Euthanasia perception, legacy & Debian Suicide Cluster
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock.
Euthanasia legislation is currently subject to very active discussion in the Oireachtas, Irish parliament and Westminster, the British parliament.
The news media has given a lot of weight to testimonials from those with terminal illness and those who are close family members facing the ethical challenges alone. By way of example, the Guardian published a report about Paola Marra, the late wife of Blur drummer Dave Rowntree.
At the same time, we can see rival news reports have appeared. For example, Switzerland is well known for making euthanasia available lawfully but nonetheless, there are still cases of euthanasia that have taken place outside the legal framework. Police in the Kanton of Schaffhausen are currently investigating use of the 3D-printed "Sarco" suicide pod.
In Canada, a judge had to intervene to prevent a a euthanasia taking place on economic rather than medical grounds.
The injunction, signed by Justice Simon R. Coval, is the first of its kind issued in the province and was issued on Saturday, the day before the woman was scheduled to die.
It prevents Dr. Ellen Wiebe or any other doctor from “causing the death” of the 53-year-old woman “by MAID or any other means.” It followed a notice of civil claim alleging Wiebe negligently approved the procedure for a patient who does not legally qualify.
When talking about the appearance of a Debian Suicide Cluster or a suicide cluster in any organization for that matter, it is important to try and work out where it began, who appeared to be the first suicide, the search for suicide zero so to speak. Given that the cause of death is not always disclosed, the perception that a particular death was a suicide could be as significant, for contagion purposes, as a confirmed suicide.
Did racist Swiss jurists ask me to kill myself too?
After all the evidence about a Debian Suicide Cluster began to appear, one of the racist Swiss women, Pascale Koester from Walder Wyss, had her man-slave apprentice send me the insult below. His reference to "persisting" reminded me of the email Jason Gunthorpe wrote about Joel "Espy" Klecker.
Subject: RE: 753935 - Debian [WW-DMS.FID901178] Date: Wed, 26 Apr 2023 16:32:17 +0000 From: Nassisi Gillian <gillian.nassisi@walderwyss.com> To: daniel@softwarefreedom.institute <daniel@softwarefreedom.institute> CC: Köster Pascale <pascale.koester@walderwyss.com>
Mr Pocock,
We acknowledge receipt of both your emails dated 31 March and 21 April 2023.
First of all, our client does not see any offer to settle the case in your emails.
Furthermore, as long as you persist in your actions, we are instructed not to enter into any discussion or settlement agreement with you.
Please instruct your lawyer to contact us for any further communications.
All rights reserved.
Kind regards,
Pascale Köster and Gillian Nassisi
Gillian Nassisi MLaw, Trainee Lawyer
Walder Wyss Ltd. | www.walderwyss.com Zurich | Geneva | Basel | Berne | Lausanne | Lugano 3 Boulevard du Théâtre, P.O. Box, 1211 Geneva 3, Switzerland Phone direct: +41586583077 | Phone: +41 58 658 30 00 |Fax: +41 58 658 59 59
This e-mail message is for the sole attention and use of the intended recipient. It is confidential and may contain privileged information. Please notify us immediately if you have received it in error and delete it from your system. Thank you.
Here is the full version of the email quoted in the earlier blog post about Klecker. In the previous blog, I only showed the first half of the email. Now I show the full email, Notice the comment that Klecker didn't have the will to continue, in other words, he didn't have the will to persist, that is the link to the racist Swiss email above.
Racist Swiss women like Pascale Koester and Albane de Ziegler interfering in the lives of volunteers are a lot like this terrible disease, Duchenne muscular dystrophy that wears people down both physically and emotionally to the point where they may decide to end it before it kills them in a physical sense.
It is important to remember that the manner in which these borderline nazis at Walder Wyss intruded on my family and I occurred after we already had the horrible experience of racial harassment from the cat-hating organizer of the far-right seniors group. After that incident in 2017, I left Zurich. As any cat will tell you, if you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.
