Briton prepares for Swiss suicide

Assisted suicide is illegal in the UK

A terminally-ill man from Merseyside is flying to Switzerland to kill himself in an assisted suicide.

Reginald Crew, 70, from Hunts Cross, Merseyside, has motor neurone disease and says he no longer wants to go on.

I don't want to go on living like this

Reginald Crew

However, anti-euthanasia campaigners have opposed his decision.

Mr Crew is thought to be one of the first UK citizens to take advantage of more relaxed laws on assisted suicide in Switzerland.

Assisted suicide remains illegal in the UK, despite a number of legal challenges.

In the past, Mr Crew told the BBC: "I have had motor neurone disease for four years now.

"I don't want to go on living like this. I have had enough."

Motor neurone disease has the effect of a creeping paralysis - for which there is no cure.

Mr Crew has applied to an "assisted suicide group" in Switzerland so a doctor can help him end his life.

No choice

Although there is nothing concrete in the Swiss penal code which says that assisted suicide is legal in Switzerland, the practice of helping a terminally ill patient to end his or her life is widely considered as a "humane act".

Liz Sayce, from the Disability Rights Commission, said that, very often , when disabled people expressed a wish to die, they were doing so because they didn't feel they had a choice.

She added: "We realise that disabled people and the public are very divided on this difficult ethical question which is why we did our web poll.

"This showed people thought it was more important that disabled people had a stronger right to live then a stronger right to die."

The most recent challenge to the laws on assisted suicide in the UK came from Diane Pretty, who argued that she had the human right to choose when to die.

Her arguments were rejected in the UK courts and that ruling upheld in Europe.

Mrs Pretty died shortly after her court battle failed.