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May 8, 2005

TLC Defies British Law To Arrange Murders for Hire

From the pages of Life Matters! . . .

"A secret organisation headed by a retired family doctor is illegally providing terminally ill British people with thousands of pounds to enable them to travel to a Swiss suicide clinic," Daniel Foggo reports in [Sunday's] London Telegraph.

The Last Choice--or TLC--was set up two months ago by Dr Michael Irwin, a former chairman of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society (VES), to operate as an underground benevolence network for British people seeking to kill themselves.

Some benevolence!

TLC has been covertly channelling funds to them to finance trips to the clinic in Zurich, run by the controversial Swiss charity, Dignitas, which provides people with "doctor-assisted suicides."

Some charity!

Payments of up to £2,000 per person are allocated to cover flights, hotels, cremation and doctors' fees...

TLC...has also been providing escorts to accompany the clients to the clinic and has been offering them advice on how to arrange their own deaths at Dignitas.

"Such actions," The Telegraph notes, "are criminal offences under the 1961 Suicide Act, which states that anyone who 'aids, abets, counsels or procures the suicide of another' is liable to up to 14 years' imprisonment."

Dr Irwin, 73, from Cranleigh, Surrey, is not a stranger to the attentions of the police. Eighteen months ago, he resigned as chairman of the VES after admitting conspiring to help to end the life of a man in the Isle of Man. Dr Irwin, who was arrested but not charged over the incident, had travelled to Patrick Kneen's home at his request, armed with a lethal dose of sleeping tablets, but had found Mr Kneen too ill to ingest them.

Irwin should have been charged with his crimes long ago. It is high time to remedy that error!

Posted by earl at May 8, 2005 11:36 PM

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