If I knew how to make all the capital S's in my title dollar signs, I would have done so. You'll soon see why. The culture of death moves at breakneck speed in the United States. Now, a posh suicide clinic will open in Oregon. All services offered for a fee, naturally. Lots of fees, to be paid by cashier's check. A sample:
Photography: $600
Music by a professional pianist, to usher you into the dark: $400 (The doctor assures us that the music will be "magical.")
Nursing: $400 (buys four hours of skilled nursing)
Presence of the Dr. Death and his faithful service dog at your deathbed: $1200 (Don't forget, cashier's checks only)
There are more services offered, too. See Wesley J. Smith's post here. Sorry to be such a basket of smiles, but this one had to be passed on. Oh, Dr. Weisberg, who is setting all this up, is a psychiatrist.
Can anything be done about this legally? I rather doubt it. But it would be nice if there were some way that people could, say, refuse to do business with this guy.
Update: A setback for this aspiring entrepreneur. He's had his medical license suspended for prescribing drugs to drug addicts. Maybe they paid by cashier's check, and he just couldn't resist. Let's hope that puts paid to the suicide clinic plans for the time being, anyway.
Comments (17)
The comment about the 'magical music' that will 'usher you into the dark' reminds me of a scene in Soylent Green: the one in which Edward G. Robinson's character decides that he has 'lived too long' and signs up for government-assisted suicide. In that scene, Robinson goes to his death to the piped sound of Beethoven's 6th, accompanied by mood-lighting and projected footage of pastoral scenery.
Soylent Green peddles the usual Malthusian over-population scenario, but what it does get right is the way in which killing the old and infirm is increasingly sanitized, bureaucratized, and obfuscated by sentimentalism.
Posted by Tony W. | June 24, 2010 5:25 PM
I should clarify that "magical" is their word and "usher you into the dark" is my phrase. But check out their actual language via Smith's post. It's plenty creepy. It really does sound like what you describe from Soylent Green.
Posted by Lydia | June 24, 2010 5:48 PM
It really does sound like what you describe from Soylent Green.
Have you ever notice the really rapidly approaching convergence of science fiction and science fact? Apparently, if one can imagine something, someone will try to do it, moral or not. I'm thinking that this convergence is pretty strong proof of the need of a savior.
I don't that assisted suicide will really take hold in the short term because once people find out they can grow their own organs or replace their own genes, the natural urge to tinker could keep some people alive for many years. Once they find out the horrors of their tinkering, I suspect we will be in the situation Jesus described of asking the mountains to fall on us.
I hope Oregon pushes their drive towards autonomy to the limit (if they will not repent) and just form their own little country. They can call it Deathville.
The Chicken
Posted by The Masked Chicken | June 24, 2010 8:14 PM
God, please wake this country up!
I am using this disgusting piece of news
to write another hip hop tune about how
we need to wake up to God's glory.
Here we go:
Chorus:
We live in a sick culture of DEATH
where the devil wanna take your BREATH.
Wake up to the one, holy and true WORD
and fly to God like a little BIRD!
Yo, what a crazy time to be ALIVE.
How can I expect my soul to SURVIVE
in this neo-darwinian nightmare JUNGLE?
I expect that the crazy libs will BUNGLE
all of our attempts to give PRAISE
and instead give fat cats another RAISE.
chorus x 2
francis schaeffer, leos strauss where you AT?
Come back swinging the gospel like a BAT!
We need to pray til atheists REPENT
and see that Jesus Christ is heaven SENT!
chorus x 2
Secular philosophies belong in a TOILET.
How do you kill a frog? Slowly BOIL IT!
That is what is happening to our CULTURE.
The devil is stalking it like a big VULTURE.
Chorus x 3.
END
Yo, America. Wake up. Honor to God.
Francis Schaeffer, Aquinas, Conservatism - WE NEED YOU!!!
