International
Daughter devastated to learn of mother’s assisted suicide through WhatsApp, and she’s not alone
From LifeSiteNews
An Irish mother with mental health problems killed herself under Switzerland’s permissive euthanasia regime without telling her family. Similar horror stories are happening in Canada, and the UK may be next.
Last month, Megan Royal discovered that her mother had ended her life by assisted suicide when she received a WhatsApp message from Swiss suicide center Pegasos, letting her know that her mother’s ashes would be sent to her via mail.
Fifty-eight-year-old Maureen Slough was from Cavan, Ireland, and told her family that she would be vacationing with a friend in Lithuania. Instead, the recently retired civil servant traveled to Switzerland, where the facility says she died by lethal injection, listening to a song by Elvis Presley. Her family, including her “partner” Mick Lynch, who had spoken to her the day she died, had no idea that she was planning assisted suicide.
Slough, who had suffered through the deaths of two of her daughters, attempted suicide in 2024, and her daughter Megan Royal says she was suffering mental anguish. “She had told us she was going to Lithuania, but she had confided in two people that she had other plans,” Royal told the press. “And after a series of concerned phone calls she said she would come home, but then we got the WhatsApp message to say she had died.”
The suicide cost €15,000. Several weeks later, Royal and Lynch received goodbye letters from Maureen in the mail. Royal is heartbroken and outraged.
“They should not have allowed her to make that decision on her own,” she said. “This group did not contact me, even though my mother had nominated me as next of kin. They waited until afterwards and then told me she had died listening to an Elvis Presley song.” Pegasos claims that they were provided with a letter from Royal affirming her knowledge of the suicide, verified through an email address. Royal received no email; the family says the letter was likely forged.
According to UK Right to Life, Slough’s brother Philip, a U.K. solicitor, “has written to the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, urging them to investigate the matter with the Swiss authorities … he said that Pegasos had failed to follow its own policy of informing family, adding ‘it appears my sister provided Pegasos with letters of complaint to medical authorities in Éire in respect of bogus medical conditions, and that these documents were considered by Pegasos in support of her application.’”
He continued: “While I understand that Swiss law permits assisted dying, the Pegasos clinic has faced numerous criticisms in the UK for their practices with British nationals, and the circumstances in which my sister took her life are highly questionable.” Assisted suicide has been legal in Switzerland since 1941 and is only illegal for the ambiguous reason of “selfish motives.” Switzerland has long been a destination for suicide tourism, and UK Right to Life noted that “Pegasos was at the centre of a similar controversy earlier this year when a British mother, Anne, ended her life at the Pegasos assisted suicide clinic in Switzerland without informing her family.”
Many are already observing that if Kim Leadbeater’s assisted suicide bill becomes law in the United Kingdom, similar scenarios could soon be a reality in the UK. MP Danny Kruger attempted to table an amendment earlier this year requiring people seeking assisted suicide to sign a document declaring whether they had informed their family of their plan; it was ignored.
“That is the saddest thing, which was hinted at quite strongly – in fact, stated explicitly – in some of the evidence sessions,” Kruger told the House. “It has been suggested that wanting a loved one to live is seen by doctors as a form of coercion that should be resisted; that trying to argue a loved one out of an assisted death is the coercion that we need to guard against and, on that basis, we should not be making any expectation that families are informed.”
“What a tragic thing for us to say,” he continued. “To enable doctors to issue lethal drugs that kill people without their family knowing is an absolutely tragic thing. I beg the Committee to consider what on earth we are doing allowing that.”
Kruger is not exaggerating. At a press conference in British Columbia for MP Tamara Jansen’s Bill C-218, which would ban euthanasia for those suffering from mental illness, Alicia Duncan told the gut-wrenching story of discovering that her mother had been euthanized after being hospitalized for a mental health crisis – and finding out about her mother’s death via text message.
If the House of Lords passes Kim Leadbeater’s assisted suicide bill – and if MP Tamara Jansen’s “Right to Recover Act” fails to pass this fall – stories like that of Maureen Slough will become excruciatingly common. Parliamentarians must act to protect the vulnerable. If they do not, children discovering that their parents have died by suicide and that their ashes are in the mail will no longer be a horrifying aberration, but a social norm.
