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'Suicide tourism' to Switzerland has doubled since 2009:

(CNN) -- The law on assisted suicide in Switzerland isn't clear, according to a paper published in the journal Law, Ethics and Medicine this week. That's why, the authors say, people from other countries are traveling to the state of Zurich for the "sole purpose of committing suicide."

They're called suicide tourists.

Between 2008 and 2012, 611 "tourists" came to Switzerland for assisted suicide, according to the published analysis. They arrived from 31 countries around the world, though the majority were from Germany and the United Kingdom.

"In the UK, at least, 'going to Switzerland' has become a euphemism for (assisted suicide)," the study authors write. "Six right-to-die organizations assist in approximately 600 cases of suicide per year; some 150-200 of which are suicide tourists."

This published paper is the result of a pilot study completed for a larger project on assisted suicide in Switzerland being done by experts at the Institute of Legal Medicine in Zurich.

Of the 611 assisted suicides identified during the four-year study period, just over 58% were women. The patients' ages ranged from 23 to 97, researchers found, but the average age was 69. Close to half of the patients had a neurological disease. Others stated they had cancer, rheumatic disease or cardiovascular disease. Many had more than one condition.

In all but four cases, the assisted suicides were done using sodium pentobarbital. A fatal dose of this drug causes the patient to slip into a deep coma. Sodium pentobarbital paralyzes the patient's respiratory system, causing him or her to stop breathing. The total number of suicide tourism cases dropped from 123 in 2008 to 86 in 2009. But the number of cases doubled between 2009 and 2012, to 172.

My opinion (which can't be disputed, disproven or otherwise challenged bwahahaha) is the commercialized Swiss suicide spas, where suicide is on offer not only to the terminally ill or those with agonizing conditions, are a life-negating slippery slope. I'd append "What do you think?" but that would be disingenuous because I don't want to consider member thoughts, refine or elaborate on mine or bother with addressing arguments to contrary.  "Ditto" is an acceptable reply of course. ;-)

"Suicide tourism" is a very wrong name of the whole concept.
If you haven't seen with your eyes what a cancer disease can do, than maybe that's the right term. These people are in immense physical pain, so choosing to die with dignity is the best someone can let them do, since they have already lost control over their bodies and obviously - the battle with cancer.

"Suicide tourism" is a very wrong name of the whole concept.
If you haven't seen with your eyes what a cancer disease can do, than maybe that's the right term. These people are in immense physical pain, so choosing to die with dignity is the best someone can let them do, since they have already lost control over their bodies and obviously - the battle with cancer.

Most major religions and large denoms of our majority Christian population support their respective version of the sanctity of life, the exceptions are those which are heavily based or influenced by humanist tenets. It doesn't always follow that what the individual or majority of religions believe is immoral should be reflected in law....I don't ascribe to that view because there are lots of things which the government has no compelling interest to prevent heathens from doing if they are only harming themselves or other consenting adults.  If someone wants to kill themselves, I wouldn't stand on "moral principle" to make that illegal per se because once they are dead, what in the world can you do to them that would matter?    But the problem with suicide is that if it is not made illegal, then you have no authority to try to stop someone in process and get them help.  Furthermore, assisted suicide (another euphemism) is not just the person offing themselves, it is the sanctioning of a government authorized doctor to kill you with your permission.   So setting aside the morality,  how do we logically reconcile that we need to keep suicide illegal so we can intervene to stop someone who wants to do it themselves with making suicide legal as long as it is someone else killing you after you beg for permission from Big Brother?  That is about the screwiest justification of a "personal right" there is, not to mention compassion.

If I was dying of a painful disease, like cancer, I would ask for whatever got rid of the pain and take in as much as I needed, whether it killed me or not.  I don't want to be in pain at the end of my life.  I want to die in bliss.

If I was dying of a painful disease, like cancer, I would ask for whatever got rid of the pain and take in as much as I needed, whether it killed me or not.  I don't want to be in pain at the end of my life.  I want to die in bliss.

I realize not everyone has what it takes to do what my friend did, and I can't honestly say I do...but I WANT to be like him, so do hundreds of folks who watched him, and yes, IMO, that is the culture I want to live in.  One that values REAL courage, and REAL compassion, and REAL life, all of which I think are turned upside down in state sanctioned murder.

For me personally, I do not judge a person like Robin Williams for what he did.  He made his decision, I have no desire or need to add insult to injury to a dead man by emphasizing  illegality after the fact.  I feel the same in regard to someone who refused to eat or treat their disease or an infection or personally offed themselves to hasten their demise.  In that sense, I support their "right" and they can work it out with their God or karma or whatever higher power there may be.  I will extend compassion to these folks who in their minds feel they cannot make a different choice.   But in no way will I ever embrace state sanctioned murder of the sick.  I watched a dear friend die of cancer slowly and with tremendous suffering, and he did with such courage, unfailing good humor and selflessness, and gratitude for every minute and every person in his life, it was so powerful and humbling and inspirational, I dare anyone to argue that is not the epitome of what dying with dignity really looks like.  Dying, and dying is a messy way, is part of life and it has a value even if it is painful and hard which I think in the long run and larger picture will not benefit the larger community to sanitize.

