems at a later date. She also cites the number of countries around the world offering assisted suicide as if this, in itself, constituted an argument. What many of these jurisdictions actually show is quite the opposite to Davidson's Panglossian faith that everything will work itself out. A particularly invidious aspect of this debate has been the manipulation of language. Not only is there a tendency to imply, per Leadbeater, that the pro-side has a monopoly on compassion, relatives' understandable efforts to prevent their loved ones from taking their own lives have sometimes been reframed as 'coercion'. During the 'expert' witness testimony, one Australian MP referred to ' assisted dying ' in exquisitely Orwellian fashion, as a form of 'suicide prevention'. There has even been some squeamishness about using the word 'suicide' at all, though the Bill would by definition amend the 1961 Suicide Act. It's as if they fear this serious change to the social fabric will be impossible without annexing language to limit what their opponents may say. And now, showing tragedy and farce are far closer than we think, Kim Leadbeater is apparently a 'social reformer'. Parliament's own impact assessment also reveals this tendency. It was slipped out under the radar on Friday afternoon after the local elections. This too contained the dystopian language we've come to expect from the debate; focusing on the service's 'inclusivity'; perhaps to give women, disabled and vulnerable people equal access to death. The Bill already covers a far wider remit than its proponents initially promised. The irony is that Leadbeater and her allies no doubt think of themselves and their actions as progressive. Yet each of them is simultaneously engaged in the business of ignoring the voices of the poor and the vulnerable. This Bill is so comprehensively at odds with the principles of previous social reform that enacting it will mean rewriting the Bill on which the National Health Service was forged. The legislation is so far-sweeping that the Bill's proponents may become the first people to undo the basic healthcare principle that life should be preserved. This is worth restating for all the 'sensibles' out there; it wasn't Mrs Thatcher or 'Tory privatisation', but a Labour backbencher who will fundamentally change the stated purpose of the NHS – and in a final irony, will do so not in the name of profit but of progress.
BBC News
13-05-2025
- BBC News
Arrest over suicide of Southampton teen Vlad Nikolin-Caisley
Police have arrested a woman on suspicion of assisting the suicide of a teenager who had been drawn into a "sinister" pro-suicide community online. Vlad Nikolin-Caisley, from Southampton, was 17 when he secretly joined the website which the BBC understands is the focus of Ofcom's first investigation using new powers under the Online Safety Act. He then bought a poisonous chemical online which he swallowed at home, where lengthy attempts by his father and paramedics to resuscitate him failed. A 29-year-old woman, from Merton, London, has been arrested on suspicion of intentionally doing an act capable of encouraging or assisting the suicide of another. Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary said she had been released on bail while its inquiries suicide and attempted suicide are not in themselves criminal offences, it is illegal for someone to help someone else end their life. In practice, a government paper states prosecutions under the Suicide Act 1961 (England & Wales) are "relatively rare". The paper reveals 19 out of 187 cases recorded as assisted suicides by police, over 15 years, up to the end of March 2024, resulted in court action. Vlad's family revealed the details of his death in a BBC Documentary in February in the hope of raising awareness of the dangers faced by children and vulnerable people had been diagnosed with autism, depression and anxiety. The government said it would tighten up laws that allow people to buy drugs online that can be used to take their own lives, following Vlad's death and the death a 21 year old woman, also from Southampton. If you have been affected by any of the issues in this story you can find information and support on the BBC Actionline website here. You can follow BBC Hampshire & Isle of Wight on Facebook, X (Twitter), or Instagram.
