Swiss suicide clinics 'helping depressives die'

Sunday Telegraph ^ | 6/3/2007 | Bojan Pancevski

[bruinbirdman]

Prosecutors are calling for tougher regulations on Switzerland's assisted suicide clinics after uncovering evidence that some of the foreign clients they help to die are simply depressed rather than suffering incurable pain.

The clinics, which attract hundreds of foreigners, including Britons, every year, have been accused of failing to carry out proper investigations into whether patients meet the requirements of Switzerland's right-to-die laws.

In some cases, foreign clients are being given drugs to commit suicide within hours of their arrival, which critics say leaves doctors and psychologists unable to conduct a detailed assessment or to provide appropriate counselling.

Andreas Brunner, the senior prosecutor of the Zurich canton, told The Sunday Telegraph: "We are not trying to ban the so-called death tourism, but the outsourcing of suicide must be put under stricter control.

"Prosecutors look into every suicide, assisted or not, and there are many cases where it is not clear whether the assisted person has chosen death in full possession of their decision-making capacity. But investigations are difficult due to lack of evidence after the suicide.

"We, therefore, demand that the federal government amend the legislation to enable closer and lengthier monitoring of suicide patients before their deaths."

Mr Brunner said that there had been a number of cases where prosecutors or relatives of people who committed assisted suicide had taken legal action against doctors or organisations, although he declined to go into details.

Swiss laws allow doctors to provide "passive suicide assistance" to people who are terminally ill or in great suffering, with patients given a cocktail of drugs that they must administer themselves.

A handful of clinics provide the service, with two, Dignitas and Exit International, also offering it to foreigners, who make up a large proportion of the 300 assisted suicides that take place each year.

A Dignitas member who desires suicide must apply in writing, proving illness and pain, with a doctor's proof and prognosis. There is concern, however, that foreign patients may find it easier than Swiss clients to provide fake medical and psychiatric records.

Questions over the screening of foreign patients first surfaced when it emerged that a 67-year-old German woman who committed suicide with help from Dignitas had presented the clinic with faked papers saying that she was dying of cirrhosis of the liver. It turned out that she had been suffering from alcoholism and depression. Dr Daniel Hell, of the Swiss National Advisory Commission on Biomedical Ethics, a government regulatory body, said: "We suspect there could have been cases where people who suffered from a temporary depression have been helped to their deaths."

Ludwig Minelli, the lawyer and journalist who founded Dignitas in 1998, said there was no need for further legislation. Accusing Mr Brunner of waging a crusade against Dignitas, he said: "If the investigations had a real basis I would have been summoned for questioning, but this has not yet happened. Mr Brunner only wants to perpetuate the suspicions because he hopes a law will be passed that will limit Dignitas."

[Outland]

Damn... I mis-read the headline and thought it said, “helping progessives die”. And I was going to make a donation.

Oh well.

[little jeremiah]

Thanks for pinging this out. Great information on the thread.