How to contact Dignitas in Switzerland
Feb 6th, 2006 by ergo
The Dignitas clinic is in Forch, near Zurich, Switzerland, and therefore operates under Swiss law, which, since 1940, has permitted assisted suicide provided it is done for altruistic reasons. It can be doctor-assisted hastened death, or non-doctor.
It is always reported to the police, and there are fees involved. Travel and hotels are of course the responsibility of the person asking for help.
Only the state of Oregon, the Netherlands, and Belgium permit physician-assisted suicide for terminally ill, competent adults, but it is for residents only, and there are strict rules.
Such an action remains a crime in England and Wales, although the Joffe Bill now in front of the House of Lords would modify this if it passes.
To find out more about Dignitas in your language, visit Dignitas listing on Google and click “Translate this page”.
Or to translate Dignitas website into other languages visit either Google translation tool or Babel Fish Translator. Then choose your language (example: German to English) and enter “www.dignitas.ch” for the website address you want translated.
How to contact Dignitas in Switzerland.
Dignitas must be fully informed in advance of a person’s wishes, circumstances, and agree to help. It is not a ‘walk-in’ clinic.
Email: dignitas@dignitas.ch
Website: www.dignitas.ch
Mailing address: Postfach 9 - CH 8127 Forch, Switzerland
Telefon: +41-44-980 44 59
Footnote:
On 20 January 2006, DIGNITAS SAID:
“At the time being, we are not able to help mentally ill people because the authorities do declare to withdraw doctor licences if a doctor will write a prescription for mentally ill people. DIGNITAS has therefore introduced legal steps in order to clarify the situation by the Swiss Supreme Court or, if the latter will not render a positive decision, by the European Court on Human Rights at Strasbourg.”
Posted February 6, 2006 by ERGO
www.finalexit.org
Many thanks for contact details for Dignitas - was searching for them and dfound your “blog”. Very helpful, as we are oldish, and trying to plan our future.
Do keep up the good work. We are active supporters of te Lib Dems attempts in the UK for (eventually) similar legislation, and until then some improvements on the present ban.
thanks, this was very useful, was hard to find proper info about it, which wasnt overly `”biased”.am very much in support of dignitas being able to help the mentally ill or depressed.
many thanks
I too think Dignitas should have the freedom to help mentally depressed patients with the same freedom they have to help those with physical diseases.
Ending ones life should be a personnal decision without any government interference. Euthanasia should be supported and death trauma and painfree.
Sadly, with the best intentions, the legitimisation of your practice would facilitate the murder of the infirm who are least in a position to resist it. Every one is entitled to end his/her life. It is important that it is difficult to do so because there is only one shot. The potential for abuse and murder in your scheme is not tolerable. As such your practice is with the best intentions is of no value. To continue is cynical and irresponsible. We all die. God has customised your death according to your life. Don’t settle for less.
Thanks for letting us know what “God’s” plan is for us all, Paul.
Doctors routinely ease patients pointless, prolonged suffering with palliative drug dosages that will kill them. They do this without the patient’s request. If however, the patient—in full control of his/her mental faculties and undersatnding fully the details of their prognosis—actually asks for this option, the full weight of the religion/guilt-based/pseudo-psychiatric/legal machinery comes to bear on making their short lives even more unbearable. I know this from first-hand experience.
One day, I hope, we can evolve and mature enough to leave behind all the pitiful nonsense of religion and get to grips with the fact that life is what we experience now, between the womb and the tomb. We owe it to one another to make it a positive experience. Projections of an “afterlife” are just excuses for not dealing with things.
What goes with that is building our intelligence and critical faculties as beings sufficiently to have legal systems etc., that can live up to the moral and ethical demands of such choices.
Paul’s comment above makes me glad to be an atheist.
He says everyone has the right to end his/her life. It is indeed difficult to do so without making a mess of it, and not succeeding;-and that is why relying on a “do-it-yourself” “one-shot” may risk brain-damage ,vegetative state, or paralysis, without success in achieving death. As a Doctor I have seen “natural” haphazard dying, and it stinks.
That is precisely why the process should be made easy and reliable once the decision has been responsibly made.
Even if there was a God, which there isn’t, it is so arrogant to claim to speak for him and to know his alleged purpose.
Please leave God out of human affairs and confine him to his kennel in the sky.
Dr. (Med) Reg Le Sueur.
I was reading CNN this morning and could not believe that a place even existed that assisted in suicide. I think it is murder. How can any of you suggest that it is ok if you’re of sound and mind and being responsible about deciding to end your life? Any one who wants to die is not of sound and mind PERIOD! This is the craziest thing I have ever heard of. And just to be clear if your one who only believes in the womb to the tomb that is fine but most NORMAL people believe in a higher power to keep our sanity. We need hope that there is something better out there than this.. Paul I’m in the medical field too and I have seen thing that are unexplained, miracles that no doctor could have done. How can you say there is nothing more out there? I live and am an American. This country would never believe or allow anything like assisted suicide. Most of you other countries are freaking nuts!!!
Sorry Paul I meant that my last post for Reg Le Sueur,
“!Even if there was a God, which there isn’t, it is so arrogant to claim to speak for him and to know his alleged purpose.”
It is also arrogant to dismiss the existence of God, when you know you cannot prove that God does not exist.
ECRILEY
“This country would never believe or allow anything like assisted suicide. Most of you other countries are freaking nuts!!!”
If you had read the whole story you would have seen that the state of Oregon also permits physician-assisited suicide. So much for believing this country would never allow anything like this..
ECRILEY, You have obviously never witnessed the pain of mental illness ( of either the patient or that of their loved ones). They often endure years and years of PAIN from ineffective medication, often being used as guinea pigs when new drugs come on the market and their funds milked dry by years of psychiatric ‘help’ … so little is available and known on these illnesses. What scares me most is that you say you are in the medical field too and yet you speak in terms of “normal people” and then “freaking nuts”… !! Scary… and so judgemental… I say give them the choice to end their person hell, and not judge them on it. Every day you make a choices on how to live and how to die in everything you do, this is just a lot more “in your face”.
“It’s the craziest thing I ever heard of.”
ECRILEY:
Could you kindly elaborate on your statement above? I’d be interested in your findings and in knowing what exactly is crazy about a paralyzed person wanting suicide by any means.
As an able-bodied, independent person yourself, what insight and wisdom into paralysis do you usually share with victims to help them better appreciate their situation and not be so crazy?