Free Republic

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 founder of Dignitas, a controversial assisted suicide organization, ended his own life at age 92, the group announced Monday. It’s a tragic irony that underscores the dehumanizing consequences of the deadly practice. Ludwig Minelli, a former journalist and human rights lawyer, died November 29 through what Dignitas described as “voluntary assisted dying,” just days before his 93rd birthday on December 5. The Zurich-based death group, which Minelli established in 1998 to enable people to end their lives “on their own terms,” provided no further details about the circumstances of his death. Dignitas, one of Switzerland’s most prominent suicide killers,...