Lesley Bassett, the face of the first UK chapter of Exit, a euthanasia group that campaigns for legal suicide, on why her best friend\u2019s death and her role in it changed the course of her life.<\/p>\n
Lesley Bassett is nervous, but hiding it behind a welcoming smile. It\u2019s a wet Saturday morning in October, and she\u2019s handing out name badges to the people streaming into a hired meeting hall in Covent Garden, central London.<\/p>\n
Everyone here looks over 60: the men are dressed in jackets and ties, the women wear pastel cardigans and pretty scarves. Genteel enough to be mistaken for a bridge club or the audience at a classical recital, this is in fact the inaugural meeting of Exit UK, a grassroots voluntary euthanasia group.<\/p>\n
These people have paid to be here because they want to learn how to kill themselves, and they are expecting Bassett to help teach them how.<\/p>\n
Bassett is coordinator of the recently launched UK chapter of Exit International, an Australian-based organisation that makes Dignitas look conservative. Where other right-to-die organisations argue that terminally ill people should have the right to choose the time and manner of their own death, Exit argues that anyone of sound mind should have the means to end their own life, whenever and wherever they like. You don\u2019t have to be ill, or even old: Exit membership is officially open to over-50s, but younger people are considered on a case-by-case basis.<\/p>\n
For a fee, members get information, advice and equipment to help them end their lives. Such was the demand for Exit in Britain that its UK office opened this summer.<\/p>\n
By day, Bassett, 64, is a cake designer. Now she is also the face of an organisation that has been labelled in the press as the \u201cUK suicide club\u201d. When she took the post in July, she thought she\u2019d just be answering the phones for five hours a week, but they never stopped ringing. Soon it became 10 hours, then four days of paid work. In practice, she\u2019s working seven days a week, her cake business neglected.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve arrived at the meeting 45 minutes early and already 50 folding chairs are taken. No one can tell me for certain how many British members Exit has, but its HQ in Australia estimates there are at least 1,000. A woman with a puff of white hair is handing out tea, biscuits and leaflets to the expectant audience: suggestion forms for future meetings, other forms calling for more volunteers. The meeting hall doubles as a dance rehearsal space and there\u2019s a large mirror at one end of the room. People try to avoid staring at their own reflection as they wait for Bassett to begin.<\/p>\n
There are trestle tables with books for sale, all written by Dr Philip Nitschke, the mercurial and controversial founder of Exit International. There\u2019s his autobiography, Damned If I Do, for \u00a325; his first book, a philosophical treatise entitled Killing Me Softly, for \u00a322; and his handbook for \u00a320. You can fill in a form to order equipment costing hundreds of pounds from Nitschke\u2019s company, and that\u2019s on top of membership, which starts at \u00a362 a year.<\/p>\n
Nitschke isn\u2019t here today, but he is still the most powerful person in the room. I have been given his blessing to attend the meeting, and when I introduce myself, all anyone wants to know is whether I\u2019ve met him in person: have I seen his videos, have I read his handbook?<\/p>\n
A charismatic public speaker, who favours colourful shirts and bright ties, Nitschke made headlines recently by calling for prisoners sentenced to life without parole to be given the option of suicide. He is currently appealing against the Australian Medical Board\u2019s decision to suspend his licence to practise, after a man called Nigel Brayley attended one of his workshops earlier this year and emailed for advice about ending his life. Nitschke didn\u2019t know it, but Brayley was under investigation for the possible murder of his ex-wife, and killed himself before charges could be brought.<\/p>\n
A few years ago, Nitschke announced plans for a \u201cdeath ship\u201d, where he could euthanise people in international waters, though these never came to fruition. Every year, he comes to the UK to give a workshop, and as many as 200 members pay extra to see him. It was their success that led to the creation of the UK office (there are also branches in LA and New Zealand).<\/p>\n
The members here today look like the sort who can afford the costs involved with being part of Exit. They are a noticeably homogeneous group: white, middle class, equally split between male and female. Most have come on their own. They are what Nitschke calls \u201cbaby boomer types who are used to getting their own way\u201d: independent, educated, retired professionals. They are lively, animated, afraid of what a life prolonged by modern medicine might mean for them. Several are filling in equipment order forms as Bassett calls the meeting to order.<\/p>\n
