Eideard

Voters in Zurich overwhemingly rejected on Sunday proposed bans on assisted suicide and “suicide tourism” — foreigners traveling to Switzerland to receive help ending their lives.

Only 15.5 percent of voters in the local referendum backed a ban on assisted suicide, while nearly 22 percent supported a ban on suicide tourism, final results showed. About 200 people commit assisted suicide each year in Zurich.

Assisted suicide has been allowed in Switzerland since 1941 if performed by a non-physician who has no vested interest in the death…

A rise in the number of foreigners seeking to end their lives in Switzerland, and a study showing that more and more people seeking assisted suicides in the country do not suffer from a terminal illness, have provoked heated debate…

Turns out the people raising the debate were noisier than their numbers.

Right-to-die group Exit has agreed rules to govern assisted suicide with prosecutors in Zurich in the hope they might eventually form the basis of national regulation.

Foreigners are not explicitly excluded under the new rules, but a Swiss doctor who prescribes the deadly anesthetic must have met the person twice over a period of time to be sure of their wishes.

Here in the Land of the Free we get to have everyone who believes the religion governing some small portion of their life forbids anyone else from choosing death with dignity. Since our politicians fear the religious even more than they fear honesty – there is little chance of entering into a public dialogue and decision about the topic in most American states.

Gunther von Hagens, a German anatomist famous for his controversial Body World exhibition displaying plastinated bodies, is now selling human and animal body parts — even as jewelry — online.

The move has provoked strong condemnation from German churches which accuse him of degrading human dignity.

I know, I know. For many churches, nowadays, obedience is of more concern than dignity.

A whole body from www.plastination-products.com costs about 70,000 euros ($97,400), torsos start at 55,644 euros and heads come in at around 22,000 euros each — excluding postage and packaging.

For those on a tighter budget, transparent body slices are available from 115 euros each…

Only “qualified users” who can provide written proof that they intend to use the parts for research, teaching or medical purposes can place an order.

Interested parties who do not fall into this category can buy reproductions of the real body parts — so-called “Anatomy Glass,” which the shop’s website describes as “high resolution acrylic glass prints of the original body slices.”

Jewelry crafted from animal corpses, including necklaces made from horse slices, wristbands made from giraffe tails and earrings made from bull penises, is also available to the general public…

Cripes. Reminds me of a hunter I knew back in the day.

There are 2 vertebrates in North America that have a bone permanently stiffening their penis: bears and raccoons. He would polish the coon variety and sell them as swizzle sticks.

I have no doubt it would be banned in the United States.

Would it banned where you live? Should your elected government have the right to ban advertisements just because of the topic they suggest for discussion?

And should you have the right to end your own life with dignity?

Elderly people should be allowed to end their lives with the help of a doctor even if they are not terminally ill, according to a new campaign group that claims to have widespread support.

The Society for Old Age Rational Suicide, led by a former GP…says that pensioners should have the human right to declare “enough is enough” and die with dignity.

Dr Michael Irwin says he knows of an elderly English woman who is considering taking her life through Dignitas, the Swiss “suicide clinic”, as she is suffering from progressive arthritis and worsening eyesight.

He believes that many more will want to take the same course of action as Britain’s population ages.

The new group has commissioned a national poll that found 67 per cent of those questioned agreed that very elderly and mentally competent individuals should be allowed to receive a doctor’s assistance to die, if they are suffering from health problems but not terminally ill. Only 19 per cent of the 1,009 adults questioned by ICM said they opposed the move while the rest were uncertain.

It opens up a new front in the war to create a right to die in England and Wales, following the high-profile court battle last year that led to unprecedented legal guidelines being published…

Last year a landmark court case won by Debbie Purdy, who has multiple sclerosis, forced the Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer, QC, to set out exactly when prosecutions would be brought against people who assist another to die..

But the new campaign, SOARS, wants to legalise assisted suicide with the help of a doctor for those who are merely tired of life because of their age and health problems rather than a terminal disease.

Its hope is that a future law would allow two doctors and a legal witness to agree that the patient was mentally competent and not being pressured to die by relatives, then for the elderly person to be provided with the “necessary medication” after a two-month cooling-off period.

Organized religion and most conservative political organizations will reject this measure of individual liberty. For no other reason than they think they should in order to appear moral. Whatever that might mean.

