Assisted suicide: The road to Zurich could easily become the road to hell

At the same time, who knows how any of us would react to a diagnosis of any extremely painful and incurable – if not strictly terminal – disease? As many as a third of Irish doctors say they have been asked by patients to helpend their lives

EDWARD and Joan Downes’s “death pact” seemed initially like an irresistible love story. Joan, a former ballerina, had been diagnosed with terminal liver and pancreatic cancer.

Because assisted suicide is illegal in Britain, they travelled to a Zurich clinic where, for a fee of about €10,000 per patient, the group Dignitas arranges for death by barbiturate. With Joan condemned to die, Sir Edward, one of Britain’s most distinguished conductors, chose to follow rather than live half a life, all alone.