The meeting itself is a bit of a mess. A guest speaker from Exit Australia, Johannes Klabbers, dressed from head to toe in black and reading from a MacBook Air, talks for the first 40 minutes about defending Exit from its enemies: in the media, the church, the government and the medical profession. \u201cWe are painted as sinister people who sidle up to you in the street and say, \u2018Have you thought about ending your life?\u2019 It\u2019s just absurd,\u201d he declares.<\/p>\n
But the audience is impatient to move on to more practical matters. Hands go up as soon as Bassett takes the floor, and her speech becomes a Q&A session. Most of the questions are about where they can buy euthanising drugs. The drugs Exit recommends are controlled substances, illegal to sell privately or possess in the UK. But even though they would be breaking the law by importing them, many of the people here are prepared to try. When a woman in a pink pashmina brings up the problems she\u2019s been having with some of the recommended suppliers, there are nods all round. Trusted sources seem to be drying up. Someone asks Bassett if they could get the equipment Nitschke recommends cheaper if they didn\u2019t buy it through Exit, but she doesn\u2019t mince her words. \u201cThat would mean cutting off the lifeblood of Exit. If we don\u2019t support Exit\u2019s work and research, they\u2019re going to go under.\u201d<\/p>\n
Exit\u2019s website says it is a not-for-profit organisation, but its reliance for funding on those considering taking their own lives is controversial. Not Dead Yet, a British alliance of disabled people who oppose any change in the law on assisted dying, say: \u201cNitschke is not only playing on people\u2019s emotions, but he is profiting from them.\u201d The anti-euthanasia group Care Not Killing has described him as \u201can extremist and self-publicist whose presence in the UK puts the lives of vulnerable elderly, depressed and disabled people at grave risk\u201d. These groups argue that any change to the law on assisted dying would devalue and endanger the lives of old, weak or ill people, placing pressure on them to end their lives for fear of being a financial or emotional burden on others. Even Dignity In Dying, which supports a change in the law, believes Nitschke\u2019s workshops are \u201cirresponsible and potentially dangerous\u201d.<\/p>\n
Recently, the right-to-die movement has gathered new momentum. Lord Falconer\u2019s assisted dying bill, which would allow terminally ill people with less than six months to live to be helped to end their lives, is currently progressing through the House of Lords. Campaigners for and against the bill protested outside the Lords earlier this month, but polls show that almost three-quarters of the British public support it. High-profile cases such as those of Tony Nicklinson and Jean Davies, both of whom starved themselves to death because they could not be legally assisted to die, have helped harness public support. The current laws surrounding assisted suicide and the right to die are patchily enforced, many argue. Earlier this month, the deputy chair of the British Medical Association, Dr Kailash Chand, claimed that the present law facilitated \u201ca two-tier system \u2013 one for the people who have the resources and money to go to the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland and another for the majority of people who don\u2019t\u201d. He predicted the law would change \u201cwithin two to three years\u201d.<\/p>\n
But the people in this room aren\u2019t prepared to wait. They want to be in charge of their own destinies now; to be able to end their lives if and when they decide. While Nitschke\u2019s detractors have dubbed him \u201cDr Death\u201d, these people see him as a maverick, a hero.<\/p>\n
After the meeting, many are keen to talk to me. \u201cThe myth that if Philip says something, then everyone\u2019s going to rush out and kill themselves is just ridiculous,\u201d laughs William, a wiry man in his 70s. \u201cI\u2019ve been a member for six years, I learned all about it years ago and I haven\u2019t done myself in.\u201d<\/p>\n
Anne has arthritis but she\u2019s otherwise well. \u201cI\u2019ve had a good innings and I\u2019ll be 75 in a couple of months,\u201d she says. \u201cGradually I\u2019m being closed off, can\u2019t do this, can\u2019t do that, and I can see the trajectory of my life: I\u2019ll become more of a nuisance to everybody else and there will be more visits to hospital, more pain and unpleasantness.\u201d She has already bought the necessary drugs. \u201cIt\u2019s really stupid to prevent people taking their own life because it just means they\u2019re going to do it in messy ways instead.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m always hoping I\u2019ll come along and they\u2019ll say, \u2018Good news \u2013 it\u2019s available from Lidl.\u2019 Or a nice gift pack from Waitrose,\u201d says Christopher Pearce. \u201cThey never do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Exit\u2019s UK office is in fact a room on an industrial estate in Kent. I meet Bassett there a couple of weeks later, among corrugated iron warehouses on the river Medway. This is where she runs her cake business, but it\u2019s not the bright, sugary world I was expecting. We talk at a nondescript meeting table, where cake decorating equipment lies next to books about suicide.<\/p>\n
