In recent days, a lively debate oneuthanasia raises Britain. It follows the English-speaking press articles relating the euthanasia of a septuagenarian who refused to see herself grow old.
On July 21, Gill Pharaoh, 75, chose to be euthanized in Switzerland when she is in perfect health. Convinced that old age is no picnic, this former palliative care nurse went to a clinic in Basel (Switzerland) to die there. If this act may seem unreasonable, the Briton did it knowingly, because she refuses that “people remember her as a kind of old lady limping in the street”, she said told the Sunday Times.
For the old lady, who has spent her life in the service of the elderly, “the reality of old age is not often understood”, far from being funny and even “generally awful”.
“I want to die having my mind and being able to fend for myself. I don’t want to be a burden for the people I love around me, ”she told the English-speaking press. Aware that her choice is not easy to understand, she even justified herself on a blog. On the side of her entourage, the septuagenarian assured to have received the support of her children and her companion, even if her decision was difficult for her daughter to accept. The nurse, author of two books on old age, took a walk in the city of Basel then a dinner on the banks of the Rhine with her companion, before going to the clinic to “die with dignity” as she wished. .
If it seems to be anecdotal, the case of this Briton is far from being an exception. Between 2008 and 2012, the number of “suicide tourists” doubled in Switzerland according to a study conducted by researchers from Zurich. During these 4 years, 611 people from 31 different countries would have come to be euthanized in Switzerland. Among them, there are 126 British, 268 Germans and 66 French. Paradoxically, and in the absence of laws on euthanasia in these countries, death tourism seems to have a bright future ahead.
Read also :
Assisted suicide: more and more patients choose it
Euthanasia: the American with cancer committed suicide
In the Netherlands, pediatricians want to allow euthanasia for children under 12
