‘I drove my husband to Swiss clinic so he could die smiling ...not gasping for breath in UK’
A WIDOW whose husband “died smiling” at a Swiss clinic wants assisted dying to be legalised here.
Barbara Shooter, 67, drove husband Adrian, 74, to Basel after he suffered months of torment with Motor Neurone Disease.
She describes the system in Britain as “cruel” and insists we should not be “outsourcing compassion to a foreign country”.
The complex process also cost the couple £15,000, excluding travel.
“For a lot of people that’s completely out of the question,” said Barbara. “Then you have a sort of apartheid system where you have people who have got money can afford to do it.
“Because you can’t do it in this country, anyone who can’t afford to do it can’t do it and that’s shocking.”
Barbara’s comments, in a national newspaper, back the Daily Express’s Give Us Our Last Rights campaign in which we are fighting – alongside Dame Esther Rantzen – to force a change in the law.
She tells how Adrian was diagnosed with MND in 2021 and passed away at the Pegasos assisted dying clinic in December 2022.
The former head of Chiltern Railways had been very active, even taking part in the Peking to Paris Rally with his wife in 2010, driving a 70-year-old Ford Model A.
But by the end of his life he was suffering with severe breathing problems and gasping for air despite being on a ventilator. He could not hold up his head or swallow.
Barbara says his death was a “compassionate act” that allowed him the good end that he would have otherwise been denied.
She said: “I think it’s a very cruel system that denies someone who is clearly at the end stage of life the right to end their suffering and to prolong it.”
Barbara said “he was very close to death anyway” but making the decision to go to Switzerland and taking control back was “extremely powerful” for him.
His widow recalls: “He became a changed person once we had a date – almost buoyant really. It sounds really perverse and is hard for people to understand but the idea that he had a date for his death
‘Having a date for his death cheered him up ...he could see an end to his suffering’
cheered him up no end because he could see an end to his suffering.” Barbara describes the day of Adrian’s death as “a gorgeous bluesky day” and his death as “quick, calm and loving”.
But she said she had to provide a raft of documentation beforehand – and it was a “common misconception” that assisted dying was an easy process to arrange in Switzerland. Her husband
was also seen by numerous doctors to make sure he was certain of his choice.
Adrian eventually administered the lifeending drug himself after a medical and psychiatric examination.
She said: “I was lying next to him in bed. I had my arms round him.
“He literally looked at me smiling, telling me how much he loved me, and literally, 20 seconds later I felt his head flop.
“He was gone. That was it. It was all over. Literally, he died smiling. It was a lovely death.”
She said it was unlikely he would have had such an end had he stayed in the UK.
Barbara said: “I think he’d have got pneumonia and been gasping for breath. He could have died in an ambulance, in a corridor, at home choking effectively which is horrific, he just didn’t want that.”
Mr Shooter was cremated in Switzerland and his widow then drove home to Oxfordshire with his letters to his children, who had been unaware of his plans.
More than 600 attended his memorial service and Barbara says she received hundreds of letters, which were “overwhelmingly positive”. Helping someone end their life carries a maximum 14-year sentence although Scotland is proposing to legalise the practice.
A poll this week revealed 75% of Scots backed the Bill. that