Tag: suicide

MH370’s suicidal pilot entombed plane and its 239 passengers at bottom of the ocean after perfect ditching, says flight expert 10 years after plane disappeared

The ‘suicidal’ pilot of the MH370 Malaysia Airlines flight perfectly ditched the plane into the sea, entombing it and the 239 passengers aboard at the bottom of the ocean, a flight expert has claimed ten years after it disappeared.

British pilot Simon Hardy has said he believes that the plane was sunk into the ocean at a spot that has never been searched before.

The Boeing 777 aircraft vanished from radar while en route from Malaysia’s capital Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014. Satellite data showed the plane deviated from its flight path to head over the southern Indian Ocean, where it is believed to have crashed.

There are fears that pilot Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 53, was responsible for deliberately crashing MH370 in a murder-suicide of a shocking scale, which he committed because of problems in his personal life.

Shah had allegedly split with his wife Fizah Khan, and was said to be furious that a relative, opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, had been given a five-year jail sentence for sodomy shortly before he boarded the plane for the flight to Beijing. But the pilot’s wife has angrily denied any personal problems, while other family members and friends said he was a devoted family man and loved his job.

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Forget pro life, America’s becoming pro death! Map reveals how 29 US states have either legalized euthanasia or are considering it

A majority of US states have either legalized medically assisted suicide or are considering legislation that would do so.

The pro-medical-dying movement has seen a groundswell of support since struggling to rack up wins in the 90s, with most successful initiatives only coming into practice after 2013. 

In ten states and Washington, DC, euthanasia is legal, while 19 other states are considering their own legalization measures.

Most of the states where it is legal allow doctors to administer life-ending medications to a person with six months or fewer to live, but the exact criteria varies by state depending on who is in charge there.

The US population is aging rapidly – by 2040, about one in five Americans will be 65 or older. At the same time, more than 170 million Americans could be living with one or more chronic conditions by 2030.

But while many state leaders and health professionals are advocating for assisted dying as a new option for end of life care, many doctors argue that the practice runs counter to the foundation of their profession.

Efforts in the 90s to legalize medically assisted suicide crashed more often than not, with the exception of Oregon, which, in 1997, became the first state to legalize what it calls ‘death with dignity.’

Authors of the Oregon legislation were careful in writing it not to characterize the act as a suicide, assisted suicide, mercy killing, or homicide, part of an effort to rebrand and reposition it as a medically sanctioned and regulated procedure.

The term ‘assisted suicide’ and others like it are now considered by doctors to be outdated, opting instead to call it ‘medical aid in dying’ because the patient controls when they take the death-inducing medication prescribed by a doctor.

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Canada halts controversial assisted suicide program for mentally ill due to lack of doctors willing to participate

Canada has delayed the extension of its assisted suicide program to people suffering solely from mental illness, health officials announced Monday. 

Canada offers medically assisted death to terminally and chronically ill people, but the plan to extend the program to people with mental illnesses has divided Canadians, the New York Times reported.

Some critics attribute the problem to a lack of adequate psychiatric care in the country.

The controversial policy would allow anyone in Canada with an incurable medical condition to apply for assisted suicide, even if the disease is not terminal, which makes the law one of the most liberal assisted suicide programs in the world. 

Canada introduced medically assisted dying after its Supreme Court ruled in 2015 that requiring people to cope with intolerable suffering infringed on fundamental rights to liberty and security.

The law was expanded in 2021 to include people experiencing “grievous and irremediable” conditions, such as depression and other mental health issues. 

Over 13,000 Canadians were euthanized as part of the program in 2022, the Daily Mail reported. 

When the program was announced last year, one conservative lawmaker “charged that the Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is promoting a ‘culture of death.’”

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Drugmakers Hid Suicides, Manipulated Data to Falsely Show Safety in Antidepressant Drug Trials

Every now and then, a highly profitable pharmaceutical will come along that everyone also knows is quite dangerous.

Remarkably, rather than this stopping the product, it will often be pushed to market and the profits it generates will be used to ensure any objections to its safety get ignored and blown to the wayside.

