Tony Nicklinson Dies After Losing Fight for Assisted Suicide
A paralyzed man who fought to overturn Britain’s ban on assisted suicide died today (8/22) from pneumonia less than a week after losing his controversial court case.
Tony Nicklinson had locked-in syndrome after suffering a stroke in 2005. Trapped inside a paralyzed body and forced to communicate by blinking his eyes, the 58-year-old man asked three of Britain’s High Court judges to grant him the right to end his “dull, miserable, demeaning, undignified and intolerable” life with a doctor-administered lethal injection.
“I thought that if the court saw me as I am, utterly miserable with my life, powerless to do anything about it because of my disability, then the judges would accept my reasoning that I do not want to carry on and should be able to have a dignified death,” the former corporate manager from Wiltshire said in a statement issued by his lawyer.
But on Aug. 16, the court upheld the law barring Nicklinson from dying with a doctor’s help. […]
