A Swiss assisted-suicide organization has come under scrutiny following revelations that a small but growing number of “death tourists” has been entering the country.
In one case, a terminally ill British cancer patient arrived in Zurich with his family Oct. 23. After meeting with Ludwig Minelli, a lawyer and founder of Dignitas, a Swiss right-to-die group, the patient was examined by a doctor. Two days later the patient and his family went to a small apartment rented by Dignitas in a Zurich suburb, where he was given a barbiturate to swallow. His body was cremated and the family returned to Britain with his ashes.
In January, a 74-year-old Liverpool man with motoneuron disease made the same journey to Switzerland. It ended with the same result Jan. 20.
A loophole in Swiss law permits assisted suicide, allowing physicians to provide lethal doses of drugs to terminally ill patients who are willing either to ingest the drugs or to open the valve on an intravenous drip themselves. (Only 2 European countries, the Netherlands and Belgium, permit euthanasia, but they prohibit physicians from assisting patients from other countries who wish to end their lives.) In 2001 the Swiss parliament rejected a proposal to legalize euthanasia.
It is estimated that 125 people, mostly foreigners, have come to Zurich to die with Dignitas' assistance. Dignitas, founded in 1998, accepts foreigners as members.
The image cast by “death tourism” irks Swiss officials, and one lawmaker has proposed tightening restrictions on assisted suicide and prohibiting foreigners from participating.
The issue of assisted suicide received wide publicity earlier last year when Diane Pretty, a patient with incurable motoneuron disease, unsuccessfully sought to have Britain's high court overturn the UK's ban on the practice. Her appeal to the European Court of Human Rights was rejected, but her case spurred a campaign to change British law.
Deborah Annetts, chief executive of Britain's Voluntary Euthanasia Society, said the case of the British cancer patient who died in Zurich is “terribly sad.” She said her group had been inundated with calls from terminally ill people trying to get in touch with Dignitas. “We urgently need to protect the vulnerable from back-street assisted suicide at home and abroad,” she said. — Mary Helen Spooner, West Sussex, UK