Chilling

Horror story in the UK Independent today:

People who suffer from depression or mental illness could be allowed to legally end their lives at a Swiss suicide clinic, if campaigners win a legal test case next month.

Ludwig Minelli, who runs the Dignitas clinic in Zurich, wants to extend his assisted suicide service to patients who are not terminally ill. The Swiss Supreme Court is to hear the case in October of a patient with bipolar disorder who wants the right to die at the clinic.

Mr Minelli told a fringe meeting of the Liberal Democrat conference in Brighton that he wanted all people, including the mentally ill or depressed, to be given the "marvellous opportunity" to end their lives if they wanted.

My mother has bipolar disorder. "Marvellous opportunity." What a charmer you are, Mr. Ludwig M.

Note this paragraph:

Mr Minelli told the meeting that people who were depressed or had mental health problems were often left without appropriate options and that his clinic offered counseling and care before allowing assisted suicide.

Which makes it sound like he isn't waiting for any legal decision and has already begun killing mentally ill people.

Full article.

Well, well. Come on now, let's hear it. "There's no such thing as a slippery slope." "These religious people are just alarmists." "We'd only off terminally ill patients, really, we swear!"

This development fits in well with the discovery, about two years ago, that hospitals in the Netherlands had begun to implement the "Groningen Protocol" which guides the decision to euthanize (that is, murder) terminally ill babies. Although no one in the Netherlands had even proposed a law to allow this, the doctors had decided on their own to begin carrying out the Protocol.

See this story from MSNBC:

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - A hospital in the Netherlands - the first nation to permit euthanasia - recently proposed guidelines for mercy killings of terminally ill newborns, and then made a startling revelation: It has already begun carrying out such procedures, which include administering a lethal dose of sedatives.

The announcement by the Groningen Academic Hospital came amid a growing discussion in Holland on whether to legalize euthanasia on people incapable of deciding for themselves whether they want to end their lives - a prospect viewed with horror by euthanasia opponents and as a natural evolution by advocates.

Natural evolution. In other words, slippery slope.

Full article.