Death on TV Reveals a Swiss Haven for Suicides
Twice a week, on average, in a nondescript building by the railroad tracks, a foreigner comes to die.
Most are terminally ill. Some are young and physically healthy except for a permanent disability or severe, debilitating mental disorder.
Drawn by Switzerland's reputation as a trouble-free place for foreigners to end their lives, more than 100 Germans, Britons, French, Americans and others come to this small commuter town just east of Zurich each year to lie down on a bed in an industrial park building and drink a lethal dose of barbiturates.
Now the country's suicide practices are under the spotlight after British TV last week showed Craig Ewert, a 59-year-old Chicago man with a severe form of motor neuron disease, killing himself in Switzerland two years ago.
