A German court has found that assisted suicide for profit is not legal, thus ending a tidy little earner for a former minister for justice in Hamburg, Roger Kusch. In 2007 Kusch, a former member of the conservative Christian Democratic Union, founded an organisation which promoted the right to die. He helped 3 elderly women and 2 men to kill themselves, even though none of them were terminally ill. His fee was 6,500 Euros, plus a 1,500 Euro fee for a clean bill of health from a psychiatrist.

Kusch took advantage of the muddled state of German law on this issue. According to the BMJ, "no specific law in Germany regulates the involvement of doctors in suicide. Suicide and assisted suicide are both legal. However, both medical ethics and common law prescribe that, although doctors can assist suicide by providing drugs to the patient, they are obliged to ‘rescue’ the patient if they are present at the actual suicide. Involvement in active suicide is not allowed under general law."

While Kusch’s business shocked the public and politicians, it has proved impossible to get a law passed to stop him. In the present instance, the court ruled that offering people help in committing suicide is forbidden because it is not a registered trade. Suicide, it ruled, was legal, but that Kusch’s activity offended common moral values. Kusch plans to appeal the decision.

Surveys show that German voters may favour assisted suicide. However, the Chancellor, Angela Merkel, said in 2007:"I am absolutely against any form of assisted suicide, in whatever guise it comes." And the president of the German Medical Association, Professor Jörg-Dietrich Hoppe, said after one of Kusch’s client’s died: "It is abhorrent and deeply shocking how an egotistical cynic has exploited the loneliness of an old lady in his craving for recognition." ~ BMJ, Feb 18