British woman with no illness to end life at Swiss assisted dying clinic this week

A British woman who is not severely ill is to die by assisted dying in Switzerland this week.

Wendy Duffy, 56, boarded a one-way flight to the central European country yesterday to use a £10,000 ‘suicide clinic’ in Pegasos.

The former care worker told the Daily Mail that she had planned her death for more than a year, including the final thing she would hear.

‘You can choose whatever song you want. I’m going to go out to Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars singing Die With A Smile,’ she said.

‘You’ll never be able to hear that song now without thinking of me, will you?’

For decades, Switzerland was one of the few countries to allow a doctor to help severely ill patients end their lives with medication, or the ‘right to die’.

Wendy, however, is physically healthy. She lost her only child, Marcus, 23, four years ago and now wants to die in a ‘neat’ and controlled way.

Pegasos has less stringent rules than Digitas; its assisted suicide procedures include a lengthy evaluation of a written request and medical information and at least two face-to-face meetings with a doctor.

Patients must show they are mentally competent and have not been pushed toward the decision by anyone with an ulterior motive.

Some European countries and Colombia offer people with an irremediable suffering from conditions such as depression to seek assisted death. 

Pegasos concluded that Wendy meets the clinic’s criteria and will now undergo days of evaluation.

The process of physician-assisted death, she explained, involved her administering a medication herself by turning a dial.

Wendy added: ‘Then – ding, ding, ding – within a minute, you are in a coma, and a minute after that, you are gone.’

At least one British citizen per week travels to Switzerland for an assisted death, according to the Assisted Dying Coalition.

It’s a well-known fact why people book one-way flights to Switzerland for this reason, Wendy explains, something her family know, too.

She said: ‘Pegasos have been in touch with them. I will call them when I get to Switzerland. It will be a hard call where I’ll say goodbye and thank them. But they will get it. They know.

‘Honestly, 100%, they know that I’m not happy, that I don’t want to be here.’

Pegasus founder Ruedi Habegger said: ‘Wendy is very decided. I saw her at her hotel today, I had a long talk with her and with the psychiatrist that is going to see her a second time before the VAD [voluntary assisted death].

‘He is very confident that we are doing the right thing letting her go, that we should not stand in her way.

‘She is absolutely not in a depressive state. I’m very experienced in this field. There are no worries with Wendy, none at all.’

A UK law that could permit physician-assisted death under narrow circumstances is being debated in the House of Lords tomorrow.

It has faced fierce opposition from more than 60 groups for people with disabilities, who argue they may face subtle coercion to end their lives.

For Wendy, death is something she has seen a ‘million times’; ‘Nice deaths, horrible deaths’.

”You could give me a house full of dogs,’ she adds. ‘I’m doing this.’

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