December 4, 2014
I helped my best friend die: Lesley Basset is the face of Exit UK
Lesley Bassett, the face of the first UK chapter of Exit, a euthanasia group that campaigns for legal suicide, on why her best friend’s death and her role in it changed the course of her life.
Lesley Bassett is nervous, but hiding it behind a welcoming smile. It’s a wet Saturday morning in October, and she’s handing out name badges to the people streaming into a hired meeting hall in Covent Garden, central London.
Everyone here looks over 60: the men are dressed in jackets and ties, the women wear pastel cardigans and pretty scarves. Genteel enough to be mistaken for a bridge club or the audience at a classical recital, this is in fact the inaugural meeting of Exit UK, a grassroots voluntary euthanasia group.
These people have paid to be here because they want to learn how to kill themselves, and they are expecting Bassett to help teach them how.
Bassett is coordinator of the recently launched UK chapter of Exit International, an Australian-based organisation that makes Dignitas look conservative. Where other right-to-die organisations argue that terminally ill people should have the right to choose the time and manner of their own death, Exit argues that anyone of sound mind should have the means to end their own life, whenever and wherever they like. You don’t have to be ill, or even old: Exit membership is officially open to over-50s, but younger people are considered on a case-by-case basis.
For a fee, members get information, advice and equipment to help them end their lives. Such was the demand for Exit in Britain that its UK office opened this summer.
By day, Bassett, 64, is a cake designer. Now she is also the face of an organisation that has been labelled in the press as the “UK suicide club”. When she took the post in July, she thought she’d just be answering the phones for five hours a week, but they never stopped ringing. Soon it became 10 hours, then four days of paid work. In practice, she’s working seven days a week, her cake business neglected.
I’ve arrived at the meeting 45 minutes early and already 50 folding chairs are taken. No one can tell me for certain how many British members Exit has, but its HQ in Australia estimates there are at least 1,000. A woman with a puff of white hair is handing out tea, biscuits and leaflets to the expectant audience: suggestion forms for future meetings, other forms calling for more volunteers. The meeting hall doubles as a dance rehearsal space and there’s a large mirror at one end of the room. People try to avoid staring at their own reflection as they wait for Bassett to begin.
There are trestle tables with books for sale, all written by Dr Philip Nitschke, the mercurial and controversial founder of Exit International. There’s his autobiography, Damned If I Do, for £25; his first book, a philosophical treatise entitled Killing Me Softly, for £22; and his handbook for £20. You can fill in a form to order equipment costing hundreds of pounds from Nitschke’s company, and that’s on top of membership, which starts at £62 a year.
Nitschke isn’t here today, but he is still the most powerful person in the room. I have been given his blessing to attend the meeting, and when I introduce myself, all anyone wants to know is whether I’ve met him in person: have I seen his videos, have I read his handbook?
A charismatic public speaker, who favours colourful shirts and bright ties, Nitschke made headlines recently by calling for prisoners sentenced to life without parole to be given the option of suicide. He is currently appealing against the Australian Medical Board’s decision to suspend his licence to practise, after a man called Nigel Brayley attended one of his workshops earlier this year and emailed for advice about ending his life. Nitschke didn’t know it, but Brayley was under investigation for the possible murder of his ex-wife, and killed himself before charges could be brought.
A few years ago, Nitschke announced plans for a “death ship”, where he could euthanise people in international waters, though these never came to fruition. Every year, he comes to the UK to give a workshop, and as many as 200 members pay extra to see him. It was their success that led to the creation of the UK office (there are also branches in LA and New Zealand).
The members here today look like the sort who can afford the costs involved with being part of Exit. They are a noticeably homogeneous group: white, middle class, equally split between male and female. Most have come on their own. They are what Nitschke calls “baby boomer types who are used to getting their own way”: independent, educated, retired professionals. They are lively, animated, afraid of what a life prolonged by modern medicine might mean for them. Several are filling in equipment order forms as Bassett calls the meeting to order.
The meeting itself is a bit of a mess. A guest speaker from Exit Australia, Johannes Klabbers, dressed from head to toe in black and reading from a MacBook Air, talks for the first 40 minutes about defending Exit from its enemies: in the media, the church, the government and the medical profession. “We are painted as sinister people who sidle up to you in the street and say, ‘Have you thought about ending your life?’ It’s just absurd,” he declares.
But the audience is impatient to move on to more practical matters. Hands go up as soon as Bassett takes the floor, and her speech becomes a Q&A session. Most of the questions are about where they can buy euthanising drugs. The drugs Exit recommends are controlled substances, illegal to sell privately or possess in the UK. But even though they would be breaking the law by importing them, many of the people here are prepared to try. When a woman in a pink pashmina brings up the problems she’s been having with some of the recommended suppliers, there are nods all round. Trusted sources seem to be drying up. Someone asks Bassett if they could get the equipment Nitschke recommends cheaper if they didn’t buy it through Exit, but she doesn’t mince her words. “That would mean cutting off the lifeblood of Exit. If we don’t support Exit’s work and research, they’re going to go under.”
