Assisted suicide 'may be option for depressed'
Pastor Dale Morgan
Assisted suicide 'may be option for depressed'*
By Colin Randall and Brendan Carlin
(Filed: 21/09/2006)
Britons suffering from severe depression may soon be able to opt for
assisted suicide in a Swiss clinic, its founder claimed yesterday.
Ludwig Minelli, who established the Dignitas institute in Zurich eight
years ago, said a case going before the Swiss supreme court next month
involves a Swiss patient suffering from bipolar disorder, also known as
manic depression, who wants the right to an assisted suicide.
Mr Minelli said a judgment in the man's favour would have implications
across Europe.
The Dignitas clinic, in reality a fourth-floor apartment, is already
used by an increasing numbers of sick Britons who wish to end their
lives but whose loved ones would face criminal prosecution, and up to 14
years in jail, if they helped them to do so in the UK.
The pressure group Dignity in Dying says 54 people from the UK have been
helped in committing suicide there since 2003. A 55th is due to die
there next week.
The case of Dr Anne Turner, 66, a retired family planning expert from
Bath who died at Dignitas in January, may have contributed to the increase.
She was suffering from supranuclear palsy, an incurable degenerative
illness, and spoke publicly about her decision before her death.
Relatives who help loved ones takes their own lives at Dignitas risk
prosecution on their return to Britain, though no such case has yet been
brought.
Mr Minelli told The Daily Telegraph there was no reason why mentally ill
people should not be allowed to decide how and when to die.
Suggestions that removing the threat of criminal sanctions would "open
the floodgates" and lead to more suicides among vulnerable people were
false, he said.
"The evidence of eight-and-a-half years is that vulnerable people do not
come to us to take their own lives."
Mr Minelli, who addressed a fringe meeting at the Liberal Democrats
conference yesterday, added: "They are strong minded people, often
highly educated, who have reached their own conclusions."