104-year-old dies in assisted suicide in Switzerland

A 104-year-old Australian biologist who drew international attention to his right-to-die case ended his life in Switzerland on Thursday, an advocacy group said.

Philip Nitschke, director of Exit International, said David Goodall was declared dead at 12-30 p.m. in Liestal, a town outside the city of Basel, where he had travelled to take advantage of Switzerland’s assisted-suicide laws.

“My life has been rather poor for the last year or so. And I’m very happy to end it,” Mr. Goodall said on Thursday in the room where he later died.

The British-born scientist said this week that he had been contemplating the idea of suicide for about 20 years, but only started thinking about it for himself after his quality of life deteriorated over the last year.

Assisted suicide is legal in Switzerland, but frowned upon by many doctors and some others who say it should be reserved for the terminally ill. Mr. Goodall’s supporters want the practice to be more accepted as a legitimate choice for elderly people in sound mind.

Mr. Goodall took his life with an intravenous drip of pentobarbital, a chemical often used as an anesthetic but which is lethal in excessive doses. A doctor put a cannula in his arm, and Mr. Goodall turned a wheel to allow the solution to flow, Exit International said.

Mr. Nitschke said that, before activating the drip, Mr. Goodall had to answer “several questions so he knew who he was, where he was and what he was about to do.” “He answered those questions with great clarity, activated the process” , he added.