The Swiss call it the Gold Coast, the string of silent, discreetly guarded
villas fringing Lake Zurich. Bankers, tycoons and the heirs to family
fortunes live here, so the lakeside is fenced off and there is only one
narrow rocky strip where the public can plunge into the water.
That is where hundreds of small fragments of bone were recently washed ashore,
the macabre flotsam from leaking crematorium urns. Who is dumping human
ashes in the lake in such industrial quantities? Accusing fingers were,
rightly or wrongly, pointed at the assisted-suicide organisation Dignitas,
which claims to have helped 100 Britons to die. These include, most
controversially, a 23-year-old rugby player who had been paralysed in a
training accident.
The Crown Prosecution Service is deciding whether to press charges against the
parents of Daniel James after it learnt that they had accompanied him to
Dignitas, where he ended his life last month. The case has provoked sympathy
and condemnation in almost equal measure because, unlike most previous
cases, Mr James was not terminally ill. But that is not the only cause for
concern about the organisation.
“I calculate that about 300 Dignitas customers have had their ashes dropped
into the lake over the years,” said Soraya Wernli, who once worked in a
senior position there. Police were unable to pursue an investigation because
no laws were broken but the authorities did issue Dignitas with a warning
that too much human ash could pollute the Gold Coast, against local
regulations.
One thing is for sure: it is not how British families imagined the final
resting place for their relatives. But then so little about about the
workings of Dignitas matches its idealised image.
Dignitas, which says that it is a nonprofit organisation, has not published
its figures since 2004. Its rationale is that it is driven by its members
(6,000 have signed up, 700 from Britain) and their desire to control the
nature of their death. Yet even Ludwig Minelli, its director, admits that he
rules like a “benign dictator”.
There is talk, too, of a “Dignitas Clinic”, which conjures images of crisp
Swiss efficiency, mountain air, a kind of peace. The reality is rather more
shabby. While the organisation maintains a solid air-conditioned head office
in a dormitory suburb of Zurich, the location of the assisted suicides is
constantly changing. The present address is a second-floor apartment at
Ifagstrasse No 12, an urban wasteland about 15 km (9 miles) from Zurich.
Down the road is the Globe brothel, which is garlanded with a dozen flags
representing the different nationalities of the girls inside. Near by, a
Caribbean club, a Greek internet café and, next to the suicide apartment, a
place where you can change your car oil.
Switzerland allows assisted suicide by a nondoctor provided that it is not
done for profit. That is the most liberal ruling in Europe and its
principles were set out as early as 1918: “In modern penal law suicide is
not a crime . . . aiding and abetting suicide can themselves be inspired by
altruistic motives.”
Even critics of Dignitas such as Andreas Brunner, the state prosecutor in
Zurich, accept the principle. “But there should be tighter controls,
regulating the quality of the help offered,” Mr Brunner argued. “And more
transparency when it comes to individual cases, to finances and to the
organisation itself.”
The real concern is not the practice of helping people to die – one Swiss
organisation, Exit, has helped more than 700 Swiss citizens and has escaped
most political criticism – but the tarnished image that comes with being
seen as the suicide capital of Europe. Opponents call it “death tourism”.
Gerhard Fischer, of the Evangelical People’s Party, a powerful voice in the
German-speaking part of Switzerland, said: “It has got out of control. I’m a
farmer but I have to take a course before I so much as inject a calf, yet
you don’t need anything at all to send a human to his death. It has become a
business.”
Even so, the Government has resisted any major change in the law, and it is
left to others to make life difficult for Dignitas. Medical supervisory
boards have piled the pressure on doctors who write prescriptions for the
deadly sodium pentobarbital. Three have been removed, and the present
pivotal figure, Dr Alois Geiger, a gynaecologist, told The Times that he was
“feeling the pressure from above”.
The law requires that a doctor see those who wish to die at least twice before
they are ushered to the “death room”. Dr Geiger said that he was scrupulous
about the rule. In the case of the most controversial patients, those who
were not terminally ill, he said that he took particular care. “In these
situations we insist on a longer interval between the first and second
consultations, an interval of at least eight weeks, so we make sure that the
person in question knows what he or she is doing.”
