Britons who have died with Dignitas
More than 115 Britons have travelled to Switzerland to end their life at the Dignitas clinic since it opened 11 years ago.
Clients pay £6,000 to give themselves a lethal dose of barbiturate. The drug induces a deep sleep within minutes of drinking it, which will lead to a peaceful and painless death, according to Dignitas.
Patients are left alone in a flat as they do so but their death is filmed and the footage handed to a coroner to prove there has been no coercion.
The centre, founded by lawyer Ludwig Minelli as a non-profit organisation, operates in a legal limbo. It is permissible under Swiss law so long as no one assisted in the suicide for selfish gain.
The clinic most recently hit the headlines in December when the death of motor neurone disease sufferer Craig Ewert, 59, at the clinic was shown on a Sky documentary.
Daniel James, 23, from Worcester who was left paralysed from the chest down in a rugby accident, sparked a debate about the morality of assisting the non-terminally ill to die when he took his own life at the clinic in September.
His parents, Mark and Julie, who were at his bedside when he died, found themselves under investigation by police. The Director of Public Prosecutions later ruled that bringing charges would not be in the "public interest".
However, when multiple sclerosis sufferer Debbie Purdy attempted to clarify the law by seeking a guarantee her husband would not be prosecuted for taking her to Switzerland, three High Court judges declined to offer the "absolute security of mind" she sought.
A move to make it legal to help a terminally ill person to die was also recently defeated in the House of Lords. Under British law, doctors have the final say on withholding care including food and water, but it is not illegal for patients to starve themselves. Anyone who refuses water or food must be reported to the Care Quality Commission. Their death would be recorded as suicide.
Physician-assisted suicide using a lethal dose of medication is illegal.
