ANCHORAGE, August 21, 2002 (LSN.ca) – Alaskan William Stivers, 82, used a suicide bag ordered from Canada in order to kill himself according to a report in the Anchorage Daily News. The article, which serves as a pro-suicide advertisement, reports that Stivers “bought a small tank of an inert, deadly gas and stored it in his basement. He sent away to an address in Canada for a modified plastic bag to trap the gas around his head.” The Exit Bag, produced by the Right to Die Society of Canada is a suicide bag that is made of heavy-duty plastic that has been designed for optimum effectiveness in killing persons who wear the bag which is distributed with an instruction booklet entitled: The Art & Science of Suicide.
Alex Schadenberg of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition (EPC) in Canada told LifeSite, “This is the second known time that a Canadian exit bag has been used to kill someone in a foreign country.” Schadenberg warned that the bag designed specifically to kill human beings, “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.
EPC has attempted in vain to alert Canadian authorities to the matter. In September 2001, EPC collected and disseminated information concerning the Right to Die Society of Canada’s involvement in producing and distributing the Exit Bag on a world-wide basis. All the information was sent to the RCMP with a formal letter requesting that an investigation be launched into the production and distribution of the Exit Bag in Canada. No response was ever received.
See related LifeSite coverage: EUTHANASIA PREVENTION COALITION DEMANDS ‘EXIT BAG’ INVESTIGATION https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2002/jul/02071102.html See the report in the Anchorage Daily News: https://www.adn.com/front/story/1578453p-1695086c.html (with files from Pro-Life E-News)