Assisted Suicide Debate
January 9, 2007
Zurich's SonntagsZeitung newspaper reported on Sunday that a 43-year-old German woman with a brain tumor, referred to by her initials A.H., cried out in pain for four minutes after taking a fatal dose of poison prepared by the organization, Dignitas, in November 2006.
She had cried out: "It's burning. I'm burning," friends who accompanied her told the newspaper. She then fell into a coma but it took another 38 minutes before she was pronounced dead, the paper reported.
Dignitas declined to discuss the allegations on Monday.
"We have no comment on any reports by the Tamedia house in Zurich," Dignitas head Ludwig Minelli told the AFP news agency in an email. Tamedia publishes the SonntagsZeitung.
Another German client of the organization, a stroke victim identified as Peter A., spent three days in a coma before dying in August 2004 after taking a fatal dose of medication, the SonntagsZeitung reported. This contrasted with the quick and dignified death that Dignitas promises, the paper added.
Liberal Swiss law
A spokeswoman for the Zurich canton prosecutor's office said it was too early to say whether a probe would be launched into the reported incidents.
In a speech to Britain's Liberal Democrat party in September 2006, 74-year-old lawyer Minelli said that since its creation in May 1998, Dignitas had "helped 619 members to end their lives without any complication."
"We help our members to make a risk and pain-free suicide," he said.
Swiss law on assisted suicide is amongst the most liberal in the world. It authorizes passive assistance for suicide, allowing a doctor to supply a terminally ill person with a fatal dose of a drug, although the patient must take the dose without the doctor's help.
It is illegal in Switzerland to actively help someone to die, such as by administering an injection.
Dignitas attracts terminally ill patients from all over Europe as laws in most EU member states are either ambiguous on assisted suicide or outlaws it as a last resort for long-suffering people.
In 2005, the organization sparked opposition from many German politicians and church leaders when it opened an office in the German city of Hanover.