Healthy British woman dies at Swiss suicide clinic

A healthy 56-year-old mother has paid £10,000 for help to kill herself at a Swiss clinic.

Wendy Duffy from the West Midlands tragically lost her son four years ago and had struggled to come to terms with his death. She was killed via assisted suicide at the Pegasos clinic on an industrial estate near Basel last week.

Pegasos’s mission statement claims that it is “the human right of every rational adult of sound mind, regardless of state of health, to choose the manner and timing of their death”.

‘Absolutely disgraceful’

Duffy, who tried to commit suicide previously, told the Daily Mail before leaving for the Switzerland: “My life; my choice.”

But Dr Gordon Macdonald of Care Not Killing described the readiness of Pegasos to help a British woman in good physical health to kill herself as “absolutely disgraceful”.

He said: “The UK government should be doing something to stop people operating from the UK to facilitate it, and the Swiss government should be doing something to stop it being made available to vulnerable foreign nationals”.

In an editorial commenting on the fall of Kim Leadbeater MP’s suicide Bill, The Daily Telegraph said the case highlighted the “dangers of a state-run death service”.

Future threat

Last week, Leadbeater’s dangerous Bill timed out in the House of Lords as Peers debated over a thousand amendments to counter its flaws.

Angus Saul, The Christian Institute’s Head of Communications, warned that campaigners against assisted suicide must be on their guard against those who plan to revive the legislation.