On June 17, a referendum was organised in Vaud (a Swiss canton) to allow assisted suicide to be implemented in healt institutions. There was a good majority (61,6 %) in favor of the proposal from the State Government: to allow assisted suicide in elderly homes, nursing homes and hospitals. As a consequence now all the homes and hospitals have to allow their patients to die with EXIT.The difference with a sort like proposal from the EXIT SR (Dr Jerome Sobel) which also went for ballot in the referendum (it received 39,9 % of votes) was that EXIT’s proposal did not include hospitals and did not ask for a specific agreement by the chief doctor of the institution. Bernard Sutter from EXIT DS: “That of course is a setback on self determinatioin. However, we think that the doctors of the homes and hospitals won’t oppose so much, maybe only delay the assisted suicide for 2-4 weeks. Let’s see how this develops”. EXIT celebrated it as a victory anyway.