Second, once you start embracing the euphemistic view and make it easier, more people are going to do it  (see the OP...doubled since 2009).   In fact, it will eventually become the default option when coupled with your options being limited by government healthcare rationing or exorbitant costs of private care.  But just like abortion, the decision to snuff a life is final, and it will leave people behind with emotional damage having done something which goes against nature (as in killing your baby or loved one is NOT natural).   It would be IMPOSSIBLE to prevent abuse as it is subjective, and more broad the criteria which WILL happen once this "right" is codified, the more abuse there will be.  It will infect the culture with less appreciation for life, in particular lives that contain struggles for some unknown period of time.  We are already a culture who has a VERY simplistic and misguided view of suffering that equates to "all suffering = bad" with each pampered protected generation with less developed character and more dependent and less self reliant than the previous.

For people like me, we can have great suicides of the past, "Open your veins like Petronius Arbiter" or "stick your head in the oven like Sylvia Plath" or "Shoot yourself like Ernest Hemingway", complete with the actual setting in which it took place so you get the real sense of it all. Or, at least, your survivors do! I'd love to go out like Petronius!

.....for me it wouldn't be so much the pain that I wanted to escape, but I would absolutely hate to become a burden on my family. The minute I could not take care of myself...my life would not be worth living. Life is not wasting away in a bed...not mine anyway.

I realize not everyone has what it takes to do what my friend did, and I can't honestly say I do...but I WANT to be like him, so do hundreds of folks who watched him, and yes, IMO, that is the culture I want to live in.  One that values REAL courage, and REAL compassion, and REAL life, all of which I think are turned upside down in state sanctioned murder.

You are the one manipulating the meaning of words to try to advance your argument. It is not murder. It is not euthanasia. The person wanting to die is the person who does the killing in assisted suicide. The doctor or other person merely provides the pill or other means by which the person may kill himself. The main benefit in this is that someone with a hopeless disease or condition can DELAY killing himself past the point where he could do it all by himself. The assisted suicide laws actually prolong his life. Now tell me what is wrong with that. Tell me, do you really want to have a law that prevents a person who wants to die via assisted suicide from doing so? What gives you, or even the majority of voters, the right to deny him that choice?

Talking about manipulating the meaning of words. You cannot inject yourself with sodium pentobarbital and if you were capable enough to take a pill or inject yourself, you could find lethal substances or other means without a doctor.

The main benefit in this is that someone with a hopeless disease or condition can DELAY killing himself past the point where he could do it all by himself. The assisted suicide laws actually prolong his life.

No, the main benefit is a doctor does your dirty work, with the approval of the village to validate you taking the easier way out FOR YOU, but not those you leave behind.

I see. So you and yours get to decide how I die simply because you have the majority vote? Majority votes supercede any personal rights, or just the right to die as one chooses to? That sounds awfully risky to me when you might someday not be in the majority. I suspect then you'd scream to the world about how no one else should decide how and when you die. How about we ban all use of any painkiller, even on a deathbed, that to ANY degree will hasten one's death? Is that fine with you, so I could not take the "easy way" out? FYI, drugs like morphine already are commonly used in every state for what amounts to doctor assisted suicide at the end stages of cancer, etc. So it still amounts to suicide, but unfortunately only after the person has had to endure great suffering that could have been avoided if our laws gave better protection to the doctors.

Very well stated. I'd only add that I lived with my mom while she died of lung cancer a few years ago. Nothing very gracious
about it, but it did give us six months to discover two people neither of us knew existed before that.

if you have ever worked in or visited an assisted living facility, you'd see that there is very little "living." I can fully understand and appreciate the desire to end that torture. Our society should give those suffering, like Robin Williams, a more dignified way out. 

"It does not communicate "you spared me"...it communicates "I'll rather die than be with you".

There is no "being with you" when in a vegetative state.

Here is a transcript of a FRONTLINE program, from 2012 I think, that includes non-physicians assisting in some way, often just with information to avoid being prosecuted as a criminal.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/social-issues/suicide-plan/transcript-33/


Here is a 2010 FRONTLINE  show "Suicide Tourist". Thankfully, American states are starting to come around and put common sense and individual rights above the religious dogma of people wanting to control the lives of others by imposing their religious views upon them.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/suicidetourist/view/

With all due respect, suicide is not altruistic and doing it will leave your family with a huge burden anyway.  Ask anyone who has lost a loved one that way.   It does not communicate "you spared me"...it communicates "I'll rather die than be with you".  Still, you can do it yourself quite easily if you really feel you must...why must the larger society embrace it?