She talks me through a typical day. \u201cFirst thing in the morning, when I\u2019m still in my jimjams, I open my computer, because Australia will have been around for a few hours by then. Then I\u2019ll check the phone messages. We might get six or eight in a day. It doesn\u2019t sound a lot, but the return calls can be quite tricky and long.\u201d<\/p>\n
There are two categories of caller that Bassett finds the most difficult. \u201cThere are young people. You can tell they\u2019re depressed, and you can tell they\u2019re not 50, 60, 70 years old. That\u2019s an absolute no. We can\u2019t.\u201d She shuts her eyes. \u201cYou say all the things: \u2018Have you spoken to your GP? Have you had counselling?\u2019 They don\u2019t want to hear that, yet I\u2019ve got to say it. Their line is usually, \u2018They can\u2019t help me. Help me to get [drugs].\u2019 But I can\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then there are the people calling on behalf of someone else: people who want to assist a suicide. \u201cWe have to say, \u2018We cannot encourage you to do this\u2019,\u201d Bassett says. \u201cIt\u2019s very tough. Some of the stories of situations people are in are similar to my story, and I could tell them things that would help. I wish I could. But I can\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bassett\u2019s story begins in 1994, before she was in the cake business, when she started working in financial services with a woman called Sylvia Alper. Five years younger than Bassett, Alper was already her boss\u2019s boss, \u201cquite an elevated career woman, quite bossy\u201d. Bassett had split up with her long-term partner. \u201cI\u2019d got over the misery of it and started to think, this isn\u2019t half bad, you can do a lot when you\u2019re on your own. She was having a horrid time with her husband and could see that there was a different life to be had.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Alper got divorced, they became best friends, going to the cinema and theatre, travelling together. \u201cWe walked our legs off around Europe. You\u2019re looking around and then you look at each other and think, how lucky are we that we\u2019re here? Just enjoying things.\u201d She shows me a photograph of the two of them at a table in an Italian square, taken in the late 90s. Alper has a thick cascade of dark curls, Bassett has the same cropped hair and elfin features as she does now; both have broad smiles. \u201cIt shouldn\u2019t have worked because we were such different people, but it just did,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
From early in their friendship, Bassett knew Alper had multiple sclerosis. From time to time she\u2019d lose full use of an eye or a leg, but her sight and mobility would eventually return. Soon both Bassett and Alper found new partners, and Alper moved to Eastbourne; they saw less of each other but kept in touch on the phone. Over the years, she stopped getting better. By 2013 Bassett\u2019s fiercely independent friend was in a wheelchair, relying on round-the-clock care.<\/p>\n
Alper had always said that when the time came, she\u2019d want to go to Dignitas. In April she invited Bassett to come for lunch. \u201cThat\u2019s when she said that she wanted me to do the research. It was like we were back at work and she was giving me a project, and I was taking note and saying, \u2018Right, OK.\u2019 I went off and kind of did it as an assignment.\u201d<\/p>\n
But they quickly ruled out Dignitas: Alper was in no state to travel to Switzerland, and even if they could have worked out a way of getting there, it was going to cost \u00a312,000 or \u00a313,000. When I ask why, Bassett gives a wry smile. \u201cThere\u2019s no reason for it to cost so much, apart from that\u2019s what they charge.\u201d The current Dignitas brochure puts the cost at \u00a37,875, including doctors\u2019 fees, administration, funeral and registry office expenses, but not transport, accommodation or membership fees.<\/p>\n
Alper didn\u2019t want to spend money she could leave to her second husband \u2013 and he refused to take her to Dignitas anyway. \u201cHe couldn\u2019t be the instrument of her death. So whatever we did next had to be behind his back.\u201d Bassett is so matter-of-fact about this. Did she ever have any doubts? \u201cSylvia was very single-minded about everything in life. So, no, there was no question that when she asked that, she meant it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bassett found out that Nitschke was due to give a practical workshop in London in a few months and went along, never letting on that she was there for someone else. She eavesdropped on conversations around her, noting down names of suppliers, how much the drugs cost, how long they took to arrive. She read up on assisted dying and what the possible consequences might be for her. She left a paper trail, so she had nothing to hide when she turned herself in. She emailed a supplier, made her purchase. Then they waited.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn those weeks I could barely breathe. I was in such a state of panic, but I couldn\u2019t show her that. The biggest thing would be letting her down, not being able to fulfil the promise I\u2019d made that I\u2019d sort this. She\u2019d always been the one who sorted things for everybody else in the world.\u201d She stares at the table where her black coffee sits untouched.<\/p>\n
