ATLANTA — A former assisted-suicide-network leader being prosecuted in a Georgia man’s death is defending his group’s practice of guiding people who want to kill themselves because they’re suffering but not necessarily dying.
At least three of the people known to have committed suicide through the Final Exit Network were not terminally ill. In his most extensive remarks since his arrest last month, Ted Goodwin told The Associated Press on Tuesday that people with just months to live aren’t the only ones who should be able to seek help committing suicide.
“These people who are terminally ill are blessed in a small way — there’s a finite time for their suffering,” said Goodwin, who stepped down as president of the network after his arrest. “But there are many, many people who are doomed to suffer interminably for years. And why should they not receive our support as well?”
Critics within the right-to-die movement, including Dr. Jack Kevorkian, say people should be able to seek assistance ending their lives, but only from doctors and only if they’re terminally ill.
Georgia authorities say John Celmer, the 58-year-old man whose suicide led to charges against Goodwin and three others, was making a remarkable recovery from cancer when the group sent exit guides to his home to show him how to suffocate himself using helium tanks and a plastic hood. And police say that in 2007, the group helped an Arizona woman named Jana Van Voorhis, who was depressed but not terminally ill.
The third person, Kurt Perry, a suburban Chicago resident who was to have been the group’s next suicide, has a debilitating neurological condition that is painful but usually not fatal. The 26-year-old said frightening breathing lapses prompted him to seek support from the network.
“Having them there with me would be a blessing and an honor,” he said in an interview Tuesday.
He was set to die Feb. 26, one day after Goodwin and the others were charged with violating Georgia’s assisted-suicide law. But he has since changed his mind.
Goodwin, who is not a physician and founded the group in 2004 after his father died of emphysema, says the network helped guide nearly 200 people across the country to die but never actively assisted suicide.
The arrests were the result of an eight-month investigation in which an undercover agent posing as someone bent on suicide infiltrated the group, which bases its work on “The Final Exit,” a best-selling suicide manual by British author Derek Humphry.
Goodwin disputed Georgia authorities’ contention that guides held down members’ hands to prevent them from removing the hoods they placed over their heads while they breathed helium.
