Fabio Ridolfi, a paralysed man who
can only move his eyes and has been bedridden for 18 years due
to an irreversible condition, has been given permission for
medically assisted suicide by the Marche regional ethics
committee, the right-to-die Luca Coscioni association said on
Thursday.
It said the committee had given the green light on the basis of
the precedent established by the case of DJ Fabo, a tetraplegic
disk jockey who was helped to commit suicide in a Swiss clinic
by right-to-die activist Marco Cappato, a leading member of the
Coscioni association, in 2017.
In a landmark sentence, the Constitutional Court cleared
Cappato, saying assisted suicide could be legitimate in some
cases if the person wanting to die was in intolerable suffering.
The court also called on parliament to pass legislation dealing
with end-of-life issues, something that it has failed to do so
far.
In February the same court rejected a petition to stage a
referendum on legalising euthanasia.
It said that, if the referendum were approved, "the
Constitutionally necessary minimum protection of human life
would not be preserved". It referred specifically to the
vulnerable.
Ridolfi, 46, had made an appeal to the Italian State to help him
commit assisted suicide on Wednesday, 16 years after he made his
first vain appeal on TV in 2006.
The Luca Coscioni association said the decision by the ethics
committee was made on April 8 but Ridolfi was only notified of
it after making the appeal.
It said the committee had not given indications about the method
of assisted suicide or the drug that should be used.
Ridolfi is the second person to get the green light for assisted
suicide in Marche after the DJ Fabo precedent.
The other person is a 44-year-old tetraplegic man, known only by
his first name Mario, who was given permission to use a
barbiturate drug called Tiopentone to end his life.
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