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Two sisters are selling tickets for a party to raise money to enable their mother to commit suicide at a Swiss clinic. Jackie Baker, 59, wants to travel to the Dignitas euthanasia clinic after developing motor neurone disease in February. Her daughters Tara O'Reilly and Rose Baker are desperately trying to raise £8,000 so their mother can "die with dignity" in Switzerland. Hairdresser Tara, 40, is selling tickets for a girls night out with drag artist and playboy waiters to raise the funds for her mother. Tara said: "It's what she wants. We were very upset at the beginning but...

Growing up in a black neighborhood in Oakland, California pretty much guaranteed that I was destined to be a Democrat. As a child whatever exposure I was given to politics had a simple message, Democrats are good and Republicans are bad. When I became a teenager I accept this as gospel and when Barack Obama was elected President this confirmed all I had been taught and was excited to become old enough to one day follow in his footsteps and be a strong Democrat to fight the good fight and bring social justice to black folks all over. However, in...

A retired art teacher committed suicide at the Dignitas clinic because she was frustrated at the lack of interaction in modern life, because of our reliance on computers and the Internet. The 89-year-old, who asked only to be identified as Anne before her death, was frustrated with the trappings of modern life, including fast food, consumerism and the amount of time people spend watching television. Anne, a former electrician with the Royal Navy, was not terminally ill or seriously handicapped and traveled to Dignitas in Switzerland last month. Before her death she told the Sunday Times: “People are becoming more...

Despite controversy at home and abroad over its law on assisted suicide, the Swiss government has decided not to modify it. Instead, it plans to promote palliative care and suicide prevention. Justice Minister Simonetta Sommaruga says that abuses of the system can be tackled under the existing legislation. “Revising the current legislation could give an official stamp of approval to organisations offering their services for assisted suicide,” she said. Over the past ten years the Swiss justice ministry has studied several options for dealing with assisted suicide clinics which help Swiss citizens and foreigners to die. In its latest, it...

Karen Royle’s memories of the last precious hours with her cherished mother Rona are far from the serene, comforting images that she had hoped for. Before arriving in Zurich, Karen, 51, had envisaged a pretty Swiss chalet, with perhaps a view of the Alps — ‘just like the pictures in the book Heidi, which I’d loved as a child’. But the Dignitas ‘apartment’ at No  84 Gertrudestrasse, where 74-year-old Rona chose to end her life rather than succumb further to the ravages of Motor Neurone Disease (MND), bore no comparison to the picture-postcard tranquility her family had imagined. The image Karen...

The BBC has received hundreds of complaints from views over a program it aired Monday night showing an assisted suicide of a person killing himself at a suicide tourism facility in Switzerland. The program featured footage of a man dying at a Dignitas suicide tourism clinic in Switzerland and it was hosted by Sir Terry Pratchett and it showed millionaire Peter Smedley taking a lethal cocktail of drugs that resulted in his death. Almost 900 people contacted the BBC to complain while just 82 supported the showing of the program. Four senior peers complained abotu the program and accused the...

Fury at suicide on BBCA DESPERATELY ill man will be shown on TV choking and begging for water before he dies in a suicide clinic. The harrowing scenes to be screened by BBC2 on Monday are set to spark outrage. Millionaire hotelier Peter Smedley, 71, was filmed swallowing a lethal dose of the barbiturate Nembutal - helped down with a praline chocolate. He gasps for breath. Within a minute his face turns red and he chokes as he pleads for water. The documentary Choosing To Die shows an "escort" at the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland holding on to Peter as...

ZURICH – Voters in Zurich have overwhelmingly rejected calls to ban assisted suicide or to outlaw the practice for nonresidents. Zurich's cantonal voters by about a 4-to-1 margin Sunday defeated both measures that had been pushed by political and religious conservatives. Out of more than 278,000 ballots cast, the initiative to ban assisted suicide was opposed by 85 percent of voters and the initiative to outlaw it for foreigners was turned down by 78 percent, according to Zurich authorities. Assisted suicide is legal in Switzerland, and has been since 1941, provided the helper isn't a medical doctor and doesn't personally...

In a recent statement, Ludwig Minelli, founder of the Swiss death clinic, Dignitas, called for suicide drugs to be legally available to distraught spouses of his suicide clients should they wish to follow their loved ones in ending their lives. Assisted suicide has become an increasingly controversial issue as advocates insist it is a humane, dignified way to die. Efforts to turn public opinion in favor of assisted suicide include an appeal to patient autonomy and freedom of choice. Opponents of assisted suicide are criticized for lacking compassion when they try to prevent an elderly, disabled or terminally ill person...

I warned that the Swiss plan to restrict suicide tourism might falter–even though suicide clinics like Dignitas have profoundly embarrassed the country.  You see, once a society accepts killing as an acceptable answer to human suffering, the idea of placing meaningful limits on being made dead–as least any that are rigorously enforced–becomes very difficult logically.  Sure enough, the Swiss Justice Minister is now pushing against the proposed new restrictions.  From the story: Justice Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf says she wants the government to rethink its proposal to tighten legislation on assisted suicide. Widmer-Schlumpf, in a SonntagsZeitung newspaper interview, said assisted...

