An elderly man has traveled to Switzerland for an assisted suicide, accompanied by his wife. From the story:
Doctors from a euthanasia clinic held secret talks at Heathrow airport with a London pensioner before helping him die last week, the Standard has learned. A 90-year-old man named only as Chris—who was not terminally ill-died on Friday at Ex International, in Berne, after travelling to the Swiss capital with his wife on Tuesday.Suicide prevention is unmentioned. But why should we be surprised? The logic of the assisted suicide/euthanasia movement is turning us into a pro-suicide culture.
He is thought to be only the second Briton to die at the clinic, which until recently did not accept people from non-German-speaking countries. Chris, whose surname has not been revealed as he wanted privacy for his widow, had been planning to kill himself for about two years.
He arrived in Britain in 1938 after fleeing Nazi Austria and went on to teach physics and maths in Newcastle and later Birmingham University. After deciding to end his life because of his deteriorating health, he met leading figures behind the Swiss clinic at Heathrow —after they attended a meeting with British assisted-suicide campaigners in the summer last year.
The airport meeting was arranged by Chris’s friend, the voluntary euthanasia campaigner Dr Michael Irwin, who had been due to accompany the pensioner to Berne but pulled because of illness.
