Neighbors protest suicide clinic

last updated 8 January 2015

Zurich, Switzerland

The neighbors of an assisted-suicide clinic have petitioned the city government to close the facility. The Dignitas clinic, which helps the terminally ill end their lives, has operated from an apartment building in a Zurich suburb for nearly a decade. It is particularly popular with “suicide tourists,” people from countries where assisted suicide is illegal, who travel to Zurich to die. It’s less popular with the other residents of the building. “Almost every day, the bodies of people who have chosen to kill themselves are taken down in the lift,” resident Gloria Sonny told the British Medical Journal. “It’s horrid.”