Ludwig Minelli, the head of Dignitas, is 77. A trained lawyer, he founded the assisted suicide organisation 12 years ago.The organisation, whose slogan is '"live with dignity, die with dignity", has helped over 1,000 people to die. Many of them are people who have travelled to Switzerland because assisted suicide is not permitted in their own countries. Dignitas has the status of an association under Swiss law, with two active members, Mr Minelli and one other. The identity of the other member has not been revealed. These two active members control the policy and financing of Dignitas.Question: You have been...

Who says euthansia and assisted suicide are about compassion and choices? Ludwig Minelli has become a millionaire in the ten years since he set up his Dignitas suicide clinic in Switzerland. An article that was published in the Telegraph examined the real motivation for the Dignitas founder, Ludwig Minelli. They reported that he has become wealthy by selling memberships, assisting suicides and getting donations from his vulnerable clients. The Telegraph newspaper reported: A newspaper investigation has raised new questions about Dignitas and whether Ludwig Minelli, its founder and director, makes profit from his “mercy killings”. Previously a human rights...

The Swiss death clinic, Dignitas, is in the news again.You’ll recall that Dignitas has gained notoriety as a fee-for-service killing venue for those who wish to die via assisted suicide. Dignitas has been most exposed by high-profile visits from UK citizens who travelled to the clinic to die because in the UK assisted suicide is illegal, and allows for the prosecution (at least on paper) of those who help people kill themselves.However, there’s a very ugly underbelly to all the spin that Dignitas is a haven of care and a celebration of human autonomy.There have been reports of dingy and...

ZURICH, April 28, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Local authorities in Zurich are asking questions about the assisted suicide facility Dignitas, after 300 urns containing human ashes were found in Lake Zurich this week. The urns bear the logo of the Nordheim crematorium, which is used by Dignitas.The Daily Telegraph quoted Roman Ruetz, a police diver, who said, “After 50 we stopped counting. They lay there in a big heap.” The urns were discovered accidentally by divers from a rescue service on Lake Zurich who were looking for a sunshade that had broken off one of their boats. After retrieving 13 urns,...

Scores of urns containing human ashes have been found dumped in a lake near the Swiss suicide clinic Dignitas. One estimate puts the number discovered 30ft down on the bed of Lake Zurich at 300 or more. The urns bear the logo of a cremation service thought to be used by Dignitas, the controversial organisation where more than 100 Britons have ended their lives. It is not known if the remains of any British 'suicide tourists' are involved, and last night Dignitas founder Ludwig Minelli refused to comment. It is against Swiss law to dispose of a large number of...

To the casual observer, they must have seemed like all the other families dining in the elegant riverside restaurant in Zurich that night. Laughing and joking, a strikingly attractive woman was evidently revelling in the company of her sister, mother and father as they ate risotto and shared a bottle of wine. Throughout that cool, clear August evening in 2006, the family enjoyed animated conversation before sharing a late-night gin and tonic. So far so ordinary, except for one extraordinary detail: they all knew this would be their last meal together.   Poignant farewell: John Huff, his wife Barbara...

... In the 1960s, when the first right-to-die organizations began helping terminally ill people end their lives in Switzerland, the Swiss gave broad support to a practice widely viewed as a personal choice. Backed by the world's most liberal right-to-die laws, assisted-suicide groups have since then quietly helped thousands kill themselves. Lately, the increasingly controversial activities of Dignitas and its founder, Ludwig Minelli, are pushing even the famously tolerant Swiss too far, prompting calls for changes in the nation's assisted-suicide law. Mr. Minelli has long played the agent provocateur of Switzerland's right-to-die movement, most notably because his group helps the...

Zurich, Switzerland (LifeNews.com) -- The Switzerland government is considering a proposal that would ban the assisted suicide clinics run by the pro-euthanasia group Dignitas. The move would end the practice of so-called suicide tourism and move the European nation out of the category with Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg.The 1942 Swiss law allowing assisted suicide has led to a practice where residents of other nations, especially England and Germany, travel to the country to end their lives.Federal government officials said last week that they want to discuss "legal barriers and a ban on organized suicide assistance."The proposal would limit who...

London, England (LifeNews.com) -- The founder of Dignitas, the pro-euthanasia group that operates the Switzerland-based euthanasia clinic, has revealed plans to kill a healthy woman in an assisted suicide. Backers of the practice claim they want suicides for terminally ill patients and the elderly, but they are pushing the envelope even further.Ludwig Minelli calls killing a healthy patient a "marvelous opportunity" and says assisted suicide should no longer be reserved for the disabled or very ill patients.The Dignitas clinic has killed more than 100 people and reports from Zurich University indicate at least 20 percent of them were not terminally...

The founder of the Swiss assisted suicide clinic Dignitas was criticised yesterday after revealing plans to help a healthy woman to die alongside her terminally ill husband. Ludwig Minelli described suicide as a “marvellous opportunity” that should not be restricted to the terminally ill or people with severe disabilities. Critics said that the plans highlighted the risks of proposals to legalise assisted suicides in Britain for people in the final stages of a terminal illness. The Dignitas clinic in Zurich claims to have assisted in the deaths of more than 100 Britons. The Zurich University Clinic found that more than...