To Bassett\u2019s surprise, the package came. Alper wanted to use it immediately, insisting Bassett come to Eastbourne as soon as possible. While Alper\u2019s husband was out, they looked back at their happier years, the trips they had taken together. \u201cWe talked a little about what great things we did, and wasn\u2019t it great that we did them when we could, and what a life.\u201d She breaks off and catches her breath. \u201cThen I can\u2019t remember who said, \u2018Shall we do this?\u2019 but I went into the kitchen and opened the bottle.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bassett held Alper\u2019s hand as she took the overdose. From what she describes, it wasn\u2019t easy: Alper was retching, and streaming from her eyes, nose and mouth. \u201cI have no idea how long I held her,\u201d she says quietly. \u201cI don\u2019t know when she died. I tried to feel pulses but my heart was going so much, I had no idea whose pulse I was feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n
Eventually she called Alper\u2019s husband to tell him to come home. Then she rang the police and told them she\u2019d just helped her best friend kill herself.<\/p>\n
Bassett talks in the second person when she describes how she was arrested, searched and put in a cell. \u201cIf you needed to go to the loo, you had to be watched by a policewoman and couldn\u2019t wash your hands because you might wash off some evidence\u2026 Half of you has shut down anyway, you just go into a different place, but a little bit is thinking, blimey, this is quite an experience.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was an experience for her family, too. She has a daughter and twin grandchildren, and though her daughter understood and broadly supported her, Bassett\u2019s partner was angry that she\u2019d put herself at risk. He runs an IT company, and while she was in the cell the police searched their office and seized all his computers. They held on to them for 10 months, ruining his business. \u201cThey took away his entire life in that one visit. He was devastated.\u201d This is the only time I hear a hint of regret in Bassett\u2019s voice.<\/p>\n
Her case was dropped in August, a month after she started working for Exit UK. I ask how things are with her partner now. \u201cIt\u2019s difficult. On a good day I can use him as a sounding board. On another he\u2019s off, because he can see how close I am to crossing the line.\u201d She means breaking the law with Exit, giving out advice that could be construed as assisting more suicides. \u201cIt\u2019s so difficult not to break the law.\u201d She shakes her head. \u201cI want us to work out a way we can still do all this but keep on the right side of the law.\u201d<\/p>\n
***<\/p>\n
It\u2019s hard to get hold of Philip Nitschke, because he\u2019s in the middle of his tribunal in Australia. While I wait, I speak to more members. Do they think Nitshcke is profiting from vulnerable people?<\/p>\n
\u201cI have to say, anything you do buy through Exit \u2013 probably reasonably so, because they do have their expenses \u2013 is pretty damned expensive,\u201d says David, 55. \u201cIt\u2019s a business however you look at it, but I don\u2019t for a second think they are exploiting people for profit.\u201d<\/p>\n
David has left several messages for me since the meeting. He has a chronic stomach condition but hasn\u2019t told his family that he\u2019s been cribbing up on suicide methods. He wants someone to talk to.<\/p>\n
\u201cI see Philip Nitschke as an amazing character. He\u2019s under an awful amount of pressure and I don\u2019t know what drives him, but the more of his stuff that I watch, I can\u2019t fault him. I found other things more exploitative: did you know you can\u2019t get a cheap funeral? There\u2019s no such thing any more.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s still cheaper than going to Dignitas,\u201d says another Exit member, Christopher Pearce. \u201cFortunately we don\u2019t have to worry about the cost but, yes, it\u2019s not a good thing. It would be better if it were available at a cheaper rate.\u201d<\/p>\n
Christopher has invited me to have tea with him and his wife, Elisabetta, at their home in west London. He\u2019s a former architect, she\u2019s a retired social worker; they have a daughter who lives in LA with their grandchildren, and who knows about their plans. Relatively healthy at 77 and 76, they took out joint Exit membership for practical reasons, in the same spirit as they made a will and arranged for their bodies to be donated to medical science.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t like other people making decisions for me if I can help it,\u201d Elisabetta says. \u201cAs time passes, you see what happens to parents or older people you know who become very ill. Through my job I\u2019ve seen perhaps a bit more. Sometimes the dragging on is very sad.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe when the time comes we\u2019ll want to live. We\u2019d like to think we\u2019ve got the choice,\u201d Christopher adds. None of the recommended suicide methods sounds very appealing to them. \u201cWe\u2019re merely informing ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n
