10 November to 17 November

Whose life? Whose choice?

Dignitas, the Swiss organisation that helps people to end their lives, has featured frequently in our media over the past ten years or so, helping to popularize the idea that people who want to die for good reasons, have a right to help in achieving death. Its activities have stirred up ethical debate and attracted considerable controversy, as for example, when Robert and Jane Stokes went there to die, even though neither was suffering from a terminal illness, and more recently, when Daniel James, a 23 yr old ex rugby player, paralysed from the chest down, was taken to Switzerland by his parents, because he chose to die, rather than living the life he foresaw for himself.

It is difficult not to feel sympathy for Debbie Purdy, a woman living with Multiple Sclerosis who, at some point, expects to seek help in dying from Dignitas, and to empathise with her desire to ensure that her husband will not be prosecuted if he helps her to do so. However, since no-one who has helped a UK resident to access the help of Dignitas in dying has been prosecuted, her intention to 'protect' him by going to Switzerland alone, makes little sense.

Gavin Fairbairn is Running Stream Professor of Ethics and Language in the School of Applied Global Ethics