Dignitas Clinic In Switzerland Causes Controversy Over Swiss Assisted Suicide Law
- Dignitas was founded by Lugwig Minelli to help people end their lives.
- Unlike most Swiss organizations that help people end their lives, Dignitas offers its services to foreigners.
- Dignitas has been criticized for creating suicide tourism, charging too much, and providing questionable services, such as assisting a young, paralyzed rugby player and providing poor accommodations for the actual suicide.
- Swiss law makers are scheduled to vote in March on a bill that would require two doctors to testify that a person is terminally ill before groups could offer suicide assistance. The bill would also prohibit the organizations from charging more than the cost of the suicide.
The following, taken from Deborah Ball & Julia Mengewein, Assisted-Suicide Pioneer Stirs a Legal Backlash, WSJ, Feb. 6, 2010, provides further insight into why Dignitas is credited with causing much of the controversy surrounding Swiss law:
When Zurich government officials demanded in 2008 that assisted-suicide groups get two doctors to sign off on a suicide before one of them could write a prescription for the lethal drug, Mr. Minelli helped four people suffocate themselves with helium and masks, without doctors in attendance. The media coverage in Switzerland kicked up a storm of protest against Dignitas. . . .
At the same time, Mr. Minelli courts controversy with incendiary comments. He compares talk of prohibiting foreigners from coming to Switzerland to die to the country’s decision to deny entry to Jews fleeing from the Holocaust during the war.
See Deborah Ball & Julia Mengewein, Assisted-Suicide Pioneer Stirs a Legal Backlash, WSJ, Feb. 6, 2010.
Special thanks to Joel Dobris (Professor of Law, UC Davis School of Law) for bringing this to my attention.