Assisted suicide

Tuesday

Susie Mesure

A fatal mistake: Time Being, by Jude Cook, reviewed

Jude Cook’s intriguing third novel, Time Being, opens with a bang. A philosophy lecturer has been shot dead through the door of a toilet stall in the humanities building at the University of London. Laura Cameron was her discipline’s answer to Brian Cox or Mary Beard, a broadcast regular, almost as renowned for her ‘eccentric, bohemian style as for her books on meta ethics and moral responsibility’.  The motive is a mystery, stumping everyone from Jack, Laura’s ‘dependable and handsome barrister husband’ to the Met’s senior investigating officer, DCI Wahid Malik. Cue shock from all concerned; all except Esther Luck, a fellow philosophy lecturer who counted Laura as a ‘dear friend’ and was also using the fifth-floor toilets at the time of Laura’s murder.

Wednesday

Cosmo Landesman

The unsaid truth about suicide

Did you know that in the UK September is a month devoted to suicide prevention? And that on the 10th of this month, it’s World Suicide Prevention Day (WSPD)? No, neither did I. And neither did any of my friends. Yet we’re all aware that suicide is a serious problem. Every 90 minutes someone in the UK or Ireland dies that way. It’s the biggest killer of men under 45. And suicides among teenage girls and young women have almost doubled in recent years. We’ve been having these suicide prevention events every September for more than two decades and yet the rates are not going down. Maybe it’s time to challenge what I’d call the suicide prevention consensus.

Tuesday

Dan Hitchens

Canada’s assisted suicide laws are out of control

From our US edition

Death, somehow, seems like the wrong word. So Canada’s euthanasia doctors have adopted other terms for what they offer: each lethal injection is called a “provision.” Stefanie Green, a Vancouver Island doctor who used to work in maternity services, prefers “delivery.” Canada has sleepwalked into a moral maze with no exit, where euthanasia becomes a solution for social problems Since Canada’s parliament introduced euthanasia in 2016, a new vocabulary has arisen. Those with a terminal illness, whose death is “reasonably foreseeable” are “Track 1”; those who have no such diagnosis but qualify through “grievous and irremediable” conditions are “Track 2.

Canada

Sunday

Bill McMorris

The legal challenge to assisted suicide

From our US edition

Lonnie VanHook was preparing to board the train to Oregon when his body gave out. The Navy veteran is accustomed to these sorts of betrayals. He is quadriplegic and legless to boot; a rare form of cancer is eating away at his skeletal-muscle tissues and bladder. He awoke in a facility surrounded by medical professionals wearing the plastic countenances of concern and sympathy they picked up during the med school lessons on bedside manners. During the interaction, Lonnie told them about the reason for his upcoming trip. You can picture the Oakland native rolling his eyes as he has prepared for the rebuttal. The doctors, no doubt, exchanged astonished glances. Lonnie, what were you thinking?!? You don’t need to take the train. We can do that right here!

assisted suicide

Monday

Jane Stannus

The truth slips out about Justin Trudeau’s euthanasia regime

From our US edition

Two cheers for a brief hiatus in the Canadian stampede towards suicide for all. Earlier this month, David Lametti, Justin Trudeau’s justice minister, announced that legalization of euthanasia for the mentally ill will be delayed by one year. This, he said, will give the health system and regulatory bodies more time to prepare. Mentally ill adults will now become eligible for euthanasia in March 2024. Sadly, it’s a mere hiatus. Despite the international wave of horror in recent months pushing back against Canada’s sickeningly casual euthanasia regime, the government clearly has no intention of walking back its plans to make death on demand available to the most psychologically fragile.

authoritarian

Friday

Grayson Quay

Assisted suicide is the new trans rights

From our US edition

You can 3D-print your own suicide pod now. No doctor’s note required. And it’s legal in Switzerland. One woman featured in the official announcement video called the pod “utopian.” According to one of the numerous news pieces covering Sarco (as the device is known), those who die by this and similar means are “cared for,” not “killed.” And yet that same article included the phone number of a suicide hotline along with a disclaimer: “If you or someone you know is struggling with depression or has had thoughts of harming themselves or taking their own life, get help.” But why? Is suicide bad or isn’t it? And if it isn’t, why are you telling suicidal people to get help?

moran