NY Times - Derek Humphry, a British-born journalist whose experience helping his terminally-ill wife end her life led him to become a crusading pioneer in the right-to-die movement and publish “Final Exit,” a best-selling guide to suicide, died on Jan. 2 in Eugene, Ore. He was 94.
His death, at a hospice facility, was announced by his family.With a populist flair and a knack for speaking matter-of-factly about death, Mr. Humphry almost single-handedly galvanized a national conversation about physician-assisted suicide in the early 1980s, a period when the idead had been little more than an esoteric theory batted around by medical ethicists.
“He
was the one who really put this cause on the map in America,” said Ian
Dowbiggin, a professor at the University of Prince Edward Island and the
author of “A Concise History of Euthanasia: Life, Death, God, and Medicine” (2005). “The people who support the notion of physician assisted suicide absolutely owe him a big thanks.” More
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