Suicide Tourism

Switzerland has a lot of things that foreigners associate it with. For example, it is known for its generosity for the mega-rich foreigners to allow them to keep their money in banks fronting their accounts. But, only few people know about its generosity to permit the terminally ill and permanently disabled foreigners to hasten their death in Switzerland.

Every year, more than 100 terminally ill and the permanently and unacceptably disabled from France, Germany, USA, United Kingdom, and others come to Switzerland to commit a suicide. On average, a foreigner comes to Switzerland to die twice a week. They kill themselves by drinking a glass of water mixed with sodium pentobarbital. They choose to do so in order to avoid suffering from the disease that inevitably leads to their death. They fall asleep five minutes after they drink it, and die half an hour after.

In 1942, a law was introduced in Switzerland to allow the terminally sick and the permanently disabled to kill themselves. Switzerland is the only country in the world to allow foreigners to kill themselves. There are very few countries that have a law to allow the terminally sick to kill themselves. They include Netherlands, Belgium, and two states in USA (Oregon and Washington). The promulgation of such a law in these countries is very recent.

The question of whether such a law is good is controversial. Some argue against it. They argue that those who are neither incurably ill nor permanently disabled are likely to take an advantage from it by killing themselves to avoid facing the depression. It is said that the organizations working for the terminally ill to enable them to kill themselves are not transparent. Those who are opposed to such a law or at least those who are opposed to the possible disadvantage of such a law prefer to call the entry of the terminally ill foreigners into Switzerland “suicide tourism”.

Reference
AP, SCHWERIENBACH
Dec 14