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‘SUICIDE TOURISM’ TO Switzerland has doubled within the space of four years, according to a major study published today.
The number of individuals travelling to the country, where assisted suicide is legal, to die at clinics such as Dignitas, rose from 86 in 2009 to 172 in 2012.
Between 2008 and 2012, a total of two Irish residents engaged in what is known as “suicide tourism,” according to the study published today in the Journal of Medical Ethics.
Who and why?
Significantly, researchers found that nearly half (47%) of those who travelled from abroad for an assisted suicide had neurological conditions such as ALS/motor neurone disease or Parkinson’s disease.
Among the 611 individuals who had an assisted suicide at a Swiss clinic from 2008-2012, ages ranged between 23 and 97 years, and 58% were women.
Residents of Germany and the UK alone made up nearly two thirds of the numbers, while in total, people from 31 different countries went to Switzerland for an assisted suicide in this time period.
All bar four of the cases reported were handled by Dignitas, the group which operates assisted suicide clinics in Switzerland.
The researchers, led by Dr Saskia Gauthier at the University of Zurich, suggest that the availability of assisted suicide in Switzerland, and the phenomenon of suicide tourism that results from it, is changing how other countries debate the issue.
Dr Charles Foster from Oxford University, speaking in an English context, laid out two ways in which the sharply increasing use of Swiss clinics was leading to even more talk about legalisation of assisted suicide abroad.
The first is the liberalisation of public opinion that comes naturally, if irrationally, with familiarity.
And the second is the slowly growing public acknowledgement that there is something intellectually, if not morally, uncomfortable, about getting another country to do your dirty work.
Tom Curran, partner of right-to-die campaigner the late Marie Fleming, revealed in March that he was drafting legislation that would legalise assisted suicide in Ireland.
In an interview with TheJournal.ie, Curran said he had set up a working group of four barristers to draw up the planned bill.
In April 2013, the Supreme Court dismissed a case brought by Fleming, who has multiple sclerosis (MS), which sought to establish a constitutional right to die.
She died just before Christmas last year.
Scroll down to read today’s study in full.
http://cdn.thejournal.ie/media/2014/08/jme102091.pdf
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These people go abroad in search of a bit of dignity, and then we go and ruin it for them by calling it “suicide tourism”.
True
What a despicable term for such a sensitive issue
You can bet the Journal won’t be using the term “abortion tourism” any time soon. Other terms they won’t use in this debate are “forced to travel”, “exporting” and “anti-choice”
such a dumb name. as if you’d go sightseeing if you were terminally ill and even if you did that would be just regular tourism
Wow. Extremely poor choice of wording Journal. Suicide Tourism? I’d expect that from some rag like The Sun.
It’s time The Journal changed it’s banner colour to red
TBH it’s not just the headline that lets that article down.
The author must be hooring for a job at the Daily Mail.
It appears ye all forgot what quotation marks mean lads, it’s the authors of the ethics paper that termed it that, it even says it in the article..
Did you not notice that throughout the article it’s referred to as ‘suicide tourism’, at no point does it appear without the quotations, meaning that the journal do not specifically endorse or agree with the term.. Like how I usually put the term “pro life” in quotations, because while it’s the generally accepted term, I reckon it’s a load of tosh.
That is not a “massive rise”. It is a rise from a trivial number to a slightly bigger trivial number. If we assume that all of those 172 people are travelling from the EU, then an EU citizen is nearly 3x as likely to die by falling off a ladder than choosing assisted suicide in the only place where it is legal. On top of that, of all the people who ever sign up for Dignitas, more than half are never heard from again.
The pearl-clutchers will want you to believe that this sort of rise is a worrying sign of a sickness in our society. It is nothing of the kind.
If I could give more than one thumbs up I would
Interesting to see the Journal classified as “pearl clutchers”!!!!
People are entitled to do what they want. They are not entitled to make a death decision for another human being.
The sad bit is that so many people, fathers, mothers, daughters, sons, uncles, aunts and uncles, take the option of suicide.
They don’t have to opt for the Swiss facility. The outcome for family and friends is and continues to be devastating.
Likewise – so I gave you one too
William – could you please clarify, what I am taking from your comment is that you think people are having the decision to die made for them.. Surely this is not the case?
If you saw the way Citizens are dying in some Irish hospitals there would be no criticism of these people travelling abroad for assistance.
Maybe the Governments long term strategy on health is to just turn the entire healthcare system into one huge assisted suicide clinic! Last few years certainly felt like step 1!
