Wesley J. Smith blogs at Secondhand Smoke, but he also works for the Discovery Institute. And he’s written a post about the top 10 issues in bioethics.
Here are the top 10 recent bioethics stories:
- The ascendance of an anti-human environmentalism.
- The growth of biological colonialism.
- The increase in American pro-life attitudes.
- The struggle over Obamacare.
- Legalization of assisted suicide in Washington.
- The success of adult-stem-cell research.
- “Suicide tourism” in Switzerland.
- In vitro fertilization (IVF) anarchy.
- The Bush embryonic-stem-cell funding policy.
- The dehydration of Terri Schiavo.
Do you know what “suicide tourism” is?
Here’s what it is:
Over the last decade, Switzerland became Jack Kevorkian as a country, its suicide clinics catering to an increasingly international clientele — mostly from the United Kingdom — with the victims ranging from the terminally ill, to people with disabilities, to even a double suicide of a terminally ill elderly woman and her frail husband, who wanted to die rather than be cared for by others. Alas, as was the case with Kevorkian in the 1990s, audacity was rewarded. In the face of a wave of high-profile suicide-tourism stories, England’s head prosecutor published guidelines that, in essence, decriminalized family and friends’ assisting the suicides of the dying, disabled, and infirm. Others mimicked the Swiss. In the U.S., the Final Exit Network appears to have created mobile suicide clinics, leading to the indictment of several of its organizers. Meanwhile, the Australian “Dr. Death,” Philip Nitschke, traveled the world holding how-to-commit-suicide clinics. Still, as the decade came to a close, there was a sense that the tide could be turning: The Swiss government appears poised to shut down the suicide-tourism industry, perhaps even — although this is less likely — outlawing assisted suicide altogether.
Actually, the UK is considering cashing in on suicide tourism, as well.
WINTERY KNIGHT 