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AUSTRALIAN RIGHT-TO-DIE GROUP TO MARKET DEATH BAGS

CANBERRA, Australia, July 9, 2002 (LSN.ca) - Australia's leading assisted suicide group, Exit, plans to market free plastic suicide bags. Philip Nitschke, this country's answer to Dr. Kevorkian, says the bags are made of thick clear plastic and are large enough to fit over a person's head, with an adjustable elastic collar that can be comfortably tightened to slowly deprive the user of oxygen. "They are the poor person's access to a peaceful death," Nitschke told reporters.

Euthanasia is illegal in Australia. Helping people commit suicide is also illegal in Queensland state, where Nitschke plans to launch the bags on August 20 to attract publicity to what he calls a merciful way out for those suffering terminal diseases.

But Alex Schadenberg, executive director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition of Ontario, says groups like Exit capitalize on "the suicidal despair of men and women by affirming their feelings of having lives not worth living." He says the Exit Bag is "not only a suicide bag but also a [potential] homicide bag" -- as shown by the case of Herbert Lerner, 78, convicted last year of suffocating his wife with a plastic bag because she had Alzheimer's.

To read newswire coverage see:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020709/ap_wo_en_po/australia...

For previous LifeSite coverage of Australia's struggle with assisted suicide see:
AUSTRALIAN RIGHT-TO-DIE PROPONENT COMMITS SUICIDE
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2002/may/02052307.html

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