Life Links 4/29/10

For Dignitas, death with dignity apparently means assisting in your suicide and then dumping your remains into a lake.

Dignitas boss Ludwig Minelli now faces up to three years jail and a £3,000 fine for carrying out unauthorised burials.

Police divers — who stumbled across the pile of urns while searching for a missing sunshade from one of their boats — believe as many as 300 may have been dumped.

Locals were outraged amid fears the popular bathing resort and a drinking water source had been contaminated.

And critics accused Dignitas — established to offer a dignified death to the terminally ill — of "fly tipping" the remains of clients to avoid funeral costs.

Police diver Roman Ruetz said: "We stopped counting at 50 urns - they're all lying on a heap."

In Italy, a 22-week child survived a botched abortion for more than a day after being abandoned.

The mother, pregnant for the first time, had opted for an abortion after prenatal scans suggested that her baby was disabled.

However, the infant survived the procedure, carried out on Saturday in the Rossano Calabro hospital, and was left by doctors to die.

He was discovered alive the following day – some 20 hours after the operation – by Father Antonio Martello, the hospital chaplain, who had gone to pray beside his body.

He found that the baby, wrapped in a sheet with his umbilical cord still attached, was moving and breathing.

The priest raised the alarm and doctors immediately arranged for the infant to be taken to a specialist neo-natal unit at the neighbouring Cosenza hospital, where he died on Monday morning.

Italian police are investigating the case for "homicide" because infanticide is illegal in Italy.

The law means that doctors have had an obligation to try to preserve the life of the child once he had survived the abortion.

What was President Barack Obama's position on children who survive abortions? Oh yeah, that's right.


The National Institutes of Health has re-approved 4 older embryonic stem cell lines after Wisconsin researchers were able to provide the required documentation. Even though the public was told over and over again by scientists how worthless the embryonic stem cell lines approved for federal funding under the Bush administration were, they still desperately wanted these older lines to be re-approved for funding under Obama's embryonic stem cell policy.


Two men were convicted of violating the Fair Access to Clinic Entrances Act. Richard Dugan and Theodore Puckett face up to six months in jail and a $10,000 fine.