One of my goals in writing has hence been to review the scandalous history of some of the most dangerous pharmaceuticals on the market.

This was done both to help those being harmed by them (e.g., consider the story of statins and the story of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, or NSAIDs) and to illustrate that the horrendous malfeasance we’ve observed from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) throughout COVID-19 has been its standard operating procedure.

For example, I recently covered the story of Merck’s Vioxx, an unsafe and unneeded painkiller that was kept on the market until outside investigators proved it was causing heart attacks and strokes (estimated to have killed 120,000 people by the time Vioxx was withdrawn), something Merck was fully aware of from the start.

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Inside the cult top model joined after visiting Jeffrey Epstein’s ‘pedo island’: Ruslana Korshunova was lured into Moscow’s ‘Rose of the World’ that humiliates members and tells rape victims it was THEIR fault

The last person Kazakh-Russian model Ruslana Korshunova called before she leaped to her death from her Manhattan apartment wasn’t her family, best friend, or even her boyfriend.

Minutes before her suicide on June 28, 2008, the 20-year-old called her ‘life coach’ who months earlier introduced her to shadowy cult Rose of the World.

Vladimir Vorobeyv, who was 22 at the time, met Korshunova at a party in Moscow in December 2007 and began a three-month romance.

Korshunova was at a crossroads, worn out by her frenetic life as a top model that had her at a shoot one day, and partying with billionaires the next.

One of those rich men was convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, who flew her on his ‘Lolita Express’ to his private Caribbean island in June 2006, newly released documents revealed on Thursday.

Knowing she was despondent, Vorobeyv introduced her to Rose of the World just weeks after they met, initially signing up for a three-day $900 course.

Rose of the World is run by flashy Russian millionaire Vladislav Novgorodtsev, who shows off his wealth and exotic holidays online. 

Korshunova kept going for three months, along with her friend, fellow model Anastasia Drozdova, who also jumped to her death in 2009.

By the end of March she returned to New York in search of new modelling work but was making increasingly concerning posts on a Russian social media site.

The last day of her life began with a 10am walk next door to buy fruit, then she talked to her boyfriend Mark Kaminsky, then 32, about 12pm.

They made plans to got to a friend’s birthday party that night, before logging back in to the social media site at 12.19pm.

Soon after she called Vorobeyv, telling him: ‘I’m going to go out. I have friends coming by’.

‘She said she was feeling unwell, that she did not want to talk to anybody,’ he said.

‘She was not in a right mood. Before this, she often complained about her bad mood.’

Vorobeyv said just two days earlier she told him: ‘Even if I am not here any more, the whole world will talk about me’.

Minutes before she jumped to her death, Korshunova tried calling Vorobeyv a second time, but he was drinking at a bar and told her to call back later.

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Statistics Canada excludes assisted-dying deaths from annual mortality report

Medically assisted suicide is the sixth-leading cause of death in Canada, according to its federal health agency — a reality Statistics Canada excluded in a recent report.

The Public Health Agency of Canada confirmed that 13,241 Canadians accessed the medical assistance in dying (MAID) procedure last year, accounting for one in 25 deaths (4.1%).

However, a Statistics Canada report showed cancer (24.7%), heart disease (17.2%), COVID-19 (5.90%), accidents (5.50%), cerebrovascular diseases (4.17%), and chronic lower respiratory diseases (3.73%) caused most of the 334,081 reported deaths in Canada for 2022. 

“In the database, the underlying cause of death is defined as the disease or injury that initiated the train of morbid events leading directly to death. As such, MAID deaths are coded to the underlying condition for which MAID was requested,” Statistics Canada posted on its X feed.

If a cancer patient accesses MAID to end their life, cancer would be listed as their cause of death.

A StatsCan spokesperson told the Epoch Times they excluded MAID-related deaths over the absence of an official classification by the World Health Organization (WHO).

“Causes of death are coded using the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD) 10th revision (ICD-10) […] There is no code for MAID in the ICD,” reads the email statement.

In addition, some provinces do not attribute MAID on medical certificates of death when the procedure is carried out. Provincial and federal vital statistics registries rely on this data, reported True North.