People who are tormented physically and emotionally and live decades of a ‘life’ incapacitated do not deserve to have their right to die governed by the low, low class of human being our society elects on each and every polling day.
Our politicians are only motivated by greed and lust for power and their prevailing moral compass either comes from the twisted archaic reasonings of the shamed and evil Catholic Church or else they pretend it does in the eyes of their small time, bible bashing electorate.
England for abortions, Switzerland for dignified death. Ireland still thinks it has no responsibility to these people and that it’s hands are clean
Assisted suicide should be legal aswell as abortion. Its peoples choice and freedom as human to decide for themselves. Not a government or chruch! Makes me sick!
Barry I agree. Free will and freedom of choice. It’s my life and I should decide what is best for me not some institution like government or church.
Barry,
Throw in an aul bit of capital punishment as well.
Dare I also suggest euthanasia.
Go the full logical circle while you are at it.
Suicide yes, abortion no. I don’t remember any baby being given a choice as to whether it should be killed or not.
If you know someone killing babies you should report it.
What that has to do with either abortion or assisted suicide however I do not know….
I didn’t bring up abortion my comment is in reply to Barry Ryan. Oh, and let me guess, you refer to them as bunches of cells or something, anything other than baby as it’s too hard to admit supporting the killing of babies. Anyway this is totally off topic, that’s all from me.
Babies are not aborted. Embryos are aborted.
William what the hell are you on about?
If our lads in office found they could tax it we’d have Dignitas clinics here in the morning!
“What is known as ‘suicide tourism’” – it’s known by that name by whom?
Very sensitive.
According to the study published in the journal of ethics, it says so in the article, at the end of the sentence you appear to be quoting – how on earth did you miss it?
Sensationalist or what!
Headlines and terms like this prove the journal is no better than just a digital rag. Between bad, slow and censored journalism now they want to try take the dignity away from people who wish to end their suffering on their own terms. I may as well be reading The Sun newspaper. I don’t see the author justifying why he chose to belittle sufferers and skew even more how mental health is viewed in Ireland either
So there was two Irish people that traveled between 2008-2012 and …………………………………….
Shame on the journal for this article. The title makes it appear like they are going for a toblerone and a bit of the auld suicide. Many people dealing with life-long illness have no other choice but to end their life, and articles like this do not help in anyway, shape or form.
They put it in quotations which indicates it’s not their terminology. The article states that it comes from this ethics paper.
Sad that people have to travel to a foreign country to end their days with dignity. Perhaps by the time that I am ready to take this step, or not, (which is in the not too distant future) we will have matured sufficiently as a society to recognize that there are actually times when an individual’s decision should be complied with, even though strangers may disagree with that individual’s decision. I can never understand the word wide compulsion to interfere in private individuals’ decisions on birth and death – we must at all times dictate what strangers may or may not do. The whole issue of exploitation – whether of sex workers, ordinary disadvantaged workers, children and/or surrogate mothers is a whole different argument and these people must be vindicated and protected to the max.
It would be interesting to hear the stories of the people that went.
The Ryanair one way tickets are very popular !
We could legalise it here. It will give some people a jobs working in a clinic. It will boost our tourism figures.
We can get our abortions in the Britain and the British can come over here to die. Ireland’s got to be a better place to die than Switzerland.
The airlines should do more about this. Stop selling one way tickets there
Actually cheaper to buy a return ticket with Aer lingus or Swiss is cheaper than a one way!
Totally going off the topic here, but reading some comments regarding abortion, I feel I have to add my twopence if that’s ok. Sorry to offend anyone.
Do those in favour of abortion, actually believe it’s only a living baby once it’s outside of the womb??? Have you ever carried a child? Tell me you never felt movement or a closeness to your unborn baby during pregnancy. Many pregnancies disrupt hormones leading to depression. If every mother opted for abortion every time she felt low at such a late stage, there wouldn’t be too many babies being born. Or never mind that, if every woman decided to kill off a member of her family every time she felt depressed due to her period or just daily hormonal stress, would people still be ok with the idea?
Yes, I agree that mother should have been listened to and given the right choices available, without people of religious reasoning on the board, but to give birth at such a late stage by cesarean, the child can at least have a family that loves and cherishes it’s worth. If men were able to give birth it would be no different. Those men would be womb – men! Hormones and all
But Swiss time was running out
It seemed that we would lose the race
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