Switzerland's Suicide Tourists

Ernst Aschomenit is flying from his home in Germany to Zurich, where he plans to be dead by nightfall.

"It's not very easy to say and to know this is my last day, says the 81-year-old, who suffers from Parkinson's Disease, a brain disorder that affects muscle control. A retired mechanical engineer and childless widower, he travels alone to Switzerland.

He's afraid if he waits any longer, he'll be incapacitated by the disease and trapped in Germany, where assisted suicide is against the law. Under Swiss law, assisted suicide is legal, as long as nobody profits from a death.

One Swiss organization is pushing this law to its limits, attracting an increasing number of foreigners who want to take their own lives, and raising serious ethical questions about an act most countries forbid.

Aschmoneit had decided to take his own life a few months before as his symptoms got worse and worse and the only way to feel better, he says, was "to say good-bye before it was too late."

Looking back, he says he has had a good life. What's ahead after death? "Nothing," he says.

At the end of the last journey Ernst Aschmoneit will ever make is Ludwig Minelli, a human rights lawyer who founded Dignitas as an alternative to other assisted suicide groups in Switzerland.

It has more than 2,000 members and is the only group that welcomes foreigners.

Minelli takes Aschmoneit to his home to discuss his suicide. Like those before him, all Aschmoneit had to do is convince Minelli he is of sound mind and has a consistent wish to die. Then, Aschmoneit goes to a Dignitas doctor who had already reviewed his medical records and prescribed him a barbiturate strong enough to kill him.

Armed with the lethal drug, Aschmoneit makes his final stop at a rented apartment in Zurich, where Dignitas takes its members to commit suicide.

There's nothing in the Swiss law that prevents Aschmoneit or virtually anyone else, from doing that. Switzerland has by far the most liberal law in Europe, even more so than is Holland and Belgium, two countries that do allow euthanasia.

While assisted suicide is legal in Switzerland, euthanasia is not. The difference is that with euthanasia, the doctor takes your life by administering a lethal drug. With assisted suicide, you have to be able to physically carry out that final act on your own.

Dr. Helmut Eichenburger, a retired urologist who volunteers for Dignitas, says patients too ill to drink could use a self-induced injection, or a tube through the stomach. The preferred prescription, however, is an overdose of Pento-Barbitol, the sleeping potion Aschmoneit will use.

Like many Swiss people, psychiatrist Thomas Schlaepfer, a specialist in depression, is not opposed to assisted suicide, but is disturbed by the way Dignitas operates.

"If somebody flies into Zurich Airport, is brought into an interview for an hour and prescribed medication, that's totally wrong," he says. "That's ethically wrong. Legally, it might be OK in Swiss law, but, ethically, it's wrong."

He says it is "totally impossible" to find out in a brief visit or two whether someone is of sound mind.

Minelli, however, claims to have no doubts about what he is doing: "Ah, it is not knowing," he says. "It is feeling, and that is much better than knowing."

He denies that it all comes down to personal judgment or that it gives him a sense of power. "No, no the personal judgment is only - Should I have to stop it or shouldn't I have to stop it."

As to doubts, he says, "I have no bad dreams. I do not wake up with bad ideas about what I'm doing."

But on repeated questioning he recalls a case in which he may have had small doubts. "I had the impression that he has come too early, but you can only see a human being from the outside and you can't see what is going on in his mind."

The most serious question facing Dignitas concerns mentally ill people like Walter Wittwer, a schizophrenic. For 10 years, Wittwer was a member of another assisted suicide group that wouldn't allow him to take his life, because he was mentally ill. Then, Wittwer joined Dignitas; three months later, he was dead.

Minelli argues that mentally ill people have the same right to take their own lives as others. But psychiatrist Thomas Schlaepfer says suicidal tendencies are often a symptom of mental illness and can be treated.

"In this office," he says, "many people said, 'I'm totally depressed; I want to end my life' and weeks later this opinion was changed."

Public prosecutor, Andreas Brunner, believes the law is dangerously unregulated and gives him little room to act. He says nothing, not even a medical degree, is required to start an organization that helps people kill themselves. He says one person can decide whether others live or die

Until now, the law is on Minelli's side. He proceeds with the suicide of Aschmoneit, who givves 60 Minutes II his final interview as he prepares to die.

Aschmoneit says he feels peaceful but admits to "very small, little doubts."

"If you give me a possibility to get healthy, then I would say, 'OK, I take the next airplane and drive back,'" he says. Instead, he spends his last hours in a tiny, two-room apartment, where Dignitas volunteers mix the lethal drug with water.

"It's very strange to think that in an hour you'll be dead," Logan tells Aschmoneit.

"Ja, that's right. Hard for me, too, but I will do it," he replies.

Less than an hour after 60 Minutes II left the room, he drank the overdose of Pento-barbitol. Twenty-four minutes later, he was dead.

His suicide was reported to the police, as required by law. And Ernst Aschmoneit became the 145th person to take his life through Dignitas.