In Switzerland the law allows people to be helped to end their lives as long as the patient is mentally fit to make that decision and the helper is not motivated by self-interest. Dignitas is one of the country’s four non-medical right-to-die organizations. But while it and Exit International both help foreign nationals, the other two only assist Swiss people.
Dignitas was founded in Zurich in 1988 by Ludwig Minelli, a magazine journalist turned lawyer. Minelli says that his group lets people exercise “the last human right: the ability to decide how and when somebody would like to end one’s own life.”
A hugely controversial figure, Minelli has previously provoked criticism for allowing people with mental disorders, not just those with terminal physical conditions, to end their lives at Dignitas. In April he said that he would like Dignitas to also be allowed to help healthy people die. He explained that he wanted to help a Canadian woman who was well to realize her desire to die with her ill husband. He advocated almost no limitations on assisting people with their deaths, calling it “a marvelous possibility.”
The first Briton to die at Dignitas, an unnamed man from Cambridge who had throat cancer, did so in late 2002. Ex-docker Reg Crew, who had motor neurone disease, became the first Briton to be named as using Dignitas when he went there in January 2003, accompanied by his wife Win and a British TV news crew.
“I’d never say I was tired of life, but I’m tired of the life I’m in and I know I am never going to be cured,” 74-year-old Crew said.
People who go to Dignitas see death as a release and are frustrated that assisting a suicide is illegal in Britain. Anne Turner, a retired family planning expert who had the incurable brain disease supranuclear palsy, died at Dignitas in January 2006. She had seen her husband and brother endure lingering deaths from similar conditions. “Doctors should be able to help people to die. I always quote the fact that I had a cat and I had him put down because he was riddled with cancer, but we cannot do that with humans,” Turner said.
In all 115 Britons have ended their lives at Dignitas so far. As the right to die has become a key moral and medical issue, so the numbers of Britons using Dignitas has grown: from one in 2002 to 15 in 2003 and 26 in 2006. However, Dignitas currently has 786 British members who they will want its help.
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
In an article published on this page on Tuesday, Kaohsiung-based journalist Julien Oeuillet wrote that “legions of people worldwide would care if a disaster occurred in South Korea or Japan, but the same people would not bat an eyelid if Taiwan disappeared.” That is quite a statement. We are constantly reading about the importance of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), hailed in Taiwan as the nation’s “silicon shield” protecting it from hostile foreign forces such as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and so crucial to the global supply chain for semiconductors that its loss would cost the global economy US$1
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
Sasha B. Chhabra’s column (“Michelle Yeoh should no longer be welcome,” March 26, page 8) lamented an Instagram post by renowned actress Michelle Yeoh (楊紫瓊) about her recent visit to “Taipei, China.” It is Chhabra’s opinion that, in response to parroting Beijing’s propaganda about the status of Taiwan, Yeoh should be banned from entering this nation and her films cut off from funding by government-backed agencies, as well as disqualified from competing in the Golden Horse Awards. She and other celebrities, he wrote, must be made to understand “that there are consequences for their actions if they become political pawns of