The assisted suicide organisation, Dignitas, has lost an appeal to be permitted to store natrium-pentobarbital for use by patients wishing to die.
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Switzerland’s highest court ruled on Wednesday that natrium-pentobarbital falls under the law on narcotics.
It said that permission could be granted to national and international organisations to use the substance in emergencies to preserve life, but this could not be extended to Dignitas.
It explained that Dignitas is a private organisation and wants to use the narcotic to take life rather than save it.
Meanwhile a poll to be published in the French-language magazine Hebdo on Thursday shows that three quarters of people in Switzerland are “fairly or greatly” in favour of assisted suicide, and that 56 per cent would consider using it if they were suffering from a serious incurable disease.
However, opinions were almost equally divided as to whether foreigners should be allowed to travel to Switzerland in order to die.
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Terminally ill British couple die in Switzerland
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Peter and Penelope Duff, aged 80 and 70 respectively, had both been suffering from cancer. They kept secret their plans to travel to the Dignitas clinic near Zurich, where they received help with assisted suicide. The couple died on February 27. They had told friends and neighbours they were moving out of their home in…
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Swiss surgeon Jérôme Sobel, president of the Swiss assisted suicide organisation Exit, talks to swissinfo about the realities of assisted death in Switzerland and Europe. Craig Ewert, a 59-year-old motor neurone disease sufferer from Harrogate, Britain, died in Switzerland in 2006, having been helped by the controversial charity Dignitas. Last week television channel Sky News…
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Most affected are patients from abroad, as the Dignitas organisation is the only one in Switzerland to offer this help to non-residents. In summer Dignitas lost the lease on the flat in a Zurich suburb it had used for eight years. Since then it has moved several times, but has so far been unable to…
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If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.