From LifeSiteNews
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that HHS is terminating 22 mRNA vaccine development contracts and moving away from the technology in favor of ‘safer’ alternatives.
The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) has announced it is “winding down” almost $500 million worth of mRNA vaccine projects and rejecting future exploration of the technology in favor of more conventional vaccines, in perhaps the biggest delivery yet of what his supporters hoped for when President Donald Trump appointed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head the department.
“We reviewed the science, listened to the experts, and acted,” Kennedy said in a Tuesday press release. “BARDA [the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority] is terminating 22 mRNA vaccine development investments because the data show these vaccines fail to protect effectively against upper respiratory infections like COVID and flu. We’re shifting that funding toward safer, broader vaccine platforms that remain effective even as viruses mutate.”
“Let me be absolutely clear: HHS supports safe, effective vaccines for every American who wants them. That’s why we’re moving beyond the limitations of mRNA and investing in better solutions,” Kennedy added.
We reviewed the science, listened to the experts, and acted. BARDA is terminating 22 mRNA vaccine development investments because the data show these vaccines fail to protect effectively against upper respiratory infections like COVID and flu. We’re shifting that funding toward… pic.twitter.com/GPKbuU7ywN
— Secretary Kennedy (@SecKennedy) August 5, 2025
Some projects will be canceled outright, while others will be modified to shift focus away from mRNA and toward other work. “While some final-stage contracts (e.g., Arcturus and Amplitude) will be allowed to run their course to preserve prior taxpayer investment, no new mRNA-based projects will be initiated,” HHS explains.
Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a doctor who voted to confirm Kennedy after receiving assurance he was less opposed to conventional vaccines than his history suggested, said the move has “conceded to China an important technology needed to combat cancer and infectious disease,” and “works against” President Trump’s goals to “Make America Healthy Again and Make America Great Again.”
READ: mRNA vaccines linked to genetic changes that can cause cancer, autoimmune disorders
When asked about HHS’s decision the next day, Trump said “we’re going to look at that” before declaring that his first administration’s Operation Warp Speed initiative, under which the COVID-19 shots were developed in record time, was “considered one of the most incredible things ever done in this country,” but suggested now the focus was on other solutions for other diseases. “We are speaking about it, we have meetings about it tomorrow … and we’ll determine,” the president said.
Whether or not mRNA research will resume in the future under more rigorous standards, the technology has drawn controversy due to its use by the most prominent COVID-19 shots, which were developed in record time by the first Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed initiative.
The federal Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) reports 38,709 deaths, 221,030 hospitalizations, 22,331 heart attacks, and 28,966 myocarditis and pericarditis cases as of June 27, among other ailments. U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) researchers have recognized a “high verification rate of reports of myocarditis to VAERS after mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccination,” leading to the conclusion that “under-reporting is more likely” than over-reporting.
An analysis of 99 million people across eight countries published in the journal Vaccine “observed significantly higher risks of myocarditis following the first, second and third doses” of mRNA-based COVID shots, as well as signs of increased risk of “pericarditis, Guillain-Barré syndrome, and cerebral venous sinus thrombosis,” and other “potential safety signals that require further investigation.” In April 2024, the CDC was forced to release by court order 780,000 previously undisclosed reports of serious adverse reactions, and a study out of Japan found “statistically significant increases” in cancer deaths after third doses of mRNA-based COVID-19 shots, and offered several theories for a causal link.
In May, U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) commissioner Marty Makary and vaccine chief Dr. Vinay Prasad announced that there would no longer be blanket recommendations for all Americans to receive the shot, but the “risk factors” it would still be recommended for include asthma, cancer, cerebrovascular disease, chronic kidney diseases, a handful of chronic liver and lung diseases, diabetes, disabilities such as Down’s syndrome, heart conditions, HIV, dementia, Parkinson’s, obesity, smoking, tuberculosis, and more. Kennedy Jr. subsequently announced COVID shots would not be recommended to healthy children or pregnant women.
However, in June, the Trump administration approved a new mRNA-based COVID-19 shot from Moderna, for “individuals who have been previously vaccinated with any COVID-19 vaccine and are: 65 years and older, or 12 through 64 with at least one underlying condition that puts them at high risk for severe outcomes from COVID-19.”
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