They\u2019ve been members since 2010, and have seen Nitschke in action at London workshops. \u201cOne suspects he\u2019s a bit of a showman and gets some satisfaction from what he does, but nevertheless I take my hat off to him. Someone needs to do it,\u201d Christopher says.<\/p>\n
As I\u2019m putting my coat on, Christopher tells me that two years ago there was an injured fox in the garden, so they rang a vet who came and put it down. \u201cThe vet left this behind,\u201d he says, his eyes wide with delight as he shows me a picture of the drugs the vet used. But almost as soon as they realised what they had, the vet came back to retrieve it. Now all they have is the photograph.<\/p>\n
\u201cI saw how the fox died,\u201d Elisabetta says. \u201cIt just\u2026\u201d She lets her shoulders drop. She looks envious.<\/p>\n
***<\/p>\n
When I finally get to speak to Nitschke, it\u2019s 11pm Darwin time, on the second day of his appeal hearing. The appeal isn\u2019t going well, Nitschke says, but he is defiant in the face of the charges against him. \u201cBrayley wasn\u2019t sick, he was 45, but he certainly had fairly cogent reasons, I would argue, for ending his own life. The thought that he would spend 25 years in prison led to that decision.\u201d So he\u2019s comfortable with the idea of a suspected murderer using Exit\u2019s advice to kill himself? \u201cI suppose comfortable is the right word,\u201d he replies. \u201cIt\u2019s the person who is dying\u2019s decision.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nitschke knows he shocks people. He clearly relishes controversy. He tells me that his handbook is the only book that has been banned in Australia over the past 35 years; that during the brief window when voluntary euthanasia was legal in Australia\u2019s Northern Territory, he was the first doctor in the world to have helped patients to die legally; and that the machine he built so people could administer their own euthanising drugs is now in the Science Museum in London. He is proud of being \u201cDr Death\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a rare day when I don\u2019t walk down the street and have someone come up and say very nice things to me,\u201d he says. \u201cThat didn\u2019t used to happen when I was writing out prescriptions for penicillin. It\u2019s nice to be involved in an important, cutting-edge social debate. It\u2019s exciting. Hopefully we\u2019ll start to see not only changes in legislature, but also a world in which people see this as a right, without having to pass some sort of strict eligibility criteria.\u201d<\/p>\n
Is he making money as well as social history?<\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes people feel that you should never earn anything if you\u2019re associated with this issue. It\u2019s almost as if the issue itself doesn\u2019t allow you to break even, let alone make a living,\u201d he replies immediately. \u201cIt\u2019s not cheap, but it\u2019s not cheap to travel around the world running workshops, either. It would be impossible to run the organisation without that sort of financial basis. It\u2019s a not-for-profit organisation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Whether or not you agree with what Nitschke is doing, the demand for the kind of services Exit offers will not go away while assisted suicide remains illegal in Britain. With increasing numbers of baby boomers passing retirement age, Britain looks likely to be an expanding market for organisations that offer a planned death.<\/p>\n
\u201cHaving a local presence on the ground in the UK will make a big difference,\u201d Nitschke says. \u201cI would expect quite significant growth. In some ways we\u2019ve almost reached the limits in Australia, New Zealand and increasingly the US, but Europe, in particular the UK, is a big area of interest.\u201d<\/p>\n
Whatever drives Nitschke, when he talks about the future of Exit, he uses the language of business. But speaking to Bassett, her motives couldn\u2019t be clearer. Why does she take the risk of getting involved with Exit when she knows so well what the consequences could be?<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause it\u2019s wrong!\u201d she almost howls. \u201cIt\u2019s just wrong.\u201d There\u2019s a long pause. \u201cIt\u2019s the right thing to do, that\u2019s all I can say. It\u2019s right to help people who are stuffed. They are stuck and they\u2019re worried. In later years, you shouldn\u2019t be that fearful about what\u2019s going to happen to you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ultimately, she says, she\u2019s just listening to what people want from their lives \u2013 and their deaths. \u201cIt\u2019s everybody\u2019s right to have a say in it.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lesley Bassett, the face of the first UK chapter of Exit, a euthanasia group that campaigns for legal suicide, on why her best friend\u2019s death and her role in it changed the course of her life. Lesley Bassett is nervous, but hiding it behind a welcoming smile. It\u2019s a wet Saturday morning in October, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n