Swiss Government Tries to Stop 'Suicide Tourists'

By Helena Bachmann
Geneva
Monday, Nov. 16, 2009

As a maxillofacial surgeon, Jerome Sobel has brought a smile — literally — to hundreds of patients' faces. But the Lausanne physician has a second job that is far more somber: helping terminally ill people end their lives. Sobel is president for French-speaking Switzerland's chapter of EXIT, an assisted-suicide organization that provides a lethal dose of barbiturates to terminally ill patients who want to end their life.

But Sobel may soon have less to do in that second job. The Swiss government, concerned that Switzerland is becoming a destination for "suicide tourism," wants to tighten its decades-old assisted-suicide law, considered to be the most liberal of its kind in the world. As it stands, the legislation permits assisted suicide if a physician is convinced that the patient has no chance of recovery, that he or she is mentally and physically capable of making the decision to die and that the patient administers the drug — about 10 grams of sodium pentobarbital mixed with a fruit juice — in a private residence. (If a third party administers the drug, the act is considered active euthanasia, which remains illegal in Switzerland, though not in the Netherlands or Belgium.)
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