Doctor sends SIX dementia patients to suicide clinics
He says sufferers couldn’t face ‘gradual annihilation of their personalities’ so chose to die
A DOCTOR who was struck off has helped six British dementia sufferers to end their lives at assisted suicide clinics in Switzerland.
Psychiatrist Colin Brewer, who is no longer allowed to practise in Britain, wrote medical reports stating the patients had the mental capacity to choose to die.
None of the six – who died between 2013 and 2016, among them an eminent physicist – was suffering from a terminal illness.
Last night, Brewer told The Mail on Sunday he had carried out a series of mental assessment tests on the patients before they went to Dignitas.
But campaigners against assisted dying said it is ‘hugely dangerous’ to enable people with ‘diminished mental capacity’ to end their lives.
Five of the Britons died at Dignitas in Zurich, while the other died at another Swiss suicide clinic called Life Circle in Basel.
After being diagnosed with dementia by their doctors, and having already decided to go to Dignitas, they went to Brewer before the disease progressed to the point where they could no longer be judged of sound mind.
Brewer’s reports were assessed by Dignitas, along with other information, before they were allowed to die.
The patients end their lives no later than three months after Brewer’s assessment and before they are suffering the severe effects of dementia.
The patients included a 78-year-old teacher as well as the leading scientist, Professor John Fayers, who was 83 when he took a fatal dose of barbiturates at Dignitas in 2013.
Assisted suicide is a criminal offence in the UK and carries a maximum jail sentence of 14 years, but it is allowed in Switzerland.
Inside the Dignitas clinic – an anonymous building in a Zurich suburb – are rooms for patients with kitchenettes and dining areas.
Patients drink the fatal dose of barbiturate dissolved in water. Most die painlessly less than 20 minutes later. The deaths are
‘You do not know how the disease will progress’
monitored by Dignitas’s trained carers, who are known as ‘companions’ and stay behind to deal with the police and undertakers.
Brewer ran an addiction clinic in London before he was struck off in 2006 by the General Medical Coun- cil after a patient for whom he had prescribed drugs died.
He can see and assess patients offering non-medical services as long as he makes clear that he is not on the medical register.
Speaking to The Mail on Sunday, Dr Brewer said that he regularly refuses to write reports for dementia patients who contact him because they are no longer lucid enough to make the decision to take their lives.
Last year, he turned two patients away because they were too demented, he said.
The 76-year-old psychiatrist said: ‘More and more people are living long enough to get dementia, although most of the people I see are in their 70s and therefore not particularly old. People are also more aware of dementia now.
‘These are people who know that dementia means the gradual annihilation of their personalities and for most people their personality is the most important thing. It’s who they are.
‘None of them said I want to go to Switzerland because I’m a burden on the family.
‘They said I’m going to Switzerland because I’m going to lose my mind and I don’t want to be alive when that happens.’
Dr Brewer has also written assessments for people with illnesses such as cancer and motor-neurone disease, stating that they were mentally alert enough to choose to die.
Between 2013 and 2016, he has assessed 18 patients who have died at Swiss assisted suicide clinics.
Baroness Ilora Finlay, one of Britain’s most eminent end-of-life doctors and an opponent of legalising assisted suicide in the UK, warned that dementia patients risked cutting their lives short without good reason if they go to Dignitas.
She said: ‘You don’t know how the disease [dementia] might or might not progress.
‘Some people may be frightened and may be in despair.
‘But if you assist their suicide you cut their life off by months or years when they may never have gone on to experience more severe forms of the disease as something could intervene and cause them to die sooner.’
Alistair Thompson, a spokesman for the group Care Not Killing, added: ‘It’s a hugely dangerous trend to start allowing people with diminished mental capacity to end their lives.
‘A lot of people fear that when there is a care crisis within the NHS there will be more pressure on people who are elderly and frail to think about ending their lives.’
Dignitas, set up in 1998, allows foreigners to use its services and according to its own figures up until last year, 310 Britons had died there.
Anyone who wants the organisation’s help must also prove they have the mental capacity to be able to take the decision to kill themselves.
Dr Brewer, an associate co-ordinator for right-to-die group My Death My Decision, said he is the only doctor in Britain willing to assess if dementia patients who want to be helped to die are of sound mind.
He explained: ‘You don’t have to be a doctor to assess mental capacity. It’s helpful but it’s not essential.’