Subject: RE: [jwk@espy.org: Joel Klecker] Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2000 20:40:00 -0600 (MDT) From: Jason Gunthorpe <jgg@ualberta.ca> To: debian-private@lists.debian.org
On Tue, 11 Jul 2000, Brent Fulgham wrote:
> > It's very hard for me to even send this message. This is a > > great loss to us all. > First, I'd like to extend my condolences to Joel's family. It > is still very hard to believe this has happened. Joel was
> always just another member of the project -- no one knew (or > at least I did not know) that he was facing such terrible > hardships. Debian is poorer for his loss.
Some of us did know, but he never wished to give specifics. I do not think he wanted us to really know. I am greatly upset that I was unable to at least be there with him on the 9th when he decided he could no longer continue..
> I know we are dedicating the release to him, but what about > having a "Klecker" box as a permanent part of Debian? If we
I will see to this.
It is nice to see all the support for Joel
Jason
Am I the only Debian Developer who read the entire history and formed the impression that Klecker may be a case of euthanasia, in other words, Klecker chose to take his own life in the context of medically-assisted-suicide?
It is awkward to ask questions like this but it is important to remember that the former Debian leader, Chris Lamb, decided to force these discussions into the open at the time my father was dying. Lamb is an arrogant toff who forced that upon my family. Here is that recording from the Swiss harassment judgment where I was explaining to the court the difficulty of dealing with a racist Swiss landlady at the same time that my father had a stroke on the other side of the world in Australia: Video
Stepping back a bit, we can see that Klecker's home state, Oregon, was the first US state to introduce assisted-suicide legislation. Therefore, as Klecker was growing up, Klecker and his family were exposed to a lot of public debate about euthanasia laws. The debate began in the early nineteen nineties, when Klecker was twelve or thirteen years old. A public referendum, Ballot Measure 16 approved the concept on 8 November 1994 and when Klecker was 16 years old. (Coincidentally, Jérémy Bobbio aka ‘Lunar’ died of cancer in Rennes, France on 8 November 2024, 30 years after Oregon's referendum). Implementation of the act was delayed for almost three years due to interventions by the former president and the US Supreme Court. Oregon residents suffering from terminal illness could begin availing of euthanasia in October 1997.
It must have been an unpleasant time for his family to have this heightened public awareness of the euthanasia issue at almost exactly the same time that Klecker's childhood was visibly robbed from him by the evolution of his medical condition.
Under the euthanasia law, the doctor who completes the death certificate will not mention that euthanasia was a factor:
Q: What is listed as the cause of death on death certificates for patients who die under the Death with Dignity Act?
A: The Oregon Health Authority, Center for Health Statistics recommends that physicians record the underlying terminal disease as the cause of death and mark the manner of death “natural”. This is intended to balance the confidentiality of patients and their families, while ensuring that we have complete information for statistical purposes.
A death certificate is a legal document that has two primary purposes: (1) to certify the occurrence of death for legal matters (e.g., settling the estate), and (2) to document causes of death for public health statistics. To ensure that we have accurate and complete data on patients who have ingested the medications, the Oregon Health Authority regularly matches the names of persons for whom a DWDA prescription is written with death certificates. The Attending Physician is then required to complete a follow-up form with information about whether the death resulted from ingesting the medications, or from the underlying disease.
Therefore, unless the patient or their family chooses to disclose the decision to euthanise, we have no way to be sure that it was euthanasia.
Nonetheless, if Klecker did choose euthanasia it would make him a pioneer of the concept. Cumulative statistics are published about the program, here is the report including all data up to 2023.
In the year that Klecker died, 39 people received a prescription for the medication and 29 died after taking the medication.
The statistics go into greater detail and provide further fuel for debate. For example, we can see that only sixty-three percent of people die within an hour of taking the medication while almost seven percent take more than six hours to die.
It is now seven years since my father had a stroke and the Debian people are still sooking that I wasn't fully available to do things like mentoring for Google, things that Google never pays us to do anyway.
