Swiss Getting Uneasy About Foreigners Who Come To Be Killed

OK, this is a joke, right? The Swiss are now, suddenly, getting worried about all those foreigners who line up at Swiss death clinic Dignitas to be killed? Such hypocrisy, such arrogance, such slef-centernedness.

Suicide Tourists Make Swiss Minister Uneasy as Terminally Ill Seek Escape

Switzerland is the destination of choice for people from abroad who want to die. The office of the country’s top legal official is pushing to change that.

While assisted suicide is permitted in the Netherlands, Belgium and the U.S. states of Oregon, Washington and Montana, only Switzerland allows doctors to help foreigners end their lives. More than 25 percent of the 380 assisted suicides in Switzerland during 2009 involved foreigners, most of whom died after drinking water laced with a lethal dose of barbiturates.

Former Justice Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf, who was replaced by Simonetta Sommaruga in November, has proposed making the practice more difficult by demanding oversight by doctors who aren’t connected with one of the country’s four right-to-die organizations. Assisted suicide has been legal in Switzerland since 1942. more