Exit’s website says it is a not-for-profit organisation, but its reliance for funding on those considering taking their own lives is controversial. Not Dead Yet, a British alliance of disabled people who oppose any change in the law on assisted dying, say: “Nitschke is not only playing on people’s emotions, but he is profiting from them.” The anti-euthanasia group Care Not Killing has described him as “an extremist and self-publicist whose presence in the UK puts the lives of vulnerable elderly, depressed and disabled people at grave risk”. These groups argue that any change to the law on assisted dying would devalue and endanger the lives of old, weak or ill people, placing pressure on them to end their lives for fear of being a financial or emotional burden on others. Even Dignity In Dying, which supports a change in the law, believes Nitschke’s workshops are “irresponsible and potentially dangerous”.
Recently, the right-to-die movement has gathered new momentum. Lord Falconer’s assisted dying bill, which would allow terminally ill people with less than six months to live to be helped to end their lives, is currently progressing through the House of Lords. Campaigners for and against the bill protested outside the Lords earlier this month, but polls show that almost three-quarters of the British public support it. High-profile cases such as those of Tony Nicklinson and Jean Davies, both of whom starved themselves to death because they could not be legally assisted to die, have helped harness public support. The current laws surrounding assisted suicide and the right to die are patchily enforced, many argue. Earlier this month, the deputy chair of the British Medical Association, Dr Kailash Chand, claimed that the present law facilitated “a two-tier system – one for the people who have the resources and money to go to the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland and another for the majority of people who don’t”. He predicted the law would change “within two to three years”.
But the people in this room aren’t prepared to wait. They want to be in charge of their own destinies now; to be able to end their lives if and when they decide. While Nitschke’s detractors have dubbed him “Dr Death”, these people see him as a maverick, a hero.
After the meeting, many are keen to talk to me. “The myth that if Philip says something, then everyone’s going to rush out and kill themselves is just ridiculous,” laughs William, a wiry man in his 70s. “I’ve been a member for six years, I learned all about it years ago and I haven’t done myself in.”
Anne has arthritis but she’s otherwise well. “I’ve had a good innings and I’ll be 75 in a couple of months,” she says. “Gradually I’m being closed off, can’t do this, can’t do that, and I can see the trajectory of my life: I’ll become more of a nuisance to everybody else and there will be more visits to hospital, more pain and unpleasantness.” She has already bought the necessary drugs. “It’s really stupid to prevent people taking their own life because it just means they’re going to do it in messy ways instead.”
“I’m always hoping I’ll come along and they’ll say, ‘Good news – it’s available from Lidl.’ Or a nice gift pack from Waitrose,” says Christopher Pearce. “They never do.”
Exit’s UK office is in fact a room on an industrial estate in Kent. I meet Bassett there a couple of weeks later, among corrugated iron warehouses on the river Medway. This is where she runs her cake business, but it’s not the bright, sugary world I was expecting. We talk at a nondescript meeting table, where cake decorating equipment lies next to books about suicide.
She talks me through a typical day. “First thing in the morning, when I’m still in my jimjams, I open my computer, because Australia will have been around for a few hours by then. Then I’ll check the phone messages. We might get six or eight in a day. It doesn’t sound a lot, but the return calls can be quite tricky and long.”
There are two categories of caller that Bassett finds the most difficult. “There are young people. You can tell they’re depressed, and you can tell they’re not 50, 60, 70 years old. That’s an absolute no. We can’t.” She shuts her eyes. “You say all the things: ‘Have you spoken to your GP? Have you had counselling?’ They don’t want to hear that, yet I’ve got to say it. Their line is usually, ‘They can’t help me. Help me to get [drugs].’ But I can’t.”
Then there are the people calling on behalf of someone else: people who want to assist a suicide. “We have to say, ‘We cannot encourage you to do this’,” Bassett says. “It’s very tough. Some of the stories of situations people are in are similar to my story, and I could tell them things that would help. I wish I could. But I can’t.”
Bassett’s story begins in 1994, before she was in the cake business, when she started working in financial services with a woman called Sylvia Alper. Five years younger than Bassett, Alper was already her boss’s boss, “quite an elevated career woman, quite bossy”. Bassett had split up with her long-term partner. “I’d got over the misery of it and started to think, this isn’t half bad, you can do a lot when you’re on your own. She was having a horrid time with her husband and could see that there was a different life to be had.”
