{"id":20767,"date":"2025-01-24T21:56:42","date_gmt":"2025-01-24T22:56:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=20767"},"modified":"2025-01-25T00:00:15","modified_gmt":"2025-01-25T00:00:15","slug":"derek-humphry-pivotal-figure-in-right-to-die-movement-dies-at-94","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=20767","title":{"rendered":"Derek Humphry, Pivotal Figure in Right-to-Die Movement, Dies at 94"},"content":{"rendered":"
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His own experience assisting his terminally ill wife in ending her life set him on a path to founding the Hemlock Society and writing a best-selling guide.<\/p>\n

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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 \u201cFinal Exit,\u201d a best-selling guide to suicide, died on Jan. 2 in Eugene, Ore. He was 94.<\/p>\n

His death, at a hospice facility, was announced by his family.<\/p>\n

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 idea had been little more than an esoteric theory batted around by medical ethicists.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was the one who really put this cause on the map in America,\u201d said Ian Dowbiggin, a professor at the University of Prince Edward Island and the author of \u201cA Concise History of Euthanasia: Life, Death, God, and Medicine\u201d<\/a> (2005). \u201cThe people who support the notion of physician assisted suicide absolutely owe him a big thanks.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1975, Mr. Humphry was working as a reporter for The Sunday Times of London when Jean Humphry, his wife of 22 years, was in the final stages of terminal bone cancer. Hoping to avoid prolonged suffering, she asked him to help her die.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Mr. Humphry procured a lethal dose of painkillers from a sympathetic doctor and mixed them with coffee in her favorite mug.<\/p>\n

\u201cI took her the mug and told her if she drank it she\u2019d die immediately,\u201d Mr. Humphry told The Daily Record in Scotland. \u201cThen I gave her a hug, kissed her and we said our goodbyes.\u201d<\/p>\n

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His own experience assisting his terminally ill wife in ending her life set him on a path to founding the Hemlock Society and writing a best-selling guide.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 \u201cFinal Exit,\u201d 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 idea had been little more than an esoteric theory batted around by medical ethicists.\u201cHe was the one who really put this cause on the map in America,\u201d said Ian Dowbiggin, a professor at the University of Prince Edward Island and the author of \u201cA Concise History of Euthanasia: Life, Death, God, and Medicine\u201d (2005). \u201cThe people who support the notion of physician assisted suicide absolutely owe him a big thanks.\u201dIn 1975, Mr. Humphry was working as a reporter for The Sunday Times of London when Jean Humphry, his wife of 22 years, was in the final stages of terminal bone cancer. Hoping to avoid prolonged suffering, she asked him to help her die.Mr. Humphry procured a lethal dose of painkillers from a sympathetic doctor and mixed them with coffee in her favorite mug.\u201cI took her the mug and told her if she drank it she\u2019d die immediately,\u201d Mr. Humphry told The Daily Record in Scotland. \u201cThen I gave her a hug, kissed her and we said our goodbyes.\u201dWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20769,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20767","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20767","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20767"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20767\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20770,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20767\/revisions\/20770"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}