A British woman with an incurable brain disease committed assisted suicide in Switzerland today, surrounded by her loving family but hundreds of miles from home.
Retired doctor Anne Turner, from Bath, died with the help of medics from the Dignitas clinic in Zurich on the day before her 67th birthday.
Dr Turner was suffering from Progressive Supranuclear Palsy, or PSP, the degenerative disease which killed the actor Dudley Moore in 2002. She died at 1235 GMT at a flat in Zurich after drinking a lethal dose of barbiturates.
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In an interview recorded days before her death, she said that legislation should be changed so that terminally ill patients who wanted to commit suicide did not have to die while they were still able to travel abroad. “I think it is very, very important that people have the opportunity to do in this country (the UK) what I’m going to do,” she said in an interview given to the Press Association last week at her home in Bath.
Emerging from the flat shortly after his mother’s death, Edward, 39, an accountant from Fitzrovia, London, said: “She was ready to go and that makes it all the easier for us. We will respect her choice and we will miss her very much. We are very thankful that her suffering is over.”
Dr Turner was in the relatively early stages of the disease and was still able to walk unaided. She was accompanied to Switzerland by Edward and her daughters Sophie Pandit, 41, an actor, and Jessica Wharton, 37, a legal executive. She also invited a group of journalists and gave a series of emotional interviews in her final hours.
This morning at her hotel overlooking the city’s major lake, the Zurichsee, Dr Turner said she remained determined to carry out the act. “I am just so tired of being dependent on people,” she said. “But I have been forced to die in a strange country, not at home.” She added: “This time, it is really going to work. I do not want to go home.”
Her children believe that their mother’s decision to commit suicide while still only partially disabled will re-ignite the debate over existing laws.
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Dr Turner survived breast cancer after undergoing a mastectomy in 2004. She attempted to commit suicide by suffocation at her home in Bath last October, but failed.
She had already watched her husband Jack, a GP, die lingering death from the degenerative disease Multiple Systems Atrophy in September 2002. His younger brother had died of Motor Neurone Disease a few months earlier. She decided not to suffer as they had.
Dr Turner, who ran a family planning clinic, said last week: “I have been seen by one psychiatrist three times and by another one once - and they left no questions about my soundness of mind. Nor did they think I was depressed - and I do not think I am. My three children all support my decision, especially as we have all seen the effect of a very similar illness in my husband: his terrible suffering, loss of dignity and his long slow demise.
“I feel strongly that assisted suicide should become legal in this country. In order to ensure that I am able to swallow the medication that will kill me, I have to go to Switzerland before I am totally incapacitated and unable to travel. If I knew that when things got so bad, I would be able to request assisted suicide in Britain, then I would not have to die before I am completely ready to do so.”
She added: “I know that I am more fortunate than many other people in my situation, in that I have the knowledge and the finances and the support of my family to make assisted suicide in Switzerland possible. To die with dignity should be everybody’s right.”
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She said she had suffered “several nasty falls” since early 2003 - her disease can affect balance - breaking her wrist twice and thumb once. According to the PSP Association, patients live for an average of seven years with the disease and can survive for even longer.
Dr Turner was the 42nd Briton to commit assisted suicide with Dignitas, and the organisation currently has nearly 700 British members. The first publicised British case - and the second Briton to die with Dignitas’s help - was Reg Crew in January 2003.
Edward described the family’s final hours together, saying they “chatted together, sang some songs and joked”. He also praised Dignitas as “superb”, adding: “We are just full of admiration for the way they have helped my mother through this very difficult time.”
Speaking before his mother’s death, Edward said the family had enjoyed a Beethoven and Rachmaninov concert after arriving in Switzerland on Sunday, took a boat trip on the city’s famous lakes and rivers and a ride on its trams.
“We bought a bottle of champagne at dinner last night and then had a good cry as we drank,” he said. “Everyone in the restaurant was good enough not to stare at us.”
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Before travelling to the clinic, Sophie wept as she told invited journalists: “At the moment, there is a living, breathing person in front of us who, in a few hours, is not going to be here - I just can’t get my head around that.
“It has constantly been coming up in conversation. None of us has been pretending it’s not going to happen.”
Edward added: “One of the ways we cope is by understanding how much mummy wants this to happen. She is so brave. We can’t imagine having to do this ourselves.”
He said that the family had been unable to dissuade her from suicide. “Mother announced the diagnosis in December 2004 and said, in the same breath, ‘I am going to kill myself’. We have spent a lot of time in denial, not wanting to bring it up and hoping she’s forgotten.”
Speaking before Dr Turner’s death, Sophie said: “We’ve been saying things like ‘Oh, she’s bought a new duvet cover - that must mean she must want to stay’. But now we’ve had a year to get our heads around it, and we have accepted it.”
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Speaking a few moments after Dr Turner’s death, Edward said: “She took the final dose at about 1.05pm (Swiss time) and, within five minutes, she was asleep. She went into a very deep coma and her breathing just slowed and, by 1.35pm, she was pronounced dead. We are just waiting for the police to get here.”
Local officers are called to the Dignitas flat routinely after an assisted suicide.
Edward went on: “We would have liked to have had her around for longer, of course. But she has got to die some time and she has got to die when it’s right for her and not for us.”
Sophie said: “I was very glad it was peaceful. I’m so relieved that she’s not suffering anymore but it is still a terrible shock.”
Deborah Annetts, chief executive of Dignity in Dying, renamed this week from the Voluntary Euthanasia Society, described Dr Turner’s case as “truly heart-breaking”.
She said: “In Britain, the lack of choice for terminally ill people drives those like Anne Turner to take matters into their own hands while their illness allows them to. Our law is shortening rather than prolonging life.”