Word: exitement
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...ordinary Afghans could change, of course, if they believed the U.S. was there to stay and had the will and capability to prevail. But, as Gates also notes, the U.S. military is not in Afghanistan to stay, and Obama is under growing domestic political pressure to find an exit strategy from a costly war whose importance to U.S. national security has grown murky. (See pictures of Afghanistan's mean streets...
...maxillofacial surgeon, Jerome Sobel has brought a smile - literally - to hundreds of patients' faces. But the Lausanne physician has a second job that is far more somber: helping terminally ill people end their lives. Sobel is president for French-speaking Switzerland's chapter of EXIT, an assisted-suicide organization that provides a lethal dose of barbiturates to terminally ill patients who want to end their life. (See pictures of suicide in the U.S. Army recruiters' ranks...
...however, are outraged at what they perceive as the government's interference in a personal matter. "This goes against the human right of self-determination - a principle that has been an integral part of the Swiss mentality for the past 700 years," says Bernhard Sutter, a board member of EXIT. Sutter says that the organization, which has 70,000 members, not only obeys the law, but also follows its own stringent guidelines, such as the detailed examination of a candidate's medical records, in-depth interviews and compulsory counseling about alternatives to suicide...
...Vincent Minelli, director of the Zurich-based assisted-suicide group Dignitas, says that "if a new law is passed, the only thing it would accomplish is an increase in clandestine deaths and in the number of suicides in general." Unlike EXIT, whose membership is restricted to Swiss residents, at an annual fee of $27, Dignitas has sparked repeated controversy by helping people from abroad die in its clinic, including non-terminal cases like that of Dan James, a 23-year-old British rugby player who was paralyzed from the neck down and who ended his life in Zurich last year...
...stricter regulations; they are already stringent enough," says Frank Petermann, an attorney specializing in medical law. "From a legal standpoint, it's difficult to understand how the Ministry of Justice can work out a draft bill that violates the Swiss constitution." That is one of the arguments that EXIT, Dignitas and other supporters of assisted suicide are vowing to use in their fight to maintain the existing law. "We will do all we can to combat this attempt at taking away our freedom," EXIT president Sobel vows. "If need be, we'll force a nationwide referendum." (Read more about Dignitas...