Has Swiss euthanasia group Dignitas gone too far?
Geneva/Zurich – The Swiss Dignitas organization has long been controversial for its assisted suicides and the legal grey area that practice inhabits. However, a report on Swiss television on the assisted suicide of two Germans at a car park in the woodlands near Zurich has caused a fresh storm of protest. The two men, aged 50 and 65 years and from the southern German states of Bavaria and Baden-Wuerrtemberg across the Swiss border, took their lives in a car in a parking lot in the town of Maur, east of the city of Zurich. Active euthanasia is banned in Switzerland. However, under Swiss law a terminally ill person wanting to die can be offered a poison, which they then take voluntarily. The mayor of the 9,000-strong community of Maur, Bruno Sauter, has called the car deaths “impious and distasteful.” It is not the first time Sauter has encountered assisted suicide. Dignitas founder Ludwig Minelli, 75, lives in his district and Minelli is said to have earlier permitted a German woman to
