Four members of the Final Exit Network, a volunteer organization which helps terminally-ill members "hasten their death," were arrested in Georgia and Maryland Wednesday on charges of helping a 58-year-old man commit suicide. Now authorities have search warrants to investigate members of the Final Exit Network in seven other states -- including Missouri.The St. Louis chapter of Final Exit held its first organizational meeting earlier this month, and one of the national board members, Dalton Bake
Our feature story this week, "Death Watch," is a must-read for anyone who has wondered about assisted suicide, the changing ways in which it is practiced, and the ethical and moral questions it raises.
This engrossing story by RFT writer Aimee Levitt focuses on the Final Exit Network, a radical offshoot of the now-defunct Hemlock Society who have chosen helium as its preferred agent of death and total secrecy as its modus operandi. As Levitt skillfully chronicles, the group's unco
The Final Exit Network, the subject of two lawsuits, an FBI investigation and, incidentally, an RFT feature, should, technically, be out of business after a Georgia court froze its assets last March.But the group has found a way to soldier on.Writes board member Bob Levine in an e-mail newsletter:You will be happy to learn that in spite of the assaults from the Georgia Bureau
of Investigation and the Phoenix police we are continuing our Exit Guide service
with one limitation imposed on us by o
flickr.com/photos/alexfilesThe news came from England yesterday that orchestra conductor Sir Edward Downes, 85, and his wife Joan, 74, committed suicide together last week in Switzerland with the aid of a right-to-die organization called Dignitas.Lady Downes was terminally ill and in the last stages of cancer. Sir Edward, who had been the principal conductor for the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, was, according to a statement issued by his son Caractacus and daughter Boudicca, "almost blind and inc
When Riverfront Times reported on the suicide assistance group the Final Exit Network back in April, the group's future looked grim. Seven members in Arizona and Georgia had been arrested and charged with assisting a suicide and violating Georgia's RICO racketeering laws and a Georgia court had frozen the network's financial assets.Since then, Derek Humphry's Legal Defense Fund and other private donors have chipped in to pay for bail and legal representation. (Humphry is the author of the so-
cortlandreview.comWeber.In an unlikely convergence of RFT feature stories, reformed pickup artist turned filmmaker Eric Weber (who once neatly turned the tables during an Unreal interview) has just published a short story in the online literary magazine The Cortland Review about a suicide pact between two married octogenarians.It's not quite the Final Exit Network -- for one thing, the network doesn't figure into the story at all, and for another (spoiler alert), the characters don't use the
