Predators tell children how to kill themselves
By Patrick Sawer
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/02/17/nweb117.xml

A network of "suicide gurus" who use the internet to advise people how to kill themselves has been exposed. They are blamed for prompting depressed and vulnerable youngsters to take their own lives.  One, an American satanist who boasts of writing a guide to the subject, says: "What's the problem with ending your life via suicide?"  Another is a "pro-choice" Dutch writer whose website includes detailed accounts of dozens of suicide methods.

Campaigners have uncovered 29 "internet suicides" in Britain since 2001, including two new cases reported this weekend. 
The findings follow the cluster of suicides among young people in Bridgend, where a coroner is now re-examining nine deaths on top of 16 suspected suicides under investigation. It emerged on Friday that another two young people from the Welsh town had been found hanged. Nathaniel Pritchard, 15, and his cousin Kelly Stephenson, 20, were both members of a social networking ­website.

Full story at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/02/17/nweb117.xml
 

After 19 years in coma, Polish man amazed by changes
Associated Press
June 3, 2007

WARSAW, Poland — A railway worker who emerged from a 19-year coma woke to a radically altered Poland and is learning to adapt to his new life, Polish media reported. "I wake up at 7 a.m. and I watch TV," Jan Grzewski, 65, told TVN24 Television over the weekend, smiling slightly as he lay in bed at his home in the northern city of Dzialdowo. "I could not talk or do anything, now it's much better," he said in a weak but clear voice, some two months emerging from his coma.

Wojciech Pstragowski, a rehabilitation specialist, said Grzewski was shocked at the changes in Poland's economy — especially its stores: "He remembered shelves filled with mustard and vinegar only" under communism.  Poland shed communism in 1989 and has developed democracy and a market economy. In 1988, Grzewski fell into a coma after he was injured attaching two train carriages. Doctors also found cancer in his brain and said he would not live, according to the local daily Gazeta Dzialdowska.

When doctors could do no more, Grzewski's wife Gertruda took him home and cared for him, Gazeta said. "I would fly into a rage every time someone would say that people like him should be euthanized, so they don't suffer," she told Gazeta. "I believed Janek would recover," she said, using an affectionate version of his name.

Full story at: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/bizarre/4857888.html
 

Boy in “Hopeless” Vegetative State Awakens and Steadily Improves
October 2006
By Hilary White

GRESHAM, Oregon October 10, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A young boy, who had previously been diagnosed as being in a “persistent vegetative state,” has awakened from a 22 month-long coma and is breathing on his own.

Devon Rivers collapsed in a seizure during a phys-ed class in 2004 and his condition was never explained, though some doctors suggested it was caused by an unknown viral infection. Doctors agreed, however, that he had little hope of recovery.

His mother, Carla Rivers, visited him regularly and, in addition to physical therapy by his paediatric nursing home to keep his limbs supple, she talked to him in the belief that coma patients can retain their hearing and some understanding.

"For two years the doctors said there was no hope," said Carla Rivers. "Everything that happens in Devon's life is a gain. There's no losses."

Despite the doctors’ gloomy prognosis, eleven year-old Devon is now being prepared for occupational therapy to help him re-learn motor skills and is able to play with his siblings. Doctors cannot explain the reason either for his unexpected awakening or for his steady recovery.

In August of this year his mother, Carla Rivers, noticed that he began turning his head to follow movement; instead of a blank stare, he was reacting to his environment. Days later Devon was breathing without a respirator.

Carla Rivers said, “Devon may make a full recovery or what we see today may be what we get…God's plan is greater than ours. There's nothing we can do to force it any sooner or hold it back,” she said.

Coma patients and others with severe cognitive disabilities have been labelled “hopeless” only to recover frequently enough that some doctors and ethicists are questioning the accuracy of the diagnosis of “persistent vegetative state” (PVS).

The diagnosis is ambiguous in that symptoms of patients can vary greatly and still be called “vegetative.” A 1996 study published in the British Medical Journal showed that 43% of patients diagnosed with PVS do not qualify for the diagnosis.

