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Exit International in Switzerland that facilities assisted suicides is no longer reserving them for the terminally ill.

At its annual conference and general membership meeting, the organization overwhelmingly adopted a resolution to that effect. The resolution requires the organization at its 2009 meeting to take a vote on whether their statutes shall be amended to add “being tired of old-age” to the current eligibility criteria for killing people via assisted suicide.

American bioethicist Wesley J. Smith isn’t surprised. “Once one accepts the premise that suicide is an acceptable answer to the problems of human suffering and ennui, there are no boundaries that will hold for long,” he said. “This isn’t an outrider.”

Back in 2001, the Dutch Minster of Health suggested that elderly people who are tired of life be given suicide pills–right after her country formally legalized euthanasia. “I am not against it, as long as it can be carefully enough regulated so that it only concerns very old people who have had enough of living,” Els Borst told the NRC Handelsblad newspaper on Saturday.

[4August08, Geneva, Switzerland, LifeNews.com]