Klecker's father sent the report below. Like all the other emails, nobody states if it was medically-assisted-suicide but his time of death in the early hours of the morning at 4:29 am is consistent with the pattern of taking the medication before going to bed. Another key point in the email is that the Sun Ultra 30 and monitor were already packed up to be sent back to Ben Collins. We should not jump to conclusions about this, Klecker was somebody who was well organized and even if it was not euthanasia, the doctors may have been able to give him some advance warning about the rate at which his illness would progress.
Subject: Re: [jwk@espy.org: Joel Klecker] Resent-Date: 11 Jul 2000 15:47:21 -0000 Resent-From: debian-private@lists.debian.org Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2000 10:47:19 -0500 (EST) From: matthew.r.pavlovich.1 <mpav@purdue.edu> To: Ben Collins <bcollins@debian.org> CC: Debian Private List <debian-private@lists.debian.org>
To hear how the Internet and the Debian Project brought importance to someone who was battling a tragic illness is uplifting. It makes all the disagreements look very insignificant. Lets rock this release. For Joel.
Matthew R. Pavlovich
On Tue, 11 Jul 2000, Ben Collins wrote:
> It's very hard for me to even send this message. This is a great loss to > us all. > > ----- Forwarded message from J Klecker <jwk@espy.org> ----- > > X-From_: jwk@espy.org Tue Jul 11 10:52:41 2000 > Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2000 07:58:57 -0700 > From: J Klecker <jwk@espy.org> > X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.61 (Macintosh; I; PPC) > X-Accept-Language: en,pdf > To: bcollins@debian.org, Jeff Klecker <jklecker@norpac.com> > CC: Dianne Klecker <dgk@espy.org>, jwk@espy.org > Subject: Joel Klecker > > Mr. Collins, > My son Joel died this morning at 4:29 am after a lifelong battle with > Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. Joel was 21 years old. The Debian Project > was of paramount importance to him. > I am not technically skilled enough to maintain Joel's system or to > repair glitches. However, the system will continue to run as long as > possible (access as per normal). Please continue to use any information > or resources of value to the project. > I have sent the Sun Ultra 30 and monitor to you via UPS. Please notify > me of arrival. (I feel quite responsible since it was of great > importance to Joel) > Will you please notify any fellow developers with whom Joel worked. We > would welcome contacts from any of you. Either through this E-mail > channel, jwk@espy.org by phone at 503-769-7373 or by that "other" > mail: Jeffrey and Dianne Klecker and brother Ben Klecker > 1385 East Virginia St > Stayton, Or 97383 > Thank you and we miss him very much, Jeff Klecker > > > > ----- End forwarded message ----- > > -- > -----------=======-=-======-=========-----------=====------------=-=------ > / Ben Collins -- ...on that fantastic voyage... -- Debian GNU/Linux \ > ` bcollins@debian.org -- bcollins@openldap.org -- bcollins@linux.com ' > `---=========------=======-------------=-=-----=-===-======-------=--=---' > > > -- > Please respect the privacy of this mailing list. > > To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-private-request@lists.debian.org > with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org > >
For the purposes of a suicide cluster analysis, we really don't need to violate Klecker's privacy or make any assertion that he chose euthanasia. All we are concerned with is whether exposure to the emails about this death might have been a contagion factor in any subsequent suicide decisions.
I first volunteered to be a mentor for Debian and Google Summer of Code back in 2012. I had volunteered for this program every year for six years. Not long after my father had a stroke, I sent an email to Molly de Blanc telling her that I wouldn't be fully available for mentoring in Google Summer of Code in 2018. Here is that email:
Subject: Re: Google Summer of Code 2018 Date: Mon, 22 Jan 2018 08:41:49 +0100 From: Daniel Pocock <daniel@pocock.pro> To: Molly de Blanc <deblanc@riseup.net>
On 22/01/18 02:25, Molly de Blanc wrote: > I mmissed this on the application before! We need 2-5 administrators for > the application. Who else wants to be one? >
You can use my name temporarily while looking for other people to help you in this role.
Google knows me as a previous administrator for Ganglia in GSoC and I've met most of the Google people too.
However, I can't officially commit to help with the duties of an administrator right now.
