Knighted for his services to music, a child prodigy violinist and a conductor acclaimed across the world, Sir Edward Downes enjoyed a long, happy and fulfilling career, lovingly supported by Joan, a former ballet dancer, choreographer and his wife of 54 years. Illness, age and disability, however, were taking an increasing toll of both of them: Sir Edward was almost blind and was going deaf; Lady Downes had terminal cancer. Last week they travelled to Switzerland, and on Friday, alone together in a small clinic in Zurich, swallowed lethal doses of barbiturates.

They were not the first British couple to end their lives with the assistance of Dignitas, the non-profit organisation dedicated to helping those determined to commit suicide do so in dignity and tranquillity. In March Peter and Penelope Duff made a similar final journey. And last year, amid anguished public debate, Daniel James, a paralysed 23-year-old rugby player, persuaded his parents to support his decision and travel with him to Zurich to allow him to die.

For years, the aiding and abetting of suicide was a crime. But as medical science has advanced, more and more cases have arisen of people kept alive with drugs or medical treatment, who have been left in pain, dependency and without any hope of improvement. Some have committed suicide with the help of loved ones unable to watch them suffer. Some have applied to courts to force a discontinuation of medical intervention. And a growing number — at least 115 — have made the fateful journey to Switzerland. Each case has prompted debate on the ethics of helping people to take their lives. Each case has presented almost insuperable legal and medical dilemmas. And after each case, public opinion has tilted slightly more towards the dignity of life rather than the sanctity of life.

Increasingly, the State is loath to prosecute those who, with loving care and in clear conscience, have assisted the terminally ill to end their own lives. And in a society that places increasing importance on upholding the inalienable rights of each individual, one of the most fundamental must be the right to control one’s own destiny — and death. Religious teaching traditionally insisted that this is not so: that God, not Man, has the final say over human mortality. But even the Roman Catholic Church has ruled recently that suicide is no longer a mortal sin.

It is, however, absurd that on an issue so crucial attitudes are increasingly determined by a private clinic in Switzerland — one to which only the rich can afford to travel — and the piecemeal responses of British courts. The Government is reluctant to change the present law lest the necessary parliamentary debate polarise opinion and lead to legislation that was inflexible and far from comprehensive, and that militated against compassion and common sense. For there are very serious objections to any easing of the prohibition on assisting a suicide. A more permissive law might be exploited by those who cruelly played on people’s fear of being a burden to persuade them to end their lives. It might increase the suicide rate among the depressed or psychiatric patients, who could otherwise have been helped to face life. It might weaken a long-standing social taboo at the cost of leaving others, especially dependants, devastated.

The Downes case is especially troubling as it raises the issue of suicide pacts — when one person feels unable to face life without the other. The danger here is that a romanticised view of a joint death may make suicide attractive, rather than an alternative to unbearable pain. Every day thousands of dying people are eased towards death in quiet, moral, medical ways. Dignity is the watchword. But that dignity should be safeguarded at home: not in a distant Swiss clinic.