Final Exit-Selling Death

I did a search and didn't find this news bit, maybe because all the threads were deleted for being too controversial.

Daily Beast

Summary

Final Exit is a suicide kit, made by a company called the Gladd Group that is headed by 91yo Sharlotte Hydorn. The kits are plastic bags that fit over the head while it's up to the purchaser to rent or buy a tank of helium. A tube comes with the bag that will feed the helium to the bag, causing asphyxiation. The kit cost's $60 to purchase, and her annual income sits around $98,000, meaning she sell's approximately 1,600 units a year. I couldn't find the website that you do the purchasing, but I did find a mailing address to where you can send your money and you'll get the device in return. There's no prerequisite for obtaining the device as long as you send the fee.

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Suicide assisted kits for sale? This is news to me. Heck, I never even heard of Oregon's Death With Dignity Act. If it is illegal, the legality certainly isn't very clear about it if the Gladd Group can rake in that much money. Government can ok it, but no one else? Since it's inception, the number of people that used Death With Dignity Act totaled 401 since 2008, or 19.4 deaths per 10,000 in the same time period. The big difference between such programs and the Final Exit helium hood is that there is a lot of red tape and waiting to receive the lethal dose of drug provided by DWDA that is absent with the kit. Not to mention, there isn't a screening in place to see if you actually qualify for the program kit.

When it comes to assisted suicide, I'm for it: As long as it's done right. The DWDA, will it's flaw's, is great option for people who are terminally ill. People need to die with dignity, and not in anguish with relatives missing weeks of work to comfort you in your pitiful state of being, spending thousands of dollars in hospital care. I know it's hard to let go, but if the end is coming why extend the period of life leaving the body? I believe many more people than who admit it would take their life in their own hands when the time comes, but will they tell that to their loved ones? Waiting and red tape makes almost nullifies the process in many instances where people don't live to see the program finishing, and this is a weight on people's minds.

Then there are the people that just want to die, because life has no purpose for them or whatever their reason is. The DWDA doesn't help them, and no agency would. Some of these people are in a rough patch in life and assisted suicide would be a great error in their quick judgment. But the depression isn't always episodic in nature, but perpetual. I've known people that have killed their self, and they did remind me of a terminally ill patient, with the illness being their mental state. I have never seen them out of their fog and I have to assume that they were like that from an early age. Life just did pan out the way they thought it would, or maybe it panned out exactly like they knew...It's depressing to think about, but this is the reality for many people. And if they want to buy a way to die, I say let them. But why does it have to be with a bullet, rope, or by any other self-inflicted means.

I'm not saying there shouldn't be a screening process, but the one there is needs to change. Is there a reason why assisted suicide isn't more accepted? Is it the moral question behind it? Is it the lose in money pharmaceutical companies and hospitals would have treating a depressed or terminally ill patient? Government lauding it's suicide statistics? Selfishness? My mind is beyond those questions, and assisted suicide should be an option for a sentient being. Maybe I'm OK with it since I believe that life drags on after death in some fashion that isn't weighed by karma. Mods can move this thread as they see fit.

reply to post by satron


I'd rather save the $60 and make a diy suicide kit out of a garbage bag.

Seriously though, if I'm gonna kill myself I might as well splurge and just OD on heroin. At least that way I'll go out feeling like a million bucks!

Seriously though, this is one of the worst things I've ever heard of. I bet she sells ropes already tied into nooses as well.

My contention is that the taboo against suicide was written by early slave owners. They didn't want their slaves just killing themselves when they could go on working for the master. So it was written into the religions so that people would fear the hell of an afterlife more than the hell of slavery in this life.

I remember Edward G Robinson's death scene in Soylent Green. I recall thinking what a smooth way to go. And then there was the old Indian woman( man maybe) in Dances With Wolves who just told the tribe to go along and she took herself out to the burial ground. That was smooth also. Unlike this weirdness we have around us in modern society.

Now police have raided the house of Sharlotte Hydorn, the person that mails out the Final Solution.

news.yahoo.com...

Agents also seized Hydorn's computers and sewing machine, and her correspondence with individuals at the Final Exit Network, a group that has 3,000 members nationwide and provides support to people seeking to end their lives.

Looks like a lot more people could be arrested.

What gets me is that, in Oregon, lawmakers are working to make it a felony to supply suicide kits to people that qualify for the lethal dose of drugs that can be prescribed anyway to a terminally ill patient. The people that want the kits are in no condition to wait and go through the paper work and legal crap, then pay a total bill which includes the phone request regarding participation in the Death With Dignity Act, a psychological consultant, and the price of the medication. It's a lot considering that someone can take their own life for the price of a bag with a tube and a supply of a gas other than oxygen. So what about the people that would qualify for the program but don't have the money to shell out? Sounds to me like they're getting the most money out of you they can since they are losing a tax paying citizen.