“Therefore, Vital Statistics is not a reliable source for tracking MAID. Stats Can will continue to classify deaths according to the WHO ICD rules,” said Health Canada.

Approximately 31,664 Canadians accessed MAID between 2016 and 2021, with an average year-over-year growth rate of 66%. In the previous data year, the feds recorded 10,029 such deaths — up 34.7% from 7,446 deaths in 2020. 

MAID accounted for 3.3% of all deaths in Canada in 2021, up from 2.4% of all reported deaths in the previous year.

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OxyContin’s Reformulation Linked to Rising Suicides by Children

In 2010, Purdue Pharma replaced the original version of OxyContin, an extended-release oxycodone pill, with a reformulated product that was much harder to crush for snorting or injection. The idea was to deter nonmedical use, and the hope was that the reformulation would reduce addiction and opioid-related deaths. That is not how things worked out.

The reformulation of OxyContin was instead associated with an increase in deaths involving illicit opioids and, ultimately, an overall increase in fatal drug overdoses. Researchers identified that pattern by looking at the relationship between pre-2010 rates of OxyContin misuse, as measured by surveys, and subsequent overdose trends. They found that death rates rose fastest in states where reformulation would have had the biggest impact. A new study by RAND Corporation senior economist David Powell extends those findings by showing that the reformulation of OxyContin also was associated with rising suicides among children and teenagers.

The root cause of such perverse effects was the substitution that occurred after the old version of OxyContin was retired. Nonmedical users turned to black-market alternatives that were more dangerous because their potency was highly variable and unpredictable—a hazard that was compounded by the emergence of illicit fentanyl as a heroin booster and substitute. The fallout from the reformulation of OxyContin is one example of a broader tendency: Interventions aimed at reducing the harm caused by substance abuse frequently have the opposite effect.

From 1988 to 2010, Powell notes in the journal Demography, the suicide rate among 10-to-17-year-olds fell by 36 percent. That drop was “followed by eight consecutive years of increases—resulting in an 83% increase in child suicide rates.” Based on interstate differences in nonmedical use of OxyContin prior to 2010, Powell estimates that “the reformulation of OxyContin can explain 49% of the rise in child suicides.”

Since “the evidence suggests that children’s illicit opioid use did not increase,” Powell says, it looks like “the illicit opioid crisis engendered higher suicide propensities by increasing suicidal risk factors for children,” such as child neglect and “alter[ed] household living arrangements.” He notes a prior study that found “states more
affected by reformulation experienced faster growth in rates of child physical abuse
and neglect starting in 2011.” And he suggests the suicide rate may also have been boosted by “parental death and incarceration” associated with the shift from legally produced pharmaceuticals to illicit drugs.

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The story of a horrendous injustice and the three people who tried to expose it begins with a suicide note

Two years into his 25-year sentence for attempted aggravated rape, Nathan Brown could tell the man sitting across from him — a jailhouse lawyer improbably named Lawyer Winfield — was not going to help him get out of prison. It was astounding to Brown that he was pinning his hopes on a fellow inmate who had an eighth grade education and whose formal legal training amounted to a prison paralegal course. “But he knew more than I did,” Brown said.

Brown laid out for Winfield the details of his case. In the summer of 1997, a woman was assaulted in the courtyard of the apartment complex in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, where Brown was living with his mother. The woman, who was white, fended off the attacker with her high-heeled shoe until he fled on a bicycle. When sheriff’s deputies arrived, a security guard suggested they question Brown — one of the few Black tenants in the complex.

Brown, 23 at the time, was in his pajamas, rocking his baby daughter to sleep. The deputies put him in handcuffs and brought him to the victim. When she couldn’t identify him, the officers allowed her to get close enough to smell him. She had told them her attacker had a foul body odor. Brown, she would later testify, smelled like soap; he must have showered immediately after, she speculated. In a trial that lasted one day, the jury found him guilty. After his appeal was rejected, he no longer had a right to an attorney provided by the state.

