Dignitas

Propaganda is all around us and unless we sit in a hut somewhere, our hands over our ears we are effected by it. What is the flavour of the month who is getting a bashing this week.

From encyclopaedic knowledge to plain innuendo we are prone to being inflicted with opinion dressed up as fact and facts eroded by opinion.

Dignitas the Swiss based organisation which assists people wishing to end their lives are under the spotlight with an article written the other day supposedly unearthing some of the more unpalatable facts behind the organisation.
Grounds for condemnation according to the newspaper article was that one of the "clinics" was housed in a building which also housed a 'burger bar' and was not the clinically refined place we all have in our minds eye.
There was reference made to a doctor who is no longer permitted to practice in this country because he had pushed the envelope out to include, in the people he refers to Dignitas, not only the terminally ill but people who were mentally unhinged and suffering dementia. I suppose the catch phrase is "suffering" and it seems to me that there are too many people telling people who are genuinely suffering that they must "chin up and bear it". People who come from all kinds of cloth, some religious, some ethical, some who simple fear the opportunity, life is simply too precious. It's interesting that this last batch of protesters do not protest when "abortions" are carried out on an industrial scale but then to them that's another issue.
The preservation of life at all costs has its roots in the religious texts and until recently, suicide was a criminal offence. It has always seemed the hight of hypocrisy for the State to ban the right of a human being to take his or her own life whilst happily enlisting people to go and fight wars on behalf of the State when the chances of being killed are very high.
Anyway the argument this morning seemed to be based on the proximity of the Burger Shop (perhaps the thought of the 'Last Supper' comes to mind) and how shocking it was that people with simply a wish to die must be prevented in some way or other.
The "will to live" and maybe it's concomitant, "I need to die", is all part of life and the twists and turns it takes for many people. It's often the security of a fulfilled life which brings you to the conclusion that dying by your own hand is evil and must be prevented. Given that for some people living is pure hell, for a whole range of reasons, to be forced to carry on in both physical and mental pain seems to me to be as cruel as it gets !!!