Sick

 

Sick Suicide Reality Show at Edinburgh Festival

By Wesley J. Smith
A sign of a sick society: Turning our nihilistic suicide outlaws into celebrities.
That happened big time with Jack Kevorkian, who assisted mostly non-terminally ill people in suicide, offering the kidneys he ripped from one of his victim’s body at a press conference, “first come, first served.”

Despite all of that–and his stated goal of conducting human vivisection, he became all the rage, dahling! He was invited to Time’s 50th anniversary party where Tom Cruise rushed up to shake his hand.

At the end, Kevorkian was transformed into a harmless Muppet type character, played in a hagiographic bio-pic by the A-list movie star, Al Pacino.
Now, it is Kevorkian’s Down-Under ghoul brother from another mother, Philip Nitschke’s turn. Nitschke avoids being present at deaths, but he blatantly teaches people how to commit suicide–and I would say, encourages self-extinction.
He became infamous internationally after telling NRO’s Kathryn Lopez that he supported selling suicide pills in supermarkets–even to troubled teens. He has counseled mostly elderly people on how to illegally obtain death drugs in Mexico.

He blatantly lied to the media about Nancy Crick, telling them she wanted assisted suicide because of terminal cancer. Dutifully, they swooned. Later, she killed herself in front of an audience of his supporters who applauded when she took the poison. When her autopsy showed she was not seriously ill, he shrugged, saying he knew it all along. Oh well, death doctors will be death doctors.
Now, he’s going to become a star in the famous Edinburgh Fringe art festival. From the Independent story:

Audience members at the Edinburgh Fringe show hosted by the controversial medic known as Dr Death will be ‘gassed’ as they model how “a peaceful and reliable means of death” is carried out.

Right-to-die campaigner Philip Nitschke, 67, will invite people on stage to inhale gas from his updated version of the Deliverance machine that helped end the lives of four terminally people in the 1990s using intravenous drugs. Dr Nitschke said the move to gas made his new Destiny euthanasia machine much easier to use as no special skills, such as inserting an IV tube, are required. 

Nihilism strikes a beat. Into your life it will seep.
I once debated Nitschke on CNN, both of us by remote satellite connection.
Just before we went on, the producer gushed enthusiastically into our ear phones: “Thank you for coming on, Dr. Nitschke! We appreciate your time so much! Thank you, thank you!”
It got so fawning, even he was embarrassed. And now, an arts show headliner.
Like I wrote above, we live in a sick society.
Editor’s note. This appeared on Wesley’s fine blog at www.nationalreview.com/human-exceptionalism/421479/suicide-reality-tv-wesley-j-smith

Source: NRLC News