A terminally ill company director has announced the date of his death and funeral on LinkedIn, days before he plans to end his life at a clinic in Switzerland.
Simon Binner, 57, is planning to die on Monday at the Swiss facility after being diagnosed with motor neurone disease this year.
Mr Binner wrote under the “experience” section of the business networking site that he was employed as a “patient” at “motor neurone disease”.
He posted: “I was diagnosed with aggressive motor neurone disease (MND) on Jan 7 2015. As I was driven home I had already decided what I would gladly have to do when my time was upon me.
“I died in Switzerland with Eternal Spirit on Mon Oct 19 2015 and my funeral was on Fri Nov 13 2015.
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“My MND accelerated very rapidly. The sawbones initially thought I would last until 2017-18, but they were mistaken — no worries, it’s an inexact science!
“I don’t recommend MND! Better to have one massive fatal stroke or be killed instantly by a drunk driver! There is nothing that I can say that’s positive about MND.”
The Cambridge graduate, who lives in Purley, Surrey, with his wife, Debbie, has already handed over his role as operations director at Caremark, a health and social care provider in Sutton, southwest London.
Mr Binner’s decision to end his life through assisted suicide at the Eternal Spirit clinic in Switzerland comes despite him saying in a video on Facebook that he did not want to go to abroad to die.
He said: “I don’t want to go Switzerland to die there; I don’t want to go to hospital . . . I want to be here for Christmas but I can’t be here.”
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Mrs Binner, who has campaigned for changes to medical law after her daughter died from bone cancer aged 18, said she had conflicting feelings about the decision.
“He said he was utterly determined that he did not want to go through the process of MND. He has never wavered from the view.
“I am somebody who does not believe generally in assisted suicide. But it’s hard that I should force someone to stay alive and go through this process because of my beliefs.”
She added: “The most important thing to say is that Simon believes that if that was available in the UK he may well want to stay alive longer. Christmas would be lovely for us to have.
“But he feels he has to go at a time when he can walk on to the plane because he has to do that stuff himself.
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“It feels a very brutal pre-planned thing that we are going to have to do.”
Last night, Andrew Copson, chief executive of the British Humanist Association, said “The tragedy at the heart of Simon’s story is that if the law allowed people with incurable and terminal conditions to seek a doctor-assisted death in this country, he and others like him would have more time to spend with their loved ones.”