Taking Life on the Web: A case report on three websites submitted to the E-HARD providing suicide related Information

Internet Health 2003;1:9

Vinod Scaria
E-Health Adversities Research Database [1]
Center for Cybermedicine and Internet Research

Correspondence:
E-Mail: vinodscaria@yahoo.co.in

Introduction:

Internet as an anarchic media and an embodiment of freedom of expression has been rightly feared to contain information that would adversely affect human life also.[2]. Much has been talked about the adversities of Health related information on the Internet, but there have been no attempts to systematically collect information regarding adverse effects of information posted on the Internet. To this end the E Health Adversities Research database was set up in January 2003. Later the scope of the Database was expanded to include all information that would adversely affect human lives.[1]. We present here a case report of three websites which offer suicide related information and was submitted to our website in early February 2003.

Case Reports:

The Church of Euthanasia, which describes to be set up on the four pillars of suicide, abortion, cannibalism and sodomy, gives advice to kill yourself to save the planet.

The website provides in-detail information on how to take one’s life using Helium, complete with photographs on how to assemble the equipment. The website also provides an exhaustive collection of links on how to procure the needed equipments.

The Death NET describes itself as the International archive specializing in all aspects of death and dying. The website also provides a section called Death MART and describes it as the art and science of dying. This section offers a number of documents on how-to take one’s life. There is also a hosted discussion group named Death TALK.

This website gives in depth analysis and thorough and exhaustive information on different modes of taking one’s life.

Discussion:

It should be emphasized here that Internet being an anarchic media, has the potential to provide information that would harm human lives. Though there have been little evidence in the past few years about such information, new evidence like that recently published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research[3], testifying against the Satan Service website should be taken into consideration.

To quantify the menace of such information on the Internet, we searched the popular search engine Google[4] with the query string “how to suicide” and returned with 153 URLs, and the websites described above seemed to have good visibility as per the rank order. Though the number of such websites seem to be low, the actual incidence of people using these websites and the influence of these websites is not known.

We hope this report would significantly motivate people to submit evidence on such information. Moreover prevention of spread of such information on the Net, should be undertaken on a worldwide scale to curb the menace.

References:

1] E-Health Adversities Research Database. URL: http://www.cybermedicine.netfirms.com/ehard.html

2]Does Internet Harm Health? Letters: BMJ 2002;324:238 ( 26 January ) http://bmj.com/cgi/content/full/324/7331/238/a

3] Athanaselis S, Stefanidou M, Karakoukis N, Koutselinis A
Asphyxial Death by Ether Inhalation and Plastic-bag Suffocation Instructed by the Press and the Internet
Journal of Medical Internet Research 2002;4(3):e18
http://www.jmir.org/2002/3/e18/

4] Google URL: www.google.com accessed on March 24^th 2003

Competing Interests: The author maintains the E-Health Adversities Research Database on his website.

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