Derek Humphrey, the British -born journalist who led his experience in helping his wife with an incurable disease to end her life until he became a pioneer in the movement of right to death and publishing the book “The Final Exodus”, which is the best -selling evidence of suicide. On January 2, in Eugene, Oregon, he was 94 years old.
His family announced his death in the elderly house.
Thanks to his populist tendency and talent to speak realisticly about death, Mr. Humphrey was almost alone to arouse a national debate about suicide with the help of doctors in the early eighties, the period in which the idea was not more than just an idea limited to a certain category. The theory discussed by medical ethics.
“He was the person who put this issue on the map in America,” said Ian Dubaijin, a professor at Prince Edward Island University and the author of the book. A brief history of compassionate murder: life, death, God and medicine. (2005). “People who support the idea of suicide with the help of the doctor owe him very much.”
In 1975, Mr. Humphrey was working as a reporter for the London Sunday Times when his wife Jane Humphrey, who lasted 22 years, was in the final stages of bone cancer. Hoping to avoid long suffering, she asked him to help her death.
Mr. Humphrey bought a deadly dose of pain relievers from a sympathetic doctor and mixed with coffee in her favorite cup.
“The cup took it and told her that if it drank it, you will die immediately,” Mr. Humphrey told Daily Record in Scotland. “Then I embraced it, accepted it, and bid it farewell.”
Mr. Humphrey dated the emotional, banned and enrolled in the law for the death of his hasty wife in the movie “Jean Road” (1979). The book, whose excerpts were published in newspapers around the world, caused a sensation. Readers send messages to the editor discussing the suffering of their loved ones. Many wrote directly to Mr. Humphrey.
A woman wrote: “I wish we had a solution like Hell,” describing the last eight weeks of her husband’s life as “horrific.” “How beautiful, how much more” love “. We have done what others forced us to do and felt the” horrific death “that the medical world offers by prolonging life in all possible ways.
In their letters, some readers requested instructions to help their loved ones death. This was pushed by Mr. Humphrey, who married at the time and working in California for the Los Angeles Times, to consider establishing an organization to defend suicide and the end of life of the hopeless patients of their recovery.
Anne Wikit Humphrey, his second wife, suggested using Himluk as a title, on the pretext that most Americans connect the word to the death of Socrates, the man who discussed his death and plans for it, as Mr. Humphrey later wrote in an updated edition of “Jean Road.”
In August 1980, they rented the Los Angeles club for the press to announce the establishment of the Himluk Association, which they launched from their garage in Santa Monica.
The organization has grown quickly. In 1981, she issued “Let me die before I wake up,” a guide to medicines and doses of urging “peaceful self -salvation”. The group also pressed the legislative councils in the states to unseen laws that make suicide with legal help. In 1990, the Himluk Association moved to Eugene. By that time, its members were more than 30,000, but the conversation of the right to death had not yet reached most dinner tables in America.
This changed amazingly in 1991, after Mr. Humphrey published his book “The final exit: the practical aspects of self -salvation and the help of suicide to the dying.” The book was a 192 step -by -step guide, in addition to explaining the methods of suicide, giving advice similar to Miss Manners to go out safely.
He wrote: “If you unfortunately have to end your life in a hospital or hotel, it is nice to leave a message in which you apologize for the shock and inconvenience to the employees.
The book quickly ranked first in the category of tips with a cardboard in the list of best -selling books in the New York Times.
“This is an indication of the size of the mastery murder that is looming on the horizon in our society now.” It is frightening and worrying, and this type of sales numbers is a shot in the goal. . It is the highest protest statement on how medicine is dealt with with chronic diseases and death.
The reactions to the “final exit” were generally divided into ideological foundations. The conservatives criticized it.
What can one say about this new “book”? In one word: evil, “the world of vital ethics at the University of Chicago Lyon R. cup He wrote in the magazine of Comtenary, describing Mr. Humphrey as “the highest executioner.” “I didn’t want to read it, I don’t want you to read it. It should never be written, and it was not worth honoring with a review, not to mention an article.”
But the progressive adopted the book, even with public health experts expression of their concern that the methods they developed can be used by people with depression who were not an incurable disease.
“I have read the book” The Final Exodus “out of curiosity, but I will keep it for another reason – because I can imagine, after I sponsor a cancer patient, the day I have wanted to use,” The New York Times and the writer of the column Anna Quizelin wrote: “And if it comes That day, who will be really his work, only my work and the work of those I love? “
Instead of concern about the contents of the book, Mrs. Quintlin said: “We have to look for ways to ensure the availability of decent death in places other than the bookstore chain in the commercial center.”
Derek John Humphrey was born on April 29, 1930 in Bath, England. His father, Retiston Martin Humphrey, was a street vendor. His mother, two houses (Dogan) Humphrey, was a supermodel before marriage.
After leaving the school at the age of 15, Derek got the job of a newspaper correspondent. The following year, The Bristol Evening World as a reporter. He continued to reports to the Manchester Evining News and Daily Mail before moving to the London -Times Sunday Times, then the Los Angeles Times.
Before turning into books on death, Mr. Humphrey wrote a book “Because they are black” (1971), a research on racial discrimination he wrote with Jos John, a black social worker. And “Police and the Black People” (1972), about racism and corruption in Scotland Yard.
Mr. Humphrey was a polarized figure even within the movement of the right to death.
In 1990, he and Mrs. Wikit Humphrey separated and bitterly fighting in the media. She described him as a “fraudster” and accused him of leaving her because of her diagnosis of cancer. Mr. Humphrey denied this claim.
“This was a very fragile marriage,” he told the New York Times in 1990. “This was very painful, as was the death of Jin,” he told the New York Times in 1990. I lost my house. I lived in a three -month hotel.
Mrs. Wikit Humphrey killed herself in October 1991.
In a video recorded the previous day, she expressed concern about the work they did together, including helping her parents to end their lives at home.
“I came out of that house, believing that we are killers.”
He told the Times that Mr. Humphrey entered into a “control of damage.” He put an advertisement from half a page in the newspaper explaining his side of the story.
“Unfortunately, most of her life suffered from emotional problems,” the announcement said, adding that “suicide for depression was never part of the doctrine of the Shukran.”
The death of Mrs. Wikit Humphrey and reservations about the movement of the right to death in tension within the Himluk Association. Mr. Humphrey resigned from his position as CEO in 1992 and established the Organization for Merciful.
The Himluk Association was finally divided into several new groups, including The final exit networkAnd that helped Mr. Humphrey at its beginning.
He married Grechen Crocker in 1991. She survived with three children of his first marriage. Three grandchildren; And one grandson.
Lori Brown, “Exodus” of the Final EXIT, which helps patients with chronic diseases in planning their deaths, said in one of the interviews that its customers sometimes attribute the credit to Mr. Humphrey and Final EXIT to give them courage to end their lives.
Ms. Brown said: “The Himluk and the Book of” The Final Exodus “are the ones who have already exceeded the threshold of entering this matter into the living rooms of ordinary Americans as a topic for discussion.” “You can talk about it at the Thanksgiving dinner table.”
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