UK Conductor And HIs Wife End Their Own Lives At Swiss Assisted Suicide Clinic

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Main Category: Seniors / Aging
Also Included In: Litigation / Medical Malpractice;  Mental Health
Article Date: 14 Jul 2009 - 8:00 PDT

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A well known UK orchestra conductor Sir Edward Thomas Downes, CBE, and his wife Lady Joan Downes have died after choosing to end their lives together at the Swiss assisted suicide clinic Dignitas.

Sir Edward who was 85 and suffering from a terminal illness, and his wife Joan who was 74 "died peacefully, and under circumstances of their own choosing" according to a statement issued by their family and reported by the BBC earlier today.

Their family said that the couple decided to end their lives together as they did not wish to struggle with health problems.

According to a statement issued by their son and daughter, Caractacus and Boudicca, who announced the death of their parents with "great sadness", the couple died on Friday 10 July, reported the Daily Telegraph.

Lady Joan was thought to have been suffering with cancer and Sir Edward was nearly blind and had lost much of his hearing.

The statement from the family said that the couple had been together for "54 happy years".

Sir Edward had led a vigorous, long and distinguished career as a conductor, including a 40-year association with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra; and before becoming her husband's personal assistant, Lady Joan had been a ballet dancer, a choreographer and a TV producer.

"They both lived life to the full and considered themselves to be extremely lucky to have lived such rewarding lives, both professionally and personally," said the statement.

A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police said their deaths were being investigated but there were no further details at this stage.

Sir Edward was born in Birmingham in 1924 and started playing the violin when he was 5 years old. Later on he won a scholarship to Aberdeen and then studied with the eminent German conductor Hermann Scherchen.

In the decades that followed he became Associate Music Director of the Royal Opera, and conducted over 50 seasons at Covent Garden.

He was Chief Guest Conductor at the BBC Philharmonic, and served as Principal Conductor from 1980 to 1991 and later became Conductor Emeritus.

Sir Edward, who became CBE in 1986 and was knighted in 1991, also held other positions with world famous orchestras in Australia and The Netherlands, and was showered with honours from several music colleges, universities, and other organizations, and won many awards, including the Laurence Olivier award.

The Swiss right-to-die organisation Dignitas that helped Sir Edward and Lady Joan end their lives has been in the news in the UK quite a lot recently.

More than 100 people from the UK have chosen to end their lives there, most of them because they were terminally ill.

In an interview on BBC Radio 4 in January this year, the founder and current leader of the clinic, lawyer-trained Ludwig Minelli defended helping Britons, including some psychiatric patients, to kill themselves.

He said that failed attempts to commit suicide were a huge cost for the NHS.

"I have a totally different attitude to suicide. I say suicide is a marvellous marvellous possibility given to a human being," said Minelli, who has since complained that many people took his phrase " I say suicide is a marvellous marvellous possibility" out of context.

On the Dignitas website is a defence of this statement that points out Minelli meant in the context of what he said next in the interview:

"Suicide is a very good possibility to escape a situation which you can't alter."

Another reason Dignitas has been in the news is because a former worker has been talking to the media about why she left the organisation and why she is campaigning to have it shut down.

In an interview with the Daily Mail in January, 51-year old nurse Soraya Wernli, who worked at Dignitas for two and a half years, accused the organisation of being more concerned with making money than about ethical euthanasia.

Wernli has issued lawsuits against Minelli, and for the last 8 months of her employ she worked as an undercover informant for the police, who according to the news report are also concerned about Minelli.

Wernli is writing a book titled The Business With The Deadly Cocktails where she promises to give details of how Dignitas was a "principled and necessary organisation gone bad", she told the Daily Mail.

She said one of the things that worried her was the speed with which people arrived, were quickly seen by Minelli, and then helped to die.

"People land at the airport, are ferried to his office, have their requisite half-an-hour with a doctor, get the barbiturates they need and are then sent off to die," she told the paper.

"This is the biggest step anyone will ever take. They should at least be allowed to stay overnight, to think about what they are doing," said Wernli.

There has also been criticism of the way that Dignitas helped a British 23-year old rugby player, Daniel James, to commit suicide last year after he was paralysed while playing rugby.

Marjorie Wallace, chief executive of mental health charity SANE told the BBC that Minelli was offering:

"A seductive but dangerous solution to the feelings of anguish and hopelessness experienced by some people with mental illness."

Instead of a "one-way ticket to despair and unnecessary death", people should have more options, such as greater access to effective treatment, she added.

Source: BBC, Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail, Dignitas.

Written by: Catharine Paddock, PhD
Copyright: Medical News Today
Not to be reproduced without permission of Medical News Today