Regards,
Daniel
The Walder Wyss Swiss lawyers demanded more publicity about the Debian toxic culture. They have been extremely rude to my family and I. By spreading gossip and rumors about volunteers and our families, they create a situation where the only way to proceed is to publish emails like this so people can trace the root cause of these deaths.
Here is where the borderline nazis from Zurich demand that I publish something:
In this email, we see an example of Klecker's thinking about a week before he died, he was making arrangements for the Ultra Sparc 30. The machine was loaned from Sun Microsystems, they are now part of Oracle Corporation. In other words, they had sent this machine to the home of a dying teenager so he could do unpaid work for them and even as he prepared to die, he had to make arrangements to pack it up and return it to them.
Subject: Re: [jwk@espy.org: Joel Klecker] Resent-Date: 12 Jul 2000 01:23:28 -0000 Resent-From: debian-private@lists.debian.org Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2000 21:23:06 -0400 From: Ben Collins <bcollins@debian.org> To: Erick Kinnee <erick@kinnee.net>, Brent Fulgham <brent.fulgham@xpsystems.com>, Dirk Eddelbuettel <edd@debian.org>, Debian Private List <debian-private@lists.debian.org>
On Tue, Jul 11, 2000 at 06:04:30PM -0500, Erick Kinnee wrote: > On Tue, Jul 11, 2000 at 03:05:10PM -0700, Brent Fulgham wrote: > > > As far as the naming goes, shouldn't it be 'espy' rather than > > > 'Klecker' ? > > > > > You're absolutely right... that's a much better choice. > > > > It might be nice to mention this to his family whenever a > > machine is made available. > > What about that Ultra 30?
The UltraSPARC 30 wont be on a network. Joel was already making arrangements to send it back to me, about a week before this had occured. My intention then was to hold on to it so that I could have a SCSI system to test with (I don't have any SCSI UltraSPARC's to work with), and send my U5 to another developer so that they could assist with the SPARC port. Since those arrangements are already in place, I sort of need to stick with them to avoid calling Sun too much.
Ben
-- -----------=======-=-======-=========-----------=====------------=-=------ / Ben Collins -- ...on that fantastic voyage... -- Debian GNU/Linux \ ` bcollins@debian.org -- bcollins@openldap.org -- bcollins@linux.com ' `---=========------=======-------------=-=-----=-===-======-------=--=---'
On the day before Klecker died, he used IRC to tell people about it. Once again, I didn't want to tell people everything about my family but Google and the social media cabals have continued spreading gossip and smear campaigns about "behavior" at a time of grief.
Subject: Distressing news Date: Sun, 9 Jul 2000 10:30:01 -0400 From: Ben Collins <bcollins@debian.org> To: debian-private@lists.debian.org
For those of you that do not IRC....
06:42 *Espy* is saying 'goodbye' on IRC today, spread the word 06:42 <woot> Espy: oh? 06:44 <woot> Espy: would you elaborate on that? 06:46 <Espy> terminal illness close to death 06:46 <Joy> Espy: you're kidding, right? 06:47 <Espy> uh, no 06:47 <woot> Espy: what brought this on? 06:48 <Joy> Espy: omg! 06:50 <woot> Espy: have you known about this long? 06:53 <Espy> I've had this disease my entire life 06:55 <Espy> been bedridden at least as long as I've been a developer 06:57 <Espy> Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy 07:02 <Espy> http://mdausa.org/disease/dmd.html
Espy is Joel Klecker, our long time devoted glibc maintainer. A few days ago he joined IRC and told us he was giving up his packages to deal with this very important juncture in his life. He has unsub'd from all lists but -private, and one other.
Our thoughts and best wishes should go out to him. It might sound corny to some, but since Joel has dedicated so much time to Debian, even though he has also had to deal with this condition, I think we should dedicate our next release to him.
-- -----------=======-=-======-=========-----------=====------------=-=------ / Ben Collins -- ...on that fantastic voyage... -- Debian GNU/Linux \ ` bcollins@debian.org -- bcollins@openldap.org -- bcollins@linux.com ' `---=========------=======-------------=-=-----=-===-======-------=--=---'
When we talk about contagion, it is interesting to see if any subsequent suicides have features that can be traced to the communications about Klecker's death.