Ms Wernli, who left Dignitas in 2005 after a clash with Mr Minelli, said that
it did not always work like that. “Some foreigners – Germans and English –
would come to Zurich in the morning, be taken to the doctor and by
mid-afternoon they were dead.”
Dignitas has denied that it is running a conveyor belt operation. Dr Geiger
said: “You have to understand, before I see anyone there has been on average
five months of communication. I am given the full medical history of the
individual.”
It is not in the interests of a controversial organisation for people simply
to vanish, prompting some form of police investigation. Many suicidal
individuals are like wounded animals, ready to curl into a ball. Others want
to end their lives exactly because they are socially isolated, cut off from
families. For whatever reason, Dignitas has reconnected the lives of some of
these people before they die.
Dignitas’s 75-year-old director is a former journalist and a lawyer, not a
medical doctor. His journalistic experience is used to block off unwanted
media attention – he agrees to interviews only when he feels sure that they
won’t delve too deeply – but his legal skills have been vital in his weaving
through the rules and staying on the right side of the law.
It was the Waste Disposal, Water and Energy Department that sent a warning to
Dignitas about the human remains in Lake Zurich. And it is the local housing
authorities that keep Dignitas on the run. Again and again, landlords or
councillors have complained that Dignitas, which rents accommodation using
the names of individuals, is transforming residential space into commercial
space.
The real reason is clear: after someone has killed himself, the police are
informed. The coroner and a doctor arrive, watch the video that has been
shot shortly before in which the would-be suicide makes clear he is acting
of his own free will. Testimony is taken. An “unnatural death” is entered on
the forms. While this is going on, an ambulance, usually paid for by the
family of the recently deceased, is standing outside, blue lights flashing,
ready to carry the body to the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Zurich in
case a postmortem examination is ordered – and then to join the queue for
cremation. It is the remains that are not claimed by families or friends
that Dignitas is thought to be dumping.
The commotion makes the neighbours nervous and after several body-bags,
complaints are lodged. Opinion polls regularly show 60 per cent or more
Swiss citizens approving of assisted suicide for those with terminal
diseases or with severe disabilities, but approval melts quickly if it is
carried out on their doorstep.
“There are times when this charity resembles a guerrilla movement,” said a
reporter who has followed Dignitas since it started in 1998. “It’s restless,
constantly on the move.”
Thrown out of one apartment, searching for another, Dignitas has helped people
to die in camper vans, hotel rooms and even Mr Minelli’s living room. When
the organisation ran out of prescribed barbiturates, it used helium gas, a
practice that has now been dropped.
There is no evidence that Mr Minelli is making a profit from the activities of
Dignitas. It is a tax-free charity but it nonetheless should be having its
books audited. No one in local council offices was able to explain to me why
the Dignitas books are not being presented in the usual way. It seems
unlikely, despite the rapid growth in Dignitas clients over the past four
years, that Mr Minelli is making a fortune out of his grisly trade. The
arithmetic does not add up: it has assisted in almost 900 suicides over the
past decade. The most that anyone seems to pay is €7,000 (£5,500), depending
on the services being offered, and after salaries, rent, legal costs and
cremations are paid that seems to add up to a rather modest business. The
6,000 members – many of whom want to be put on the suicide list when their
disease becomes critical – pay an entry fee of €125 and an annual €50.
Mr Minelli’s reluctance to be candid about money probably derives from his
determination to be the absolute controller. “He is the secretary general,
the chief executive, half of the board of directors and the accountant, all
wrapped into one,” Ms Wernli said. One retired Swiss doctor who is no fan of
Mr Minelli said that the organisation was almost certainly not a cash cow.
“This man is not about money, it’s all about his power over life and death.
He’s like the mythical ferryman of the Styx, taking people over to the other
side. And what was the ferryman paid: a single coin?”
Deadly business
— Ludwig Minelli, a Swiss lawyer, founded the group in 1998
— Swiss law says that assisting suicide can only be unlawful if
self-interested motivation can be proven
— It serves two main functions, to assist patients with making a “living will”
and to assist patients to conduct a painless suicide
— By March 2008 Dignitas had assisted 840 suicides. It claims that more than
100 were Britons
— Dignitas charges €4,000 for assisted suicide and €7,000 when it takes over
family duties including funeral costs and medical fees
Source: Dignitas, Ludwig Minelli transcripts