- The Catholic 50 Cent
Posted by The Catholic 50 Cent | June 24, 2010 8:31 PM
MC, I don't think any type of tinkering is going to make a big difference, here. For one thing, the assisted suicide is here _now_, but there isn't some sudden breakthrough in successful life-extending tinkering happening just at this particular moment, the transhumanists to the contrary notwithstanding. Moreover, the kinds of people who want to "tinker" to stay alive for long periods of time are at least a partly disjoint set from the kinds of people who want to commit suicide. The latter contain those who have a horror even of any sort of (what they consider to be) artificial form of life-preservation that is presently available, much less what might become available later.
Posted by Lydia | June 24, 2010 8:36 PM
"The board's order said Weisberg, who earned his medical degree at the Medical College of Wisconsin in 2000, was terminated from his four-year residency at OHSU several months before he was to finish. No explanation was given."
https://techmedweb.omb.state.or.us/Clients/ORMB/Public/VerificationDetails.aspx?EntityID=1452792
This guy seems somewhat incompetent. No human created system is perfect but absent a licensing scheme this guy would still be practicing medicine. The wording on the website for his proposed venture leads me to believe he is also somewhat delusional.
Given the small number of assisted suicides in Oregon each year (59 in 2009), he isn't very good at business either. At $4,000/client he would gross less than $240K if he corralled every potential customer. Considering that he accepts Medicare assignment and most of the patients were over 65, we are likely talking about significantly less. This might work though if he could also give folks the option of having Lurch, Hand, or Uncle Fester at their bedside.
Posted by al | June 25, 2010 2:17 PM
Do humans not have the right to end their own suffering according to your worldview?
Posted by Angelica | June 25, 2010 2:24 PM
Sure they do. That's why God made poppies.(/snark)
Seriously, the culture of death has done a great job of conflating "relieving suffering" with "killing." In a sane culture, we'd explore better options for relieving pain, dealing with depression, and supporting those with severe disabilities and those who must care for them. Instead, we are increasingly seeing such people as "burdens" and deciding they'd be better off dead.
I say this as someone who watched him mother slowly waste away, so I'm not unsympathetic at all. There eventually came a point where we stopped all medical intervention and let the end come. There's a difference between not trying to save a life and killing. One is licit, the other is profoundly wicked. It's a continuum, but that doesn't erase the distinction.
Posted by CJ | June 25, 2010 3:38 PM
Lydia,
I have to tell you - Oregon is the single most ODD place I've ever been to. I go to Boulder and I can feel the evil in the air. The paganism clings to your skin like humidity on a hot summer night. But there, I know what it is, I can name it. In Oregon, it's sort of like "free floating anxiety". There is a sense of unease, that something is simply WRONG but I can't quite get a handle on it. It's bizarre.
Some years ago when I was thinking of making a serious study of medical ethics, and at the suggestion of a mutual friend, I had dinner with Jerome Wernow who runs a bioethics center out of the campus of Northwestern Seminary in Portland. I was a bit surprised to learn that even then he wouldn't live in Oregon. He and his wife lived across the river in Washington.
Kamilla
Posted by Kamilla | June 25, 2010 4:33 PM
"Secular philosophies belong in a TOILET.
How do you kill a frog? Slowly BOIL IT!
That is what is happening to our CULTURE.
The devil is stalking it like a big VULTURE."
LOL! Awesome lines, Catholic 50 Cent! And so true!
Keep up the good work.
Posted by Michael C. | June 25, 2010 5:47 PM
Kamilla, I suspect there is a reason why these states have become the first to formally legalize assisted suicide in the U.S., but I don't fully know that reason. For example, I think of New York State as being at least as liberal as Oregon and Washington, but it didn't start there. I lived in Pullman, WA, for three years, but there was no feeling of oddness such as you describe in Oregon but only of loneliness. It's a very small town out in the middle of nowhere, and I never felt as though I could get rooted there or as though I met anyone rooted in that town. Very much a college town. But it didn't surprise me that the Washingtonians eventually passed an assisted suicide law. We had a narrow escape from that fifteen years ago, so they just kept on trying.
