“This is analogous to putting a gun-vending machine next to a depression clinic.â€
Klonoski wasn’t terminally ill, so he wouldn’t have qualified for lethal prescriptions provided to eligible Oregonians under the state’s Death With Dignity Act, one of only two states that allow assisted suicide. But he was able to buy Hydorn’s kit on the Internet, to rent a helium tank from nearby Party City for $175, and do the job himself.
This, an emotional Zach testified at the hearing earlier this month, should be illegal.
“In a society where so many people suffer from depression and other mental-health disorders,†Zach said, “this company has found their niche in the market by peddling death. This is analogous to putting a gun-vending machine next to a depression clinic. The Gladd company, so named as to avoid suspicion in case family members happen to sign for or come across the package, made $60 off my brother’s death.â€
Though Hydorn admits she did sell Zach’s brother his implement of death, she makes no apology for it. She has a story of her own.
It was 30 years ago, Hydorn said in an exclusive interview with The Daily Beast, that her husband, “a six-foot-four, wonderful, handsome, loving, intelligent man,†was dying of colon cancer. After several operations, the cancer had spread to his brain, and surgeons had cut a hole in his stomach, out of which came his excrement, into a bag.
“It was my duty, and I did it willingly, to empty that thing every three or four hours,†she said. “One time I ran out of bags and went all over town looking for a pharmacy that sold them. Even years after my husband died, I would wake up and say, ‘I’ve got to go get those bags.’ â€
No one should have to go through that, Hydorn said, to die a slow, painful death in a hospital bed. “Death should be with loved ones beside you, holding your hand."
Not long after her husband died, Hydorn met a man named Derek Humphry, a longtime advocate of assisted suicide and founder of the Hemlock Society, which has worked to change laws prohibiting the practice around the country. It was Humphry, in 1992, who penned Final Exit: The Practicalities of Self-Deliverance and Assisted Suicide for the Dying, which effectively serves as a manual for how to kill yourself and which Humphry told The Register-Guard sold 500,000 copies in the first six weeks.
Hydorn includes the book in the helium kits she sells. She joined the Hemlock Society (which has since merged with another group and renamed itself winstonross.wordpress.com.
http://news.yahoo.com/Linkback:
https://tubagbohol.mikeligalig.com/index.php?topic=40438.0