When Alper got divorced, they became best friends, going to the cinema and theatre, travelling together. “We walked our legs off around Europe. You’re looking around and then you look at each other and think, how lucky are we that we’re here? Just enjoying things.” She shows me a photograph of the two of them at a table in an Italian square, taken in the late 90s. Alper has a thick cascade of dark curls, Bassett has the same cropped hair and elfin features as she does now; both have broad smiles. “It shouldn’t have worked because we were such different people, but it just did,” she says.
From early in their friendship, Bassett knew Alper had multiple sclerosis. From time to time she’d lose full use of an eye or a leg, but her sight and mobility would eventually return. Soon both Bassett and Alper found new partners, and Alper moved to Eastbourne; they saw less of each other but kept in touch on the phone. Over the years, she stopped getting better. By 2013 Bassett’s fiercely independent friend was in a wheelchair, relying on round-the-clock care.
Alper had always said that when the time came, she’d want to go to Dignitas. In April she invited Bassett to come for lunch. “That’s when she said that she wanted me to do the research. It was like we were back at work and she was giving me a project, and I was taking note and saying, ‘Right, OK.’ I went off and kind of did it as an assignment.”
But they quickly ruled out Dignitas: Alper was in no state to travel to Switzerland, and even if they could have worked out a way of getting there, it was going to cost £12,000 or £13,000. When I ask why, Bassett gives a wry smile. “There’s no reason for it to cost so much, apart from that’s what they charge.” The current Dignitas brochure puts the cost at £7,875, including doctors’ fees, administration, funeral and registry office expenses, but not transport, accommodation or membership fees.
Alper didn’t want to spend money she could leave to her second husband – and he refused to take her to Dignitas anyway. “He couldn’t be the instrument of her death. So whatever we did next had to be behind his back.” Bassett is so matter-of-fact about this. Did she ever have any doubts? “Sylvia was very single-minded about everything in life. So, no, there was no question that when she asked that, she meant it.”
Bassett found out that Nitschke was due to give a practical workshop in London in a few months and went along, never letting on that she was there for someone else. She eavesdropped on conversations around her, noting down names of suppliers, how much the drugs cost, how long they took to arrive. She read up on assisted dying and what the possible consequences might be for her. She left a paper trail, so she had nothing to hide when she turned herself in. She emailed a supplier, made her purchase. Then they waited.
“In those weeks I could barely breathe. I was in such a state of panic, but I couldn’t show her that. The biggest thing would be letting her down, not being able to fulfil the promise I’d made that I’d sort this. She’d always been the one who sorted things for everybody else in the world.” She stares at the table where her black coffee sits untouched.
To Bassett’s surprise, the package came. Alper wanted to use it immediately, insisting Bassett come to Eastbourne as soon as possible. While Alper’s husband was out, they looked back at their happier years, the trips they had taken together. “We talked a little about what great things we did, and wasn’t it great that we did them when we could, and what a life.” She breaks off and catches her breath. “Then I can’t remember who said, ‘Shall we do this?’ but I went into the kitchen and opened the bottle.”
Bassett held Alper’s hand as she took the overdose. From what she describes, it wasn’t easy: Alper was retching, and streaming from her eyes, nose and mouth. “I have no idea how long I held her,” she says quietly. “I don’t know when she died. I tried to feel pulses but my heart was going so much, I had no idea whose pulse I was feeling.”
Eventually she called Alper’s husband to tell him to come home. Then she rang the police and told them she’d just helped her best friend kill herself.
Bassett talks in the second person when she describes how she was arrested, searched and put in a cell. “If you needed to go to the loo, you had to be watched by a policewoman and couldn’t wash your hands because you might wash off some evidence… Half of you has shut down anyway, you just go into a different place, but a little bit is thinking, blimey, this is quite an experience.”
It was an experience for her family, too. She has a daughter and twin grandchildren, and though her daughter understood and broadly supported her, Bassett’s partner was angry that she’d put herself at risk. He runs an IT company, and while she was in the cell the police searched their office and seized all his computers. They held on to them for 10 months, ruining his business. “They took away his entire life in that one visit. He was devastated.” This is the only time I hear a hint of regret in Bassett’s voice.
Her case was dropped in August, a month after she started working for Exit UK. I ask how things are with her partner now. “It’s difficult. On a good day I can use him as a sounding board. On another he’s off, because he can see how close I am to crossing the line.” She means breaking the law with Exit, giving out advice that could be construed as assisting more suicides. “It’s so difficult not to break the law.” She shakes her head. “I want us to work out a way we can still do all this but keep on the right side of the law.”
***
It’s hard to get hold of Philip Nitschke, because he’s in the middle of his tribunal in Australia. While I wait, I speak to more members. Do they think Nitshcke is profiting from vulnerable people?
“I have to say, anything you do buy through Exit – probably reasonably so, because they do have their expenses – is pretty damned expensive,” says David, 55. “It’s a business however you look at it, but I don’t for a second think they are exploiting people for profit.”
