Free Republic

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...

The founder of Dignitas – a Zurich, Switzerland, clinic that assists those with illnesses end their lives – says he wants to open a chain of "suicide clinics" in other countries to give everyone, including the mentally ill, the "the choice of a choice." Ludwig Minelli Ludwig Minelli, a Swiss lawyer, told the London Sunday Times he has already opened an associated Dignitas office in Germany and he intends to lift the "taboo" against suicide by lobbying other countries to set up clinics to offer information on effective methods of suicide and to alert people to the risks of...

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,...

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...

... 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...