As we saw above, Klecker wanted to tell people, to communicate, before the end came. Frans Pop, the Debian Day Volunteer Suicide Victim did much the same thing, he also sent a note on Debian-private the night before Debian Day. It is eerily creepy, Klecker and Pop both wanted to transfer control of their packages before they died.
Klecker and Pop both made some effort to coordinate the transfer of their equipment to other developers too. We can see how people removed the machines (and possible evidence) from his home .
Finally, a more mundane matter. Frans was hosting/using a number of machines at his house and asked that they be passed back to Debian. Please contact me *off-list* if you can help. His parents live a fair way from the town where he lived, so will need to arrange to travel there to meet people. They'd therefore appreciate it if one person can take care of everything.
Klecker, Pop and Adrian von Bidder had all been outspoken about philosophical aspects of computing, technology and free software. Does this make them more pre-disposed to suicide or was this simply coincidence?
Klecker and von Bidder both had a Debian logo on their grave:
After the death of Klecker, people decided to dedicate the release to him and name a machine after him. Here is an email about the release, notice it was sent before the time of death:
Subject: Re: draft dedication note Date: Sun, 9 Jul 2000 23:18:37 +0300 From: Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho <gaia@iki.fi> To: Debian Private List <debian-private@lists.debian.org>
On Sun, Jul 09, 2000 at 03:58:51PM -0400, Ben Collins wrote: > Dedicated to Joel Klecker > > Although he has not left us, and will always be in our thoughts, we are > decicating this release of Debian to him. Throughout his long association > with our project, he has given unselfishly to Free Software. Most of us > were oblivious to what Joel was facing, and are only now seeing what a > true and giving person he was, and what a friend we will be losing. So as > a show of our appreciation, this one's for you, Joel. > > * The "Joel Klecker" release
If I did not know what is going on, I'd find this note puzzling. What is it that "Joel was facing"? Why are we "losing" him? If we want to publicize this, I think it should be with a little more clarity.
Also, I believe it is customary to use the past tense only of people who have died.
(BTW^2, will this release be Debian 2.2 "potato" or Debian 2.2 "Joel Klecker" or something else?) -- %%% Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho % gaia@iki.fi % http://www.iki.fi/gaia/ %%%
Here is the discussion about naming the machine after him:
Subject: Re: [jwk@espy.org: Joel Klecker] Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2000 14:57:32 -0700 (PDT) From: Sean 'Shaleh' Perry <shaleh@valinux.com> Organization: VA Linux To: Dirk Eddelbuettel <edd@debian.org> CC: Debian Private List <debian-private@lists.debian.org>
On 11-Jul-2000 Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote: > > Seconded. > > As far as the naming goes, shouldn't it be 'espy' rather than 'Klecker' ? >
probably, just did not feel like arguing over something like this.
In the end, they named the machine klecker.debian.org and it is still there today.
Klecker's death was not the only influence in the Debian world. For example, Thiemo Seufer died and Frans Pop commented on it before his own death:
Subject: Re: Thiemo Seufer Date: Sat, 27 Dec 2008 04:45:10 +0100 From: Frans Pop <elendil@planet.nl> To: debian-private@lists.debian.org
On Friday 26 December 2008, Martin Michlmayr wrote: > I'm sorry to inform you that Thiemo Seufer died in a car accident > this morning. I was told that a big, fast moving car collided with > his car, forcing his car from the high way.
That is very sad news and a great loss to the project. My condolences to his family and friends.
Frans
Looking through these discussions, it is noteworthy that human grief is being trivialized into text-based communications. This could be another factor, when a community doesn't have real-world mechanisms to process grief and they resort to a gossip channel like debian-private then they may never process the grief properly.