David has left several messages for me since the meeting. He has a chronic stomach condition but hasn’t told his family that he’s been cribbing up on suicide methods. He wants someone to talk to.
“I see Philip Nitschke as an amazing character. He’s under an awful amount of pressure and I don’t know what drives him, but the more of his stuff that I watch, I can’t fault him. I found other things more exploitative: did you know you can’t get a cheap funeral? There’s no such thing any more.”
“It’s still cheaper than going to Dignitas,” says another Exit member, Christopher Pearce. “Fortunately we don’t have to worry about the cost but, yes, it’s not a good thing. It would be better if it were available at a cheaper rate.”
Christopher has invited me to have tea with him and his wife, Elisabetta, at their home in west London. He’s a former architect, she’s a retired social worker; they have a daughter who lives in LA with their grandchildren, and who knows about their plans. Relatively healthy at 77 and 76, they took out joint Exit membership for practical reasons, in the same spirit as they made a will and arranged for their bodies to be donated to medical science.
“I don’t like other people making decisions for me if I can help it,” Elisabetta says. “As time passes, you see what happens to parents or older people you know who become very ill. Through my job I’ve seen perhaps a bit more. Sometimes the dragging on is very sad.”
“Maybe when the time comes we’ll want to live. We’d like to think we’ve got the choice,” Christopher adds. None of the recommended suicide methods sounds very appealing to them. “We’re merely informing ourselves.”
They’ve been members since 2010, and have seen Nitschke in action at London workshops. “One suspects he’s a bit of a showman and gets some satisfaction from what he does, but nevertheless I take my hat off to him. Someone needs to do it,” Christopher says.
As I’m putting my coat on, Christopher tells me that two years ago there was an injured fox in the garden, so they rang a vet who came and put it down. “The vet left this behind,” he says, his eyes wide with delight as he shows me a picture of the drugs the vet used. But almost as soon as they realised what they had, the vet came back to retrieve it. Now all they have is the photograph.
“I saw how the fox died,” Elisabetta says. “It just…” She lets her shoulders drop. She looks envious.
***
When I finally get to speak to Nitschke, it’s 11pm Darwin time, on the second day of his appeal hearing. The appeal isn’t going well, Nitschke says, but he is defiant in the face of the charges against him. “Brayley wasn’t sick, he was 45, but he certainly had fairly cogent reasons, I would argue, for ending his own life. The thought that he would spend 25 years in prison led to that decision.” So he’s comfortable with the idea of a suspected murderer using Exit’s advice to kill himself? “I suppose comfortable is the right word,” he replies. “It’s the person who is dying’s decision.”
Nitschke knows he shocks people. He clearly relishes controversy. He tells me that his handbook is the only book that has been banned in Australia over the past 35 years; that during the brief window when voluntary euthanasia was legal in Australia’s Northern Territory, he was the first doctor in the world to have helped patients to die legally; and that the machine he built so people could administer their own euthanising drugs is now in the Science Museum in London. He is proud of being “Dr Death”.
“It’s a rare day when I don’t walk down the street and have someone come up and say very nice things to me,” he says. “That didn’t used to happen when I was writing out prescriptions for penicillin. It’s nice to be involved in an important, cutting-edge social debate. It’s exciting. Hopefully we’ll start to see not only changes in legislature, but also a world in which people see this as a right, without having to pass some sort of strict eligibility criteria.”
Is he making money as well as social history?
“Sometimes people feel that you should never earn anything if you’re associated with this issue. It’s almost as if the issue itself doesn’t allow you to break even, let alone make a living,” he replies immediately. “It’s not cheap, but it’s not cheap to travel around the world running workshops, either. It would be impossible to run the organisation without that sort of financial basis. It’s a not-for-profit organisation.”
Whether or not you agree with what Nitschke is doing, the demand for the kind of services Exit offers will not go away while assisted suicide remains illegal in Britain. With increasing numbers of baby boomers passing retirement age, Britain looks likely to be an expanding market for organisations that offer a planned death.
“Having a local presence on the ground in the UK will make a big difference,” Nitschke says. “I would expect quite significant growth. In some ways we’ve almost reached the limits in Australia, New Zealand and increasingly the US, but Europe, in particular the UK, is a big area of interest.”
Whatever drives Nitschke, when he talks about the future of Exit, he uses the language of business. But speaking to Bassett, her motives couldn’t be clearer. Why does she take the risk of getting involved with Exit when she knows so well what the consequences could be?
“Because it’s wrong!” she almost howls. “It’s just wrong.” There’s a long pause. “It’s the right thing to do, that’s all I can say. It’s right to help people who are stuffed. They are stuck and they’re worried. In later years, you shouldn’t be that fearful about what’s going to happen to you.”
Ultimately, she says, she’s just listening to what people want from their lives – and their deaths. “It’s everybody’s right to have a say in it.”