Suicide Clinic Wants to Expand, Christians Oppose

A pro-euthanasia group in Switzerland that runs an assisted suicide clinic in Zurich now wants to start conducting assisted suicides on people who suffer from chronic depression.

|TOP|Meanwhile, the head of a Christian doctors group says the euthanasia advocates fail to comprehend that people considering assisted suicide need help, not death.

Since opening the clinic in 1988, the suicide clinic has killed more than 450 people, including 42 from England and many others who travel there from other European nations.

According to a UPI report, Ludwig Minelli, a Swiss attorney who runs the center, said he wants to begin helping people kill themselves who have been suffering from depression for the last 10 or more years. Minelli also expressed wanting to open up a chain of the assisted suicide centres in other countries to expand the number of opportunities for depressed people to commit suicide.

He told the London Times newspaper he opened a new office in Germany recently and wants to expand to other nations where assisted suicide is illegal to erase the "taboo" associated with it. He also wants to teach people how to properly kill themselves.

"Many people who attempt suicide don't know how to do it," he said, while pointing to his forehead. "They don't even know how to shoot themselves. They aim here and just blow the front of the head off, and live on as a vegetable."

|AD|"We need to set up advisory centres where people can openly discuss problems and seek advice about methods and risks, without the fear of losing their freedom and being put in an institution," he told the London newspaper. "These centres can only be credible if they can offer assisted suicide."

Dr. Peter Saunders, general secretary of the Christian Medical Fellowship, told UPI, "Minelli does not understand that attempting suicide is a call for help."

"Once the physical and psycho-spiritual needs are met the desire for suicide tends to go away," Dr. Saunders explained. "It is laughable to suggest that someone with Alzheimer's, who cannot remember two minutes later what they told you, could have the capacity to understand and weigh up and make a decision on suicide. The potential for abuse is horrendous."

Christian charity, CARE has been gathering protestors throughout the UK to unite and fight against the proposed euthanasia bill via their mobile phones and computers. A new text and online petition campaign has been launched by the leading Christian organisations, in a firm drive to ensure that Lord Joffe’s Assisted Dying For the Terminally Ill Bill is rejected in Parliament.

The campaign comes as part of CARE’s ‘Life Valued Campaign’, which has seen many supporters gathering across Britain focusing on exposing and educating the public on some of the most widely believed “myths” about euthanasia.

Hundreds of Christians have gathered in Sheffield, Ballymena, Leeds, Bourne, Bournemouth, Warwick and Durham in opposition to the Bill, and more meetings are planned for the near future.