Resumo de Culture Of The Death - Scientific American - Brazil - Edition Nº 38

Surrounded of controversy, Russel Ogden discloses submundo of the clandestine euthanasia.
In 1990, the Canadian David Lewis, carrier of the HIV, announced in a periodical of Vancouver that had helped eight soropositivos friends to commit suicide - an act that, in Canada, if configures as murder to the eyes of the law. For many, the notice only confirmed the supeita of that it was happening had times in the AIDS community. For Russel Ogden, after-graduating criminology of the University Simon Fraser in search of a research project, it was a chance to venture itself in ways never before trod by scientists. ?I had all a population coexisting in my proper yard questions of the euthanasia had some time?, remember Ogden, that is had by many as the first researcher of the North America to have formal studied the practical illegal passenger of the attended suicide and the euthanasia. In 1994, Ogden published its mestrado thesis of, that it registered the functioning of this illicit net. The revelations had shocked Canada.

In the decade that if followed, Ogden found legal and ethical impediments. The authorities had pressured some times to identify its informers to it. Such privacy with the law convinced it to hide its research: today it keeps its data the seven keys. E, to the 42 years, working in Vancouver, Ogden already would have to be a well established scientist. Instead of this, still it runs behind attended a course doutorado in the distance in the University of Groningen, in Holland - the Canadian universities had rejected it. The absence of traditional academic credentials, however, was not empecilho for Ogden. It wants to know who asks for the attended death, who supplies it and as this is made.

Escabrosos details on this practical had been disclosed in the first study of Ogden, in which 17 people, including doctors, social nurses, council members, assistants and two priests, had counted on details as they had helped AIDS victims if to kill. But the biggest surprise was the fact of that these deaths had not been the ?good deaths? as many described times in the books pro-euthanasia, that tend to romantizar the process. Of the 34 cases of euthanasia, Ogden discovered that half failed and finished still more causing suffering. In five situations, the asphyxia was malsucedida. In one of them, the person who helped in the suicide had to appeal to a firearm to kill the patient - in another one, to cut the pulses of it with a blade to shave. These failed attempts many times had made with that the euthanasia took some hours or until more being concluded; in a case, it delayed four days person to die it.
Those people were making that for the first one or second time, ?was not assessors of the death in series?, remembers Ogden. ?They did not know right what they were making.? It concluded that the lack of medical knowledge, the non-availability of adequate drugs and the ignorance of which would be the lethal doses had contributed to increase the suffering. ?This study it showed that, without medical supervision and formal regulations, the euthanasia is happening in appalling circumstances, similar to the ones of the clandestine abortions?, declares.
It has 11 years, notice on the study of Ogden if had spread quickly and finished arriving at the policy. Ogden ahead saw of a summon that it demanded that it disclosed the name of its informers, and each one of them ran the risk of being accused. Ogden if refused, remaining itself faithful to the promise that makes the participants, risking itself to go it for the chain. In the way of the legal battle, the University Simon Fraser abandoned it, leaving responsible Ogden for its proper defense. It alleged, with success, that its research if incased in the Wigmore criteria of Canada, a set of judicial privileges that isentava to disclose it the sources confidential. The investigators had finished removing the accusation.
Ogden discovered that, even so the used methods to die were similar (the majority involves overdose of remedies), the attitudes in relation to the attended death were sufficiently different. Ogden came back then, without the doutorado one, toward Vancouver, where it started to give criminology lessons and concentrated its studies in the NuTech movement, a coalition of activists of the right to die of some countries. Since 1999, it collected hundreds of interviews and stories in the NuTech, and is perhaps the only not-member to have been invited for its private meeting.
The idea nailed for the NuTech is to remove the medication of the attended death, using methods painless, cheap and impossible to detect. Devices of breathlessness, as the ?desrespirador?, an equipment of modified diving, and the ?bag of exit?, an equipped plastic bag with straps of velcro, comumente is used. The last one is most popular, associated to the gas helium. ?It is the method fastest to leave; if used adequately, you it will be unconscious after the second inhalation and died in ten minutes?, it discloses. Methods as this are more efficient and trustworthy that lethal drugs, but do not load a aura of dignity. In this in case that, the assessors of the death recommend the Nembutal, a used barbiturate for veterinarians to sacrifice animals.

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