'I'm looking forward to it': The last comments of the 104-year-old scientist before his assisted death

Although he’d had preferred to die at home in Australia, assisted suicide is only permitted for the terminally ill there. Instead David Goodall made the journey to Switzerland to end his life, on his own terms

“There were more people here than I realised.” The earnest last words 104-year-old David Goodall said at the press conference held in his honour, as he was wheeled out through the crowd, were an accurate summation of the scientist who found incidental fame in his battle to die.

Goodall died today after flying from Perth, Australia, earlier this week to end his life with the lethal drug Nembutal at the Eternal Spirit house in Switzerland.

Switzerland has allowed assisted suicide since 1942, and is the only country that offers it to foreign nationals. According to the Swiss statistics office there were 965 assisted suicide deaths in 2015, compared to just 43 in 1998.

“In a way I’m looking forward to it, as an end. I should be very disappointed if something happens to interfere, which I don’t think there will be,” the respected botanist and ecologist told The Independent the evening before his death, which he spent at the Spalentor Hotel in Basel, located right beside the Universitat Basel Botanical Gardens that Goodall is said to have visited in his last few days.

Goodall said he’d be much happier to have died at home in Australia, where assisted suicide, defined as any act that intentionally assists another person to kill themselves, is illegal. It will be introduced from mid-2019 in the state of Victoria, but this will only apply to terminally ill patients with less than six months to live, and Goodall had no terminal illness.

“Australia is my home. I’m fond of Australia and its landscape and its people,” Goodall, who moved to Australia from the UK in 1948, told The Independent. And if he could say one thing to politicians who have played a part in not allowing people in similar situations to Goodall the right to die at home, he’d say, “Shame on you”.

David Goodall, pictured yesterday in his Basel hotel room, started making preparations for his death as early as 20 years ago (Jessica Brown)

“That [politicians] should deny old people the right to kill themselves if they so choose, I don’t understand that. Maybe they feel obliged by their religion to stop other people killing themselves, but I have no sympathy with that,” said Goodall.

He started making preparations for an assisted death 20 years ago when he became a member of Exit International, an organisation supporting people in their right to choose how to die. He said the final straw for going ahead with assisted dying was losing his independence.

“The deterioration started five or six years ago when I lost my driving license, and it’s been going downhill ever since,” he told The Independent. Goodall worked voluntarily at Perth’s Edith Cowan University as an honorary research associate after retiring in 1979.

He first made headlines when he refused attempts by the university’s to declare him unfit for work due to concerns over his safety on his commute to work on public transport.

Goodall, who was wheelchair-bound and suffered from failing hearing and eyesight, was instead moved to an office closer to his home and away from his colleagues, and was also forced to give up theatre when his worsening vision prevented him from driving to rehearsals. He has also previously attempted suicide, and likened his subsequent hospital stay to prison.

Tom Curran, Exit’s coordinator, said: “There was no question that 20 years ago, David wasn’t ill and was enjoying life, but we advocate for people to do their preparation when they are well, so if anything occurs they don’t have difficulties,” he said, adding that another factor behind Goodall’s decision to do this, and speak publicly about such a private issue, was to raise awareness and fight for change.

“You have to be dying before you can die, so David would never have qualified. But nobody should have to go halfway around the world to exercise a right that everybody should have,” Curran said. Only 40 Australians have ever made the trip to Switzerland to die, due to the length and cost of the flight.

Curran’s wife, Marie Fleming, died in 2013 after a high-profile case with Ireland’s High Court after arguing she had a constitutional right to receive assistance to die. When asked by the court how long Fleming had to live, her neurologist guessed it could have been anything between two weeks and 20 years.

Curran argues that most people don’t qualify for assisted dying laws. And the argument that such laws create a “slippery slope” that blurs the lines of who should legally be allowed assistance comes from those countries which are refining the law when they realise it’s too limited.

Peter Saunders, campaign director for the Care Not Killing Alliance, however, argues that scrapping legal protections for one group of people would lead to assisted suicides for those with non-terminal conditions, disabilities and vulnerable people, possibly without any changes in the law.

“In Holland and Belgium, legislation that was only meant to apply to mentally competent terminally ill adults has been extended to include the elderly, disabled, those with mental health problems and even non-mentally competent children,” Saunders told The Independent.

“There are examples in Oregon and Washington of cancer patients being denied life-saving and life-extending drugs, yet offered the lethal cocktail of barbiturates to end their own lives,” Saunders added.

Another argument levelled at right-to-die campaigners is that it undermines the trustworthiness of physicians, who are relied upon to not harm anyone. But Curran argues assisted dying is a civil rights issue, not a medical one.

“Dying isn’t a medical procedure, it’s a natural one, and it shouldn’t have to involve medical people beyond the role of determining if a person has the capability to make a decision, to understand the decision they’re making and its consequences,” Curran said.

In England and Wales, it is illegal to assist or encourage someone to take their life, and numerous attempts to reform the act have failed. While numerous high-profile cases have brought the issue to light in recent years, there’s been less public support for the case of non-terminally ill people choosing assisted death.

Campaign group Dignity in Dying’s chief executive Sarah Wootton told The Independent: “The vast majority of those who choose an assisted death … are suffering from terminal and incurable conditions. It’s clear from 20 years of evidence from Oregon that assisted dying laws are safest and most effective when limited to terminally ill, mentally competent adults in their final months of life.”

But the last words should go to Goodall, who was optimistic. “I’m hopeful for change, but I think it might take five or 10 years,” he said. And despite repeatedly voicing his surprise at the media attention he received, Goodall’s advice to anyone else considering assisted dying suggests he had a boldness reserved from those in a similar situation to his own.

“I’d urge them to do that, if they can afford the travel to Switzerland. Follow my steps.”