Japanese government intends to reduce suicide rate

By Alex Schadenberg
euthanasiaprevention@on.aibn.com

Japan is reviewing its guidelines aimed at reducing the number of suicides in Japan and hopes to reduce the suicide rate by 20 percent by 2016.http://www.bloomberg.com:80/apps/news?pid=20601101&sid=a_2Lhi9MAfY0&refer=japan

Japan has been plagued by more than 30,000 suicide deaths each year over the past 10 years. According to the United Nations they have the 9th highest suicide rate in the world.

Recently the Japanese government asked internet providers to block websites that promote suicide and suicide methods, such as hydrogen sulphide on the internet after their was a rash of suicides committed using these techniques in the past few months. http://alexschadenberg.blogspot.com/2008/05/internet-providers-urged-to-remove.html

Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura said "It's outrageous that something that seems to promote suicide is widely available on the Internet. There is freedom of expression but it must be accompanied by responsibility. These things shouldn't go unregulated."

The Australian government passed a law prohibiting the promotion and counseling of suicide on the internet a few years ago in response to the work of Dr. Philip Nitschke, the Australian Dr. Death, who was providing suicide and counseling people to commit suicide via the internet.

All western nations need laws that protect vulnerable depressed and mentally incompetent people from falling victim to the euthanasia lobby who are promoting suicide (right to die) as a human right.

Internet Pushes Suicide

A new study of the Internet has revealed that a suicidal person has a greater chance of finding suicide promotion/facilitation information than prevention on-line. From the story:

Researchers from the Universities of Bristol, Oxford, and Manchester replicated a typical Internet search by someone looking for information on suicide. They plugged 12 different search terms related to suicide into each of the four most popular search engines: Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Ask. They then analyzed the top ten sites from each search.

Overall, the searches uncovered 240 unique sites about suicide, just under half of which provided information about how to commit suicide. Nearly one-fifth of the hits as well as the top three most frequently occurring sites were for pages that promoted suicide. Only 13% of the sites were dedicated to suicide prevention and support, and only 12% actively discouraged suicide. Most of the sites--even some of those dedicated to suicide prevention--provided information on methods of suicide.

Today's research highlights how easy it is to obtain information on how to commit suicide on the Internet and how a surfer is more likely to come across sites that encourage suicide than those that offer support and help.

And they wonder why it's called the Culture of Death...

HT: Alex Schadenberg