Euthanasia Case Studies

• Suffered from motor neurone disease, which can lead to a slow and painful death.

• She wanted her husband to help her commit suicide and took her case to court, as it was against British law. 

• She felt that she had lost most of her human dignity and no longer had a quality of life.

• Diane lost her case and died of natural causes in 2002.

• Tony Nicklinson was paralysed after a stroke in 2005 and developed locked-in syndrome.

• He fought a legal battle for the right to die but this was turned down by the High Court in 2012.

• After this he stopped eating, developed pneumonia and died in August 2012.

• Chantal Sébire was a school teacher in France who had an incurable tumour in her brain. 

• In February 2008 Chantal Sebire’s euthanasia plea was rejected. 

• She suffered from a rare cancer (esthesioneuroblastoma) that left her disfigured. 

• She said that she would find another way of dying.

• Two days after the court denied her plea to allow her to have an assisted suicide, Chantal was found dead.  

• She committed suicide because she could not face her life any more.

• When he was 18, Tony Bland went to Hillsborough to watch his football team Liverpool play Nottingham Forest. 

• This was 15 April 1989, the day of the Hillsborough disaster. 

• Thousands of extra Liverpool fans were let into the ground to avoid problems outside and 94 people were killed in the resulting crush.

• Tony Bland suffered severe brain damage and was in a coma for almost 4 years.

• In November 1992 a legal court ruled that doctors could withdraw treatment at the request of his family as there was no reasonable chance of him coming out of (persistent vegetative state). 

• He was allowed to die on 3 March 1993, aged 22.

• In March 2007, Daniel James, a former under-16 England international, was playing rugby when a scrum collapsed on him and he broke his neck.

• Following the incident his mother explained that ‘he couldn't walk, had no hand function, and had constant pain in his fingers. 

• He was incontinent, suffered uncontrollable spasms in his legs and upper body, and needed 24-hour care’.

• On 12 September 2008, aged 23, he travelled to Switzerland with his parents and killed himself by lethal injection at the Dignitas clinic.

• His parents supported his decision: ‘Daniel continually expressed his wish to die and was determined to achieve this. He was not prepared to live a second-class existence…his death was, no doubt, a welcome relief from the prison his body had become and the day-to-day fear and loathing of his living existence.’