In the first broadcast interview he has given in five years, the Swiss founder of the controversial assisted suicide service Dignitas has defended suicide as a "marvellous possibility". In an interview with the BBC, Luigi Minelli said that "Suicide is a very good possibility to escape a situation which you can't alter." And he dismissed the notion that his service should only be available to the terminally ill: "It is not a condition to have a terminal illness. Terminal illness is a British obsession. We are not a clinic. As a human rights lawyer I am opposed to the idea of paternalism. We do not make decisions for other people."

Consequently Mr Minelli is going to expand his client base from people who are terminally ill and/or depressed to people who have nothing wrong with them at all. "There is a couple living in Canada, the husband is ill, his partner is not ill but she told us here in my living room that 'if my husband goes, I would go at the same time with him'. We will now probably go to the courts in order to clear this question," he told the BBC.

More than 100 Britons have travelled to the Dignitas “thanatorium” in Zurich to kill themselves in its offices. ~ BBC, Apr 2