Barry Duke, the Angry Atheist

Search

Search

Please click this link to help me keep The Angry Atheist active with a donation.

1. 

   You get drivel about aliens, abduction etc from all sorts of people, not just Christians – there are atheists, agnostics…

2. 

   […] last time I had had occasion to write about Rowan County clerk Kim Davis, above, was three years ago…

3. 

   Whatever is presented on the BBC, and I must admit I do not watch the TV, the fact is that…

4. 

   “The curriculum had already drawn tensions among the county’s religious parents, with some worrying about appropriateness and arguing the material…

5. 

   As someone who produced dozens of nativity plays as a teacher and a Sunday School leader, that title ‘A Gay…

IN 2009 years ago I attended a suicide workshop held in the UK seaside city of Brighton by Philip Nitschke, an Australian physician known for advocating assisted suicide since the 1990s.

The methods he advocated for ending one’s life were effective but somewhat crude, and at the time the the large gathering of mainly older people was condemned by mainly Christian organisations deeply opposed to any form of euthanasia.

The workshop, ironically, was held in a church hall after Langham Hotel in Eastbourne and Brighton Racecourse had banned it.

Since then, life-ending methods have moved on apace, and Nitschke, who heads Exit International, came up with the idea of the Narco, a futuristic pod that can be activated with the blink of an eye. It bears an adaptation of quote from astromer Carl Sagan: “We are made of star stuff. We are the way of the universe to know itself.”

Reacting furiously to a 64-year-old American woman choice of exiting the world with dignity because she had been suffering from a severely compromised immune system, the President of the Swiss bishops’ conference, Bishop Felix Gmür of Basel, inset above, told a Swiss Catholic media website that the capsule “makes suicide too easy to access.”

I would have directed the suicidal person towards palliative care, which has a holistic understanding of the person and looks at them in both their clinical and their psychosocial and existential dimensions.

He added:

It is important to communicate with relatives and with a pastor, as well as to find out where hospices are available and how palliative and humane care is provided there.

A pastor? Give me a break!

The “palliative care” argument has been used for years to impede the legalisation of assisted dying in the UK and elsewhere for decades, despite the fact that it’s pure bullshit. Everyone knows that that such “care” simply prolongs the agony of those whose lives have been rendered untenable by incurable and often extremely painful conditions.

Nitschke, above, told the Independent in 2018 the idea for the invention was sparked by conversations in 2012 over the case of British man Tony Nicklinson, who suffered from locked-in syndrome — the result of a severe stroke in 2005 that had left him unable to speak or move.

Nicklinson fought a long, and ultimately unsuccessful, court battle in a bid to allow his doctors legally to assist his suicide. In search of assisted suicide options, his lawyer reached out to Nitschke, who began to consider how it would be possible for an individual whose movements were limited to blinking might be able to trigger death without the need for help by others, the Independent reported.

Assisted suicide is permitted in Switzerland under certain conditions, and there are several organisations that offer such services. However, the Swiss authorities do not consider the Sarco to be “legally compliant” and prosecutors in Schaffhausen, which borders Germany and is where the suicide took place, have opened criminal proceedings against several people for “inducing and aiding and abetting suicide,” a police statement said.

Please help me keep The Angry Atheist going with a donation.