Friday, 15 January 2016

The deliverance euthanasia device:

This post contains mentions of euthanasia, suicide and death. Please select another post to read from the navigation above, or scroll past this content if you find the topics disturbing.
If you are having suicidal thoughts, please contact the one following sources of help.
 [ X ] Samaritans (UK)
[ X ] Papyrus (UK)
[ X ] List of Hotlines (USA)
[ X ] List of Hotlines (International)


Euthanasia has always been a hot debate. Maybe people disagree with the act of ending one’s own suffering no matter how miserable and undignified those last days of life can be. Many believe that throwing away the gift of life conflicts with their religious or moral beliefs. 
Others disagree of course, and believe that it’s a person’s right to die no matter what- Doctor Philip “death” Nitschke is one of those people, and an advocate for euthanasia. In fact, he is responsible for delivering death to four willing people between 1995 and 1996 in Australia.
Nitschke developed a software program called “Deliverance” which ran on a Euthanasia machine. The machine would ask questions that allowed the patient to confirm their willingness to end their lives. Eventually Deliverance would ask:
“If you press this button, you will receive a lethal injection and die in 15 seconds. Do you wish to proceed?”
At the push of a button, the user would receive a lethal dose of Barbiturates through an IV drip in their arm.


These days Dr. Nitschke runs a non-profit organization called “Exit International”, which aims to legalize euthanasia. In 2009 an article in the Guardian (UK) detailed concerns and controversy surrounding workshops the doctor had been holding around England, where he would show people how to die effectively. Through “exit international” he also manufactured a barbiturate-testing kit that would allow people who wanted to end their lives to test their methods and determine that death would be peaceful and effective.
The doctor stated that, by popular demand, the kits are sold on the organizations website, and the correct concentration of barbiturates is shipped without labels from a company based in Mexico.  As an alternative, their website provides a DIY guide.
This sparked controversy across England, and resulted in some of the workshops being shut down to protect vulnerable people from committing suicide.

Exit international has updated their “Deliverance” euthanasia device and came up with a design that requires no special skills to assemble and use. It’s a sort of DIY gas mask, made from a plastic bag and a tube, connected to a canister of pure Nitrogen.  It provides a quick and painless death, which allows the patient to fall unconscious within 12 seconds.
Nitschke believes that in some ways, putting control back in the hands of a terminally ill patient would actually prolong their life.

In 2015 he was banned by the Australian government and began to focus on his comedy career. Full details are available in an article here [ X

(Sources: the guardian,  exit international, wikipedia,) 

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