In 2003, Kate Adamson, a former coma patient who had been diagnosed PVS, appeared on the television talk show the O'Reilly Factor. She said that, like Terri Schiavo, the hospital had removed her feeding tube that was only reinserted after eight days when her lawyer-husband threatened to sue the hospital.

Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
Diagnosis of Persistent Vegetative State Questioned as Former Patient Speaks Out
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2003/nov/03111207.html

Christian MD Warns: Euthanizers Experience Negative Effects

By Mary Rettig

(AgapePress) - An Oregon cancer specialist says euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide have very real and devastating effects on the doctors performing these procedures. According to Dr. Kenneth Stevens of the Christian Medical & Dental Associations (CMDA), anecdotal evidence suggests that healthcare professionals who "help" their patients die are often deeply affected.

Most media reports on physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia focus on the patient and how the patient and his or her family are feeling, Stevens notes. He says that is why he thought it important to examine and evaluate medical and public literature to learn more about the impact of "mercy killing" on the doctors involved.

Overwhelmingly, when doctors are honest about it, most admit experiencing a negative impact from intentionally ending a patient's life, Stevens observes. "What I found is that the emotional and the psychological effect on that participating physician can really be very substantial," he says.

Full story at: http://www.crosswalk.com/news/religiontoday/1402909.html

"We never say no." The right-to-die movement abandons pretense.

by Wesley J. Smith, 04/27/2006

THERE IS A PRETENSE in contemporary assisted suicide advocacy that goes something like this: "Aid in dying" (as it is euphemistically called) is merely to be a safety valve, a last resort only available to imminently dying patients for whom nothing else can be done to alleviate suffering.

Meanwhile, in the real world, the founder of the Swiss suicide facilitating organization Dignitas is just about done with pretense. The Sunday Times Magazine (London) reported that Dignitas' founder, Ludwig Minelli, plans to create sort of a Starbucks for suicide: a chain of death centers "to end the lives of people with illnesses and mental conditions such as chronic depression."

Minelli believes that all suicidal people should be given information about the best way to kill themselves, and, according to the Times story, "if they choose to die, they should be helped to do it properly." Dignitas admits to having assisted the suicides of many people who were not terminally ill. As Minelli succinctly put it, "We never say no."

Full story at: http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/012/124abkbr.asp

Assisted suicide is bad medicine

By Wesley J. Smith

Special to The Seattle Times

Former Gov. Booth Gardner, a Parkinson's disease patient, hopes to place an initiative on the 2008 ballot to legalize assisted suicide in Washington. For the sake of Washington's most weak and vulnerable people, he should reconsider.

Assisted suicide can be spun to sound reasonable in theory, but once the real-world context in which assisted suicide would be carried out is considered, it becomes clear that legalization would be bad medicine and worse public policy.

Full story at: http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis.cgi/web/vortex/display?slug=wesleysmith29&date=20060329

Chain of suicide clinics planned

The Sunday Times (London)

April 16, 2006

Daniel Foggo

A SWISS lawyer who runs a “suicide clinic” that has helped 42 Britons to kill themselves, intends to offer his services to people who are not terminally ill. Ludwig Minelli, founder of the Dignitas clinic in Zurich, says he wants to open a chain of high street-style centres to end the lives of people with illnesses or mental conditions such as chronic depression.

“We never say no,” says Minelli in an interview in today’s Sunday Times Magazine. “Even those suffering from Alzheimer’s will have lucid moments in which they may choose to die once a certain point has been reached, such as when they can no longer recognise their children.” ....

Dr Peter Saunders, general secretary of the Christian Medical Fellowship, said: “Minelli does not understand that attempting suicide is a call for help. Once the physical and psycho-spiritual needs are met the desire for suicide tends to go away.

“It is laughable to suggest that someone with Alzheimer’s, who cannot remember two minutes later what they told you, could have the capacity to understand and weigh up and make a decision on suicide. The potential for abuse is horrendous.”

Full story at: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2136723,00.html