Pegasos association rekindles controversy over assisted suicide in Switzerland

Journey of no return: the barbiturate sodium pentobarbital is the drug of choice for euthanasia in Switzerland. KEYSTONE/Alessandro Della Bella

British families have accused the Swiss association Pegasos of helping their loved ones to die without genuine medical justification. Based in canton Solothurn, the organisation defends its legality and ethics, but its methods have reignited debate about the limits of assisted suicide in Switzerland.

In a London suburb, Judith Hamilton is living a nightmare. Her son Alastair, 47, had told her he was going on holiday to Paris. A few days later, police discovered that he had instead travelled to Switzerland to die with the help of Pegasos, an assisted suicide organisation. “He hugged me and said, ‘I love you, Mum’. I didn’t know it was his farewell,” says Hamilton.

Alastair had been suffering from unexplained abdominal pain but was not terminally ill. “His life wasn’t perfect, but it was one that thousands of people would have been happy to have,” his mother adds.

When she later checked her bank statements, she found a payment of CHF12,000 ($15,100) to Pegasos. “It’s like a business. If you have enough money, they offer you a service,” she complains.

An organisation under scrutiny

Founded in 2019, Pegasos primarily serves foreigners. Its conditions are straightforward: applicants must be over 18, considered lucid, and able to pay the required fees. Unlike other Swiss associations, Pegasos does not require an incurable illness.

This model outrages David Canning, whose sister Anne ended her life in canton Solothurn in January. “I thought there would be a psychiatric assessment, an interview, that it would take several days. In reality, everything was done in a morning,” he says.

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Pegasos recently moved to Roderis, a quiet hamlet in the Solothurn municipality of Nunningen, where it operates from a new building. Local residents say they feel uneasy. “We received a letter announcing their arrival. We had to come to terms with it,” says one. The mayor of Nunningen, Philipp Muster, is now seeking to have the association’s planning permission revoked. A petition with several hundred signatures has been filed against its presence.

A grey legal area

In Switzerland, Article 115 of the Criminal CodeExternal link regulates assisted suicide: it is permitted only if it is not motivated by selfish interests. “If you get rich, it’s no longer altruistic,” explains Meret Rehmann, a lawyer in Basel. “The problem is proving how the money is used,” she adds.

This legal ambiguity has raised concern among other associations. “These are cases we would never take on,” says Jean-Jacques Bise, president of Exit Suisse Romande. “With us, the request must be justified, repeated and validated by a doctor.”

Price differences also raise questions: Exit Suisse Romande charges CHF100 for assisted suicide, compared with around CHF10,000 at Pegasos.

Pegasos defends itself

Contacted by Swiss public broadcaster RTS, Pegasos refused requests for an interview. On its website, it refers to the “fundamental human right” to choose the manner and timing of one’s death.

However, a Pegasos representative agreed to speak. Sean Davidson, based in the United Kingdom, helps organise journeys to Switzerland. He insists that the organisation simply helps foreigners benefit from Swiss law on assisted suicide and that money is not the driving force.

“I find Pegasos very efficient. They want to minimise the stress and difficulty of coming from abroad, which is already complicated enough, but without unnecessary paperwork. It’s simplified, efficient, and fully compliant with Swiss law. They carefully verify medical records and conduct thorough psychiatric and medical assessments,” he says.

For Davidson, all Pegasos clients are fully informed and resolute. Yet he admits that mistakes have been made. “Errors occurred, but they won’t happen again. This has led to a change in Pegasos’s policy. The association had a broad definition of admission criteria and went through a learning phase. It now applies a strict rule: anyone coming to Switzerland must have informed their family. There has to be communication between the person, their family and Pegasos,” he explains.

Relatives left uninformed

Those assurances fail to convince Megan Royal. Her mother, Maureen, 58, travelled to Switzerland this summer to die, despite Pegasos’s new procedures. Royal says she was shocked by how she was informed. “They sent me a message on WhatsApp – it’s an insult. The whole process lacked dignity,” she says.

Maureen had suffered from undiagnosed pain and, according to her daughter, possible mental health problems. This time Pegasos attempted to contact the family in writing, but Royal says her mother impersonated her by email. “They said they had verified my letter by contacting me via a fake email address. If they had checked properly, they would have seen they were writing to my mother, not to me,” she says.

Following the incident, Pegasos promised to verify relatives’ identities through video calls. But for Royal, it is too late. “If Pegasos had kept its promises – or better still, didn’t exist – all the families who went through what we did wouldn’t be in this pain,” she says.

For Royal, mourning has only just begun. And she is not alone. According to RTS, between 200 and 300 people choose to end their lives each year in Switzerland with the help of Pegasos.

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A legal vacuum in the UK

In the UK, where assisted suicide is still illegal, families often find themselves at a loss. “My wife had to go to Switzerland because the law here is cruel and unfair,” says David Sowry, who is protesting outside parliament for a change in the law.

A British bill is being discussed, but it would only apply to patients at the end of their lives. For Sara Fenton, whose husband has also travelled to Switzerland, this still pushes patients to “leave too early, for fear of not being accepted later or of simply being too ill to travel”.

Translated from French using DeepL/amva/ts