Dramatic increase in number of assisted suicide in Switzerland

There’s been a dramatic Increase in the number of Assisted Suicides in Switzerland. Suicide cases has gone up from 416 cases in 2011 to 1,004 cases in 2015 according to a statistics released by Dignitas and Exit, Swiss organizations which helps arrange physician-assisted suicides.
Assisted suicide has been legal in Switzerland through regulations since 1942.
The law requires a physician to be involved and recipients must be suffering from a terminal illness, or from a disease that leads to an unendurable incapacitating disability, or suffering unbearable pain.
The data indicates that there was a 34% increase in assisted suicide deaths in 2015. Combined with the 27% increase in assisted suicide deaths in 2014, deaths at suicide clinics in Switzerland has increased by more than 70% in two years.
Physician-assisted suicide is legal in five U.S. states. It is an option given to individuals by state law in Oregon, Vermont, Washington and California.
The soaring number of deaths in Belgium is alarming, a country which became the first in the world to allow doctors to kill terminally ill children. Doctors in Belgium are killing an average of five people every day by euthanasia.
In Oregon, the number of people who have died by assisted suicide has rapidly increased by 26 percent in the last year.
Lord Carlile of Berriew, a co-patron of Living and Dying Well, a Westminster think tank, said the latest figures revealed a “lack of control and scrutiny of the assisted suicide laws in Switzerland, and the poor protections for people with disabilities and psychiatric problems”.
Dr. Phil Friend, OBE, spokesman for a disability rights group opposed to assisted suicide, described the rapid increase in the number of deaths as ”scary”.
“It’s terrifying – people are beginning to see it as a much easier option for people to assisted to die than to help them,” he said.
“It is very worrying that death has become preferable to looking after someone,” Dr. Friend added.
Exit said of the people it helped to die, 56 percent were women, while the average age of recipients was 77.5.
A 2006 judgment by the Swiss Federal Court ruled that anyone of sound mind, irrespective of their medical condition, had a right to determine when to end their lives.
In Britain, MPs have overwhelmingly rejected the legalization of assisted dying in England and Wales in a 336 votes to 118 votes.
All forms of assisted dying (euthanasia and assisted suicide) are illegal in the UK.
Sarah Wootton, chief executive of Dignity in Dying, said: “The numbers having an assisted death in Switzerland are sadly unsurprising. It is clear from the numbers traveling to Switzerland that many terminally ill British people want an assisted death and are willing to make the desperate decision to travel abroad to have one because they are denied that possibility at home.
“The vote, she said only goes to show just how ridiculously out of touch MPs are with the British public on the issue.
“By rejecting the Bill Parliament has in effect decided to condone terminally ill people ending their own lives but refused to provide them the adequate protection they need,” she added.
“Suffering will continue as long as MPs turn a blind eye to dying people’s wishes. Dying people deserve better.”