Subject: Re: Privacy of -private list ; missing even one bit of common sense and decency Date: Sun, 22 Aug 2010 01:01:34 -0500 From: Gunnar Wolf <gwolf@gwolf.org> To: George Danchev <danchev@spnet.net> CC: debian-private@lists.debian.org
George Danchev dijo [Sun, Aug 22, 2010 at 08:06:01AM +0300]: > > > > And I guess that quite a few people share your view. It's considered > > > > as a crime or a sin in many religions. > > > > > > > > I personally do not like this point of view at all, but it > > > > unfortunately probably has to be respected. > > > > > > As a general rule I don't think that we have to respect the views of a > > > religious minority > > > > I wouldn't say it's a minority. According to wikipedia, the catholic > > dogmas consider this as a crime, and islam considers this as a sin or > > even a crime. That already makes quite a few people. > > Just as a data point, there are few countries where Euthanasia [1] is legal > and the Netherlands is one of them, so I guess first of all we must respect > countries legislation and peoples own legal decision. Yes, I know, we do. > Also, I don't want to speculate if that is the case with our fellow DD Frans, > since I simply don't know. I've never worked with him closely, however I > acknowledge the huge amount of valuable contributions he invested in Debian.
Please. Stop it. So much arguing about what you know shit about, and that took the life of one of our group, a respected and hard-working person, makes me sick.
We know nothing about the fact. Probably, we will never know. Stop, please, hallucinating about the situations that led him to do what he did.
Now we can see things are getting even worse: we have these fascist lawyers who came along and start looking for any excuse to extinguish people. In the Debian world, we are not employees so we can't be sacked. Therefore, the lawyers will try anything, whether it is the rogue UDRP harassment in the WeMakeFedora case or even trying to have a developer forcefully euthanised. If there is a law for it, and if the rogue corporations are willing to pay for it, some lawyer will try to exploit that law to meet their evil objectives.
Euthanasia going global
There is a huge contradiction, one of the world's most advanced superpowers, the United States, remains very skeptical of euthanasia. Very few states copied the example from Oregon to authorize any form of assisted suicide. Yet at the same time US industry is leading the world in artificial intelligence, a technology that could be even more catastrophic then nuclear war if we lose control of it.
Subject: Re: ideology an free software Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2004 12:43:59 +0200 From: Jose Carlos Garcia Sogo <jsogo@debian.org> To: debian-private@lists.debian.org
El mié, 29-09-2004 a las 11:12 +0100, David Spreen escribió: > hey there, > > the recent dwn issue's story about a debian surveillance robot made me > think about some ethical issues raised by free software. what about > debian powered weapon systems? > > who of you would not work for a weapon-company but conforms with the > dfsg-guideline "no discrimination of use"? would you like to see your > work to be part of a weapon killing people?
No discrimination means no discrimination. If you start discriminating, you'll never end doing it. Every developer can have some reason for discriminating some group, person or goal. (Do you like Debian(-med) being used in abortions, euthanasia, investigation with animals, <fill_in_here>...?) Also, we cannot impose further restrictions in licenses as (L)GPL, OSI*, BSD,...
Cheers,
P.S: BTW, I guess that we would like to see Debian being used in any spatial program... take into account that the technology needed for launching people out in the space is the same than the one needed for putting nuclear warfares out there.
-- Jose Carlos Garcia Sogo jsogo@debian.org
As we rush to construct Artificial Intelligence systems for the military, is it a sign that humanity as a whole is engaging in a form of euthanasia?
The recent news about World Food Kitchen drone executions in Gaza put the risk of autonomous weapons back into public consciousness. For those who have a background in this industry, those concerns are not actually very new, we've been thinking about these possibilities for a long time. The message above was from 2004.
My old friend Peter Eckersley warned that Google should not help the US military with AI.
Then again, how did I find out so much about the first AI-powered autonomous drone being tested at Graytown in Australia and then listed in a journal on the Pentagon web site in 2004?. The software quoted in the article, JACK, was a student project at University of Melbourne in 1999. The top guns (excuse the pun) of the CS department were put on it. One of our fellow team members is now Google Professor of Computer Science at Oxford. Peter would neither be amused nor surprised. █