Winfield began translating Brown’s grievances into a legal petition. He argued that Brown’s lawyer had provided ineffective counsel: He had overlooked the most basic defense strategies, failing to challenge the discrepancies in the victim’s story and to insist on DNA testing. The two of them worked on the petition for months, so Brown was surprised when the Louisiana 5th Circuit Court of Appeal delivered a rejection just a week later. The denial — a single sentence that didn’t address any of Brown’s claims — bore the names of three judges. But something didn’t feel right. How could they return the ruling so quickly? Why was it so vague?

The answer to those questions would come years later, in the suicide note of a high-level court employee who disclosed that the judges of the 5th Circuit had decided, in secret, to ignore the petitions of prisoners who could not afford an attorney. It was a shocking revelation. In a state where police and prosecutorial misconduct frequently make national headlines and a stream of exonerations has revealed a criminal justice system still functioning in the shadow of slavery and Jim Crow, a group of white judges had decided that the claims of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of inmates — most of them Black — were not worth taking the time to read.

Among those petitions was Brown’s claim that a DNA test would have proven his innocence.

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Canada Will Legalize Medically Assisted Dying For People Addicted to Drugs

Canada will legalize medically assisted dying for people who are addicted to drugs next spring, in a move some drug users and activists are calling “eugenics.” 

The country’s medical assistance in dying (MAID) law, which first came into effect in 2016, will be expanded next March to give access to people whose sole medical condition is mental illness, which can include substance use disorders. Before the changes take place, however, a special parliamentary committee on MAID will regroup to scrutinize the rollout of the new regulations, according to the Toronto Star. 

Currently, people are eligible for MAID if they have a “grievous and irremediable medical condition”, such as a serious illness or disability, that has put them in an advanced state of irreversible decline and caused enduring physical or psychological suffering—excluding mental illness. Anyone who receives MAID must also go through two assessments from independent health care providers, among meeting other criteria. 

The contentious idea of including people who are addicted to drugs is being discussed this week at a conference for the Canadian Society of Addiction Medicine in Victoria, British Columbia.  

“I don’t think it’s fair, and the government doesn’t think it’s fair, to exclude people from eligibility because their medical disorder or their suffering is related to a mental illness,” said Dr. David Martell, physician lead for Addictions Medicine at Nova Scotia Health, who is presenting a framework for assessing people with substance use disorders for MAID at the conference.  “As a subset of that, it’s not fair to exclude people from eligibility purely because their mental disorder might either partly or in full be a substance use disorder. It has to do with treating people equally.” 

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Lawyer, 81, who advised judge in Charles Manson trial shoots dead his wife, 75, before turning the gun on himself in murder-suicide in their $3.5 million Long Beach homes

A lawyer who was the legal advisor in Charles Manson’s murder trial shot dead his wife before turning the gun on himself.

Police in Long Beach, California, are probing the deaths of Lawrence Eric Taylor, 81, and Judy Strother Taylor, 75, as a murder-suicide.

Authorities responded to a welfare check at their $3.5million home in Naples on Wednesday, after the couple stopped answering their phone and front door.

Taylor set up his own legal firm after serving as the trial judge’s legal advisor in Manson’s trial and was Supreme Court counsel in the Onion Field murder case.

His wife worked under President Richard Nixon at the now-closed White House Special Action Office for Drug Abuse Prevention.

Long Beach Police Department found the couple dead in their home, with Judy suffering from ‘gunshot wounds to the head’ according to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office

Taylor also suffered a ‘gunshot wound’ to the head, with cops recovering a firearm at the scene.

The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office ruled Taylors’ death as a suicide and Judy’s as a murder.

Cops confirmed that the Medical Examiner will conduct an independent investigation. 

The couple were both pronounced dead at the scene, and the motive for the shooting is currently unclear. 

Judy worked as a youth mentor  and within the juvenile justice system for more than 20 years,

She teamed up with Mentor Management Systems President Jerry Sherk to bring an employee-to-employee mentoring program to the US Air Force’s Space and Missile Systems Center in Los Angeles, Albuquerque, and Colorado Springs.

Taylor was retained by the Attorney General of Montana as an independent Special Prosecutor to conduct a one-year grand jury probe of governmental corruption.

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