Personally, this is a right I intend to exercise if I ever feel I need to or wish to. It’s just a boatload of bother that I would have to engineer the whole process to be certain those I love aren’t attacked by the state afterwards.

Filling out applications at a sidewalk recruiting station

If Wang Jinyan, an unemployed factory worker with a middle school education, had a résumé, it might start out like this: “Objective: seeking well-paid, slow-paced assembly-line work in air-conditioned plant with Sundays off, free wireless Internet and washing machines in dormitory. Friendly boss a plus.”

As she eased her way along a gantlet of recruiters in this manufacturing megalopolis one recent afternoon, Ms. Wang, 25, was in no particular rush to find a job. An underwear company was offering subsidized meals and factory worker fashion shows. The maker of electric heaters promised seven-and-a-half-hour days. “If you’re good, you can work in quality control and won’t have to stand all day,” bragged a woman hawking jobs for a shoe manufacturer.

Ms. Wang flashed an unmistakable look of ennui and popped open an umbrella to shield her fair complexion from the South China sun. “They always make these jobs sound better than they really are,” she said, turning away. “Besides, I don’t do shoes. Can’t stand the smell of glue.”

Assertive, self-possessed workers like Ms. Wang have become a challenge for the industrial titans of the Pearl River Delta that once filled their mammoth workshops with an endless stream of pliant labor from China’s rural belly.

In recent months, as the country’s export-driven juggernaut has been revived and many migrants have found jobs closer to home, the balance of power in places like Zhongshan has shifted, forcing employers to compete for new workers — and to prevent seasoned ones from defecting to sweeter prospects.

The shortage has emboldened workers and inspired a spate of strikes in and around Zhongshan that paralyzed Honda’s Chinese operations last month. The unrest then spread to the northern city of Tianjin, where strikers briefly paralyzed production at a Toyota car plant and a Japanese-owned electronics factory.

Although the walkouts were quelled with higher salaries, factory owners and labor experts said that the strikes have driven home a looming reality that had been predicted by demographers: the supply of workers 16 to 24 years old has peaked and will drop by a third in the next 12 years, thanks to stringent family-planning policies that have sharply reduced China’s population growth…

The other new reality, perhaps harder to quantify, is this: young Chinese factory workers, raised in a country with rapidly rising expectations, are less willing to toil for long hours for appallingly low wages like dutiful automatons.

RTFA. Nothing surprising to someone who’s read any labor history. The distinct difference in China is that – no one is skipping any stages; but, time is compressed, the rate of change in every part of the socio-economic structure seems to happen overnight.

It’s like the dweebs – usually on CNBC – who whine about Americans finally starting to save some of their family income instead of being dedicated consumers.

Martin Amis told the Guardian: “What we need to recognise is that certain lives fall into the negative, where pain hugely dwarfs those remaining pleasures that you may be left with. Geriatric science has been allowed to take over and, really, decency roars for some sort of correction.” He said his comments were meant to be “satirical”, rather than “glib”.

His stance on euthanasia had hardened since the deaths of his stepfather, Lord Kilmarnock, the former SDP peer and writer, in March aged 81, and his friend Dame Iris Murdoch, the novelist, in 1999, aged 79, two years after her husband revealed that she was suffering from Alzheimer’s.

“I increasingly feel that religion is so deep in our constitution and in our minds and that is something we should just peel off,” he said. “Of course euthanasia is open to abuse, in that the typical grey death will be that of an old relative whose family gets rid of for one reason or another, and they’ll say ‘he asked me to do it’, or ‘he wanted to die’, Amis said. “That’s what we will have to look out for. Nonetheless, it is something we have to make some progress on…”

In his interview, Amis said his step father had died “very horribly”. “He always thought he was going to get better. But he didn’t get better and I think the denial of death is a great curse.”

He said Iris Murdoch, whom he had known for a very long time , was “a friend, I loved her. She was wonderful. I remember talking to her just as it started happening, and she said, ‘I’ve entered a dark place’. That famous quote. Awareness of loss is gone, the track is gone. You don’t know the day you’ve spent watching Teletubbies; it just vanished.”

The pro-euthanasia pressure group Dignity in Dying said: “Like all too many people in the UK, Martin Amis has witnessed the bad death of a loved one.” But, it added: “Dignity in Dying’s campaign for a change in the law is not about the introduction of ‘euthanasia booths’, nor is it in anticipation of a ‘silver tsunami’. Our campaign is about allowing dying adults who have mental capacity a compassionate choice to end their suffering, subject to strict legal safeguards.”

