a 2010 interview with the BBC<\/a>, he said: “I am persuaded that we have to struggle in order to implement the last human right in our societies. And the last human right is the right to make a decision on one’s own end, and the possibility to have this end without risk and without pain.”<\/p>\nMinelli began his career as a journalist, working as a correspondent for the German news magazine Der Spiegel, before studying law and taking an interest in human rights.<\/p>\n
After founding Dignitas he faced numerous legal challenges, making multiple successful appeals to the Swiss supreme court.<\/p>\n
In a statement, Dignitas said his work had had a lasting influence, pointing to a 2011 ruling by the European Court of Human Rights, in which it confirmed the right of a person capable of judgement to decide on the manner and the time of their own end of life.<\/p>\n
Euthanasia – when a lethal drug is administered by a physician to deliberately end a person’s life to relieve suffering – is illegal in Switzerland.<\/p>\n
But assisted dying, in which a person receives lethal drugs from a medical practitioner which they then administer themselves, has been legal for decades.<\/p>\n
Dignitas said in a statement that it would continue to “manage and develop the association in the spirit of its founder as a professional and combative international organisation for self-determination and freedom of choice in life and at the end of life”.<\/p>\n
If you’ve been affected by issues in this article, help and support is available via the BBC Action Line<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Many people helped by Dignitas are those who have travelled to Switzerland because assisted dying is not permitted…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":292033,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-292032","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292032"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292032\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/292033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}