Posted by Lydia | June 25, 2010 9:57 PM
I live in Portland, Oregon. I've written (and continue to write) my share of essays and letters to the editor protesting the creep of the culture of death here in my home state. I also have a family member with a chronic illness, so quality of life is an issue that touches me personally.
Having lived here since I was 4, here's what I think the weirdness is: It's the American Western subculture, a hugely magnified pioneer spirit/'rugged individualism' that feeds it. I joke with out-of-town friends and family that there are two and only two ideas governing our political and social landscape; all our laws and citizen initiatives can be boiled down to: 1) "Leave me alone!!" and 2) "Get off my land!!" The sentiment I'm talking about was also encapsulated in a phrase that a friend saw on a counterprotester's sign when she was doing the March for Life in San Francisco: "I moved here to get away from people like you".
The spiritual climate here is one of isolation (and resultant apathy) when it comes to others in need. Derek Humphrey and others involved in the original campaign to legalize assisted suicide actually _chose Oregon and moved here_ in the '70s and '80s because they thought these aspects of the subculture would help them achieve their goal of "the first domino to fall". When the assisted suicide initiative was written and the campaign was undertaken in the '90s, it was sold to Oregonians with the rhetoric of 'choice' and 'autonomy' (category #1 above), and to our shame we (speaking collectively here) bought it.
The ways we're fighting back include: 1) documenting every abuse of the so-called Death With Dignity Act (and there are dozens - Wesley J. Smith does a good job of catching these), 2) protesting publicly in print and other media when the issue arises, 3) educating people in the health care field, and 4) supporting Christian-based hospice and other programs that minister to the terminally ill. Physicians for Compassionate Care (www.pccef.org) and Martha and Mary Ministries (www.marthamaryministries.org) do good work in this area.
While we must work to reverse/change the law and to prevent other states from adopting assisted suicide, there is no substitute for doing the sort of work on the ground with suffering people (e.g. hospice) that demonstrates _we are different in how we look at the human person_, _we are a people who live our belief in a kind and loving God_. Bringing Christ's presence to depressed, suffering people and their families will be our most powerful weapon against the hopeless (and sometimes God-hating) rhetoric of Barbara Coombs Lee and George Eighmey (of the Orwellian-ly named Compassion & Choices) and their kind.
Posted by Kathleen Lundquist | June 26, 2010 3:10 AM
Do humans not have the right to end their own suffering according to your worldview?
The 'Right to Die' movement (or, to be accurate, the right to murder/ be murdered/commit suicide movement) is not motivated by the relief of suffering.
Posted by William Luse | June 26, 2010 3:53 PM
You are correct, Mr. Luse. There have been several surveys by the Oregon Department of Health and Human Services of those of who have filed a request for physician-assisted suicide. The number one reason the respondents cite for wanting to hasten their death: loss of autonomy.
Posted by Kathleen Lundquist | June 27, 2010 1:35 AM
Freddy Mather
Posted by Alton Harriman | June 29, 2010 9:29 PM
Everyone of us is terminal, but those who are ready to lay down their burdens do not have this option. I don't get it. If you are dead in six months anyway, save the money, refuse expensive care and leave naturally. Your children will have some inheritance with no suicide stigma to remember you by. I think there should be clinics like this in every city and town, but without any regulations whatsoever regarding who is eligible and who is not. People kill themselves in horrifying ways all the time. Let's end the horror for their families and allow people to have a peaceful end. Go spend a few hours in a nursing home and you might channel your indignation elsewhere.
Posted by Oregonian | March 11, 2011 11:06 AM
can i have clinic adress or phone number so i can call and make an appointment ,,i can t live in this world anymore,thank you
Posted by Robert | December 13, 2012 5:12 PM