The controversial suicide clinic Dignitas is under investigation by the Swiss authorities over claims that it provided drugs to a patient to allow him to end his life, despite his distressed mental condition.
Swiss laws on assisted suicide state that each patient must be of sound mind and able to understand the consequences of their actions. But details have now emerged that a DIY suicide kit prescribed by a Zurich gynaeologist was given to a 39-year-old Spanish man in spite of the fact that he suffered from paranoid schizophrenia.
Under Swiss law the deadly substance can only be provided to individuals after careful consideration of the facts of the case. However, a Dignitas report on the patient’s mental state was a few lines that barely covered half a page of A4 paper.
The authorities described the incident as a ‘serious neglect of care’ and warned that the doctor should have investigated more carefully.
Dignitas has long campaigned for further liberalisation of the law claiming that anyone should be able to seek assistance in ending their life, irrespective of whether or not they are terminally ill.
It attracted strong criticism in 2005 when one of its doctors administered a lethal cocktail of drugs to a German suicide tourist provided documents that falsely reported that she was terminally ill.
The elderly German woman had persuaded her GP in Germany to provide the report indicating that she was terminally ill with cirrhosis of the liver, saying she needed it for work reasons. The woman then used the certificate to seek help from doctors at the Swiss clinic, who assisted her suicide. Her German GP, who has not been named, said he had no idea what she was really going to do with the certificate, the Daily Mail reported.
At the time, Dignitas founder Ludwig Minelli, a Swiss lawyer, denied the organisation had done anything wrong. He said: ‘The doctor's report that I was given indicated the woman was suffering from cirrhosis of the liver as well as hepatitis.’
Despite the deception, he defended the action, saying: ‘Every person in Europe has the right to choose to die, even if they are not terminally ill.’
Dignitas, which was founded in 1998, has been the subject of fierce criticism since its inception.
Soraya Wernli, a nurse employed by Dignitas for two-and-a-half years, until March 2005, accused the organisation of being a 'production line of death concerned only with profits'. She resigned from her job at the clinic and contacted the Swiss police.
In April 2010, police divers found a group of over 60 cremation urns in Lake Zurich. Each of the urns bore the logo of the Nordheim crematorium used by Dignitas. Ms Wernli told The Times 18 months before the incident that the clinic had dropped at least 300 urns in the lake.
In March 2010, Ludwig Minelli admitted in an interview with The Atlantic, a US magazine, that when he had enough urns to fill his car he drove to a quiet spot on Lake Zurich and tossed them into the water.