Hear, hear.

I also suggest checking out the website of the Dignity in Dying campaign if you’re in the UK. In the U.S., there is Death with Dignity. Pretty much spot on.

With great caution, the Quebec College of Physicians is prepared to cross the line on the controversial debate over euthanasia and propose that it be included “as part of the appropriate care in certain particular circumstances.”

After examining the issue for three years, the College’s task force on ethics concluded that Quebec society has evolved to the point where it could tolerate euthanasia in specific circumstances. The task force’s recommendation will likely be part of a “reflection” document the College will release next fall, hoping that a public debate on the issue will pressure the federal government to eventually amend the criminal code.

“We are being very cautious in our approach,” said the College’s secretary, Yves Robert. “Avoiding the debate contributes to the general hypocrisy around this issue. To say that it doesn’t happen because it is illegal is completely stupid. … We have to stop hiding our head in the sand,” Dr. Robert said.

Anyone out there think Americans will stop hiding their collective heads in the sand? Will the bible-thumping crowd ever consider quality of life and death as something beyond their compendium of 14th Century rulebooks?

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A woman with pancreatic cancer has become the first person to die under a law passed last year allowing doctor-assisted suicide in Washington, according to an advocacy group that pushed for the law.

The woman, Linda Fleming, 66, of Sequim, Wash., died Thursday evening after taking lethal medication prescribed by a doctor under the law, according to a news release by the group, Compassion and Choices of Washington. The release said Ms. Fleming received a diagnosis of Stage 4 pancreatic cancer a month ago, and “she was told she was actively dying.”

Ms. Fleming was quoted in the release as saying: “I am a very spiritual person, and it was very important to me to be conscious, clear-minded and alert at the time of my death. The powerful pain medications were making it difficult to maintain the state of mind I wanted to have at my death.”

In November, voters approved the Death with Dignity Act, 58 percent to 42 percent, making Washington the second state — after Oregon — to allow assisted suicide. The laws in both states have been deeply controversial, particularly among religious groups. Washington passed its law after the United States Supreme Court in 2006 rejected an effort by the Justice Department to block Oregon’s law, which took effect in 1998.

Ms. Fleming’s two children and her former husband “were involved and supported her choice.”

Right on, Linda Fleming. Thank you for your courage and caring.

A Montana judge has ruled that doctor-assisted suicide is legal in the state.

The judge, Dorothy McCarter, issued the ruling in the case of a Billings man with terminal cancer who had sued the state.

In her ruling, Judge McCarter wrote that “the Montana constitutional rights of individual privacy and human dignity” give a mentally competent person who is terminally ill the right to “die with dignity.”

The ruling said that those patients had the right to obtain self-administered medications to hasten death if they found their suffering to be unbearable, and that physicians could prescribe such medication without fear of prosecution.

“Bravo” is the least I can say.

Montana deserves a bit of cranky respect for the occasional bit of what used to be American conservative ethics that still crops up. The rest of the denomination seems to prefer to be mired in religious reaction rather than individual liberty.

In the 11 years since Oregon became the first state to allow physician-assisted suicide, the worst fears have never been realized, even some of the law’s staunchest opponents say. Large numbers of people have not moved to Oregon to take advantage of the measure; through last year, 341 people had used it to hasten their death. And yet no other state has followed Oregon’s lead.

On Tuesday, however, its neighbor to the north, and in many ways its cultural reflection, will decide whether to adopt its own assisted-suicide law, the Washington Death With Dignity Act. The ballot initiative, modeled on Oregon’s, would let mentally competent, terminally ill adults obtain a doctor’s prescription for a lethal dose of medication.

Polls have shown that more Washington voters support the initiative than oppose it, but, like the Oregon measure, it is controversial and closely contested. Religious groups, along with some advocates for the disabled and some doctors, aggressively oppose it, raising questions about ethics and the way the Oregon law has been carried out.

Oregon’s measure has withstood legal challenge; in 2006, the United States Supreme Court rejected an effort by the Justice Department to stop doctors from writing lethal prescriptions…

Under the Washington proposal, two doctors, each making an assessment independent of the other’s, would have to determine that a patient had less than six months to live before that patient could receive a lethal prescription.

It’s a beginning. Generally, supporters of such laws feel their right to choose is what counts.

I know I do.