Derek Humphry, a journalist born in Great Britain whose experience with helping his terminally sick wife put an end to her life, led him to become a crusade pioneer in the movement to die and published ‘Final Exit’, a bestseller guide about suicide. On January 2 in Eugene, Oregon. He was 94.

His death, in a hospice facility, was announced by his family.

With a populist flair and a talent to talk about death for business, Mr Humphry almost put a national conversation on his own about help with suicide, at a time when the idea had been little more than an esoteric theory Where medical ethicians turn around.

“He was the one who really put this case on the map in America,” says Ian Dowbiggin, professor at the University of Prince Edward Island and author of “A Concise History of Euthanasia: Life, Death, God, and Medicine” (2005 ). “The people who support the idea of ​​help with suicide are absolutely owed to him a lot.”

In 1975, Mr Humphry worked as a reporter for The Sunday Times in London when Jean Humphry, his 22 -year -old wife, was in the final phase of terminal bone cancer. Hoping to prevent long -term suffering, she asked him to help her die.

Mr. Humphry bought a deadly dose of painkillers from a sympathetic doctor and mixed it with coffee in her favorite mug.

“I took her the mug and told her that if she drank it, she would die immediately,” Mr Humphry told The Daily Record of Scotland. “Then I gave her a hug, kissed her and we said goodbye.”

Mr Humphry described the emotional, taboo and legally charged pursuit of the accelerated death of his wife in the book “Jean’s Way” (1979). It was in newspapers around the world and was a sensation. Readers sent letters to the editor in which they discussed the suffering of their loved ones. Many wrote directly to Mr Humphry.

“I wish we had a solution like yours,” wrote a woman, who described her husband’s last eight weeks of life as “a horror.” “How much more beautiful, how much more” love. ” We did what others forced us and experienced the terrible “death” that the medical world brings by extending life in every possible way. “

In their letters, some readers argued for instructions to help their loved ones die. That was a reason for Mr Humphry, now remarried and working in California for The Los Angeles Times, to think about the establishment of an organization that argues for help with suicide and the rights to the end of the life of terminally ill.

Ann Wickett Humphry, his second wife, suggested using the word hemlock as a title for the organization, “with the argument that most Americans associate the word with the death of Socrates, a man who discussed and planned his death,” wrote Mr Humphry later in an updated edition of “Jean’s Way.”

In August 1980 he and his wife de Los Angeles Press Club rented to announce the creation of the Hemlock Society, which they ran from the garage of their house in Santa Monica.

The organization grew rapidly. In 1981, the magazine ‘Let Me Die Before I Wake’ released a guide for medicines and dosages to bring about ‘peaceful self -liberation’. The group also lobbyed to the state laws to issue laws that make help with suicide legally. In 1990 the Hemlock Society moved to Eugene. By that time, the organization had more than 30,000 members, but the conversation about the right to die had not yet reached most dining tables in America.

That changed spectacularly in 1991, after Mr Humphry published ‘Final Exit: The Practicalities of Self-Deliverance and Assisted Suicide for the Dying’. The book was a step-by-step manual for 192 pages that not only explained suicide methods, but also gave Miss Manners-like tips to get out in an elegant way.

“If you are unfortunately forced to end your life in a hospital or motel,” he wrote, “it is friendly to leave a note in which you apologize for the shock and the inconvenience for the staff. I also heard that someone gave a generous tip to a motel staff. “

“Final Exit” quickly shot to number 1 in the Hardcoveradvies category of the bestseller list of The New York Times.

“That is an indication of how great the issue of euthanasia now looms in our society,” said the bio ethicist Dr. Arthur Caplan in 1991 to The Times. “It is frightening and disturbing, and that kind of sales figures is a hit. . It is the loudest declaration of protest against the way in which medicine deals with terminal diseases and deaths. ”

The reactions to the “final exit” were generally divided along ideological lines. Conservatives have rejected it.

“What can you say about this new ‘book’? In one word: malignant, “wrote the bio ethicist Leon R. Kass of the University of Chicago in the Journal Commentary, in which he called Mr Humphry” the Lord High Executioner “. “I didn’t want to read it, I don’t want you to read it. It should never have been written, and it doesn’t deserve to be worthy with a review, let alone an article. “

But progressives embraced the book, even when public health experts expressed their concern about the fact that the methods described there could be used by depressed people who were not terminally ill.

“I have read ‘Final Exit’ out of curiosity, but I keep it for another reason – because I can imagine that after I have ever nursed a cancer patient, I could think of the day I might want to use it ”, Says the New York Times. Columnist Anna Quindlen wrote. She added: “And if that day comes, whose business are they actually, except mine and those of those I love?”

Instead of worrying about the content of the book, Mrs. Quindlen said, “We have to look for ways to assure that a worthy death is also available in other places than in the bookstore in the shopping center.”

Derek John Humphry was born on April 29, 1930 in Bath, England. His father, Royston Martin Humphry, was a commercial traveler. His mother, Bettine (Duggan) Humphry, had been a photo model before she married.

After he left the school at the age of 15, Derek got a job as a newspaper bode. The following year The Bristol Evening World hired him as a reporter. Then he started reporting for The Manchester Evening News and The Daily Mail before moving to The Sunday Times in London and then to The Los Angeles Times.

Before he turned to books about death, Mr Humphry wrote ‘Because they’re Black’ (1971), a study of racial discrimination written with Gus John, a black social worker, and ‘Police Power and Black People’ (1972) , about racism and corruption in Scotland Yard.

Mr Humphry was even a polarizing figure within the movement of the right to die.

In 1990 he and Mrs. Wickett Humphry divorced and fought bitterly in the news media. She called him a “fraudster” and accused him of leaving her because her cancer had been established. Mr Humphry denied the accusation.

“This was a very shaky marriage,” he told The New York Times in 1990. ‘This is extremely painful, just as bad as Jean’s death. I lost my house; I lived in a motel for three months. “

Mrs. Wickett Humphry committed suicide in October 1991.

In a video recorded the day before, she expressed her doubts about the work they had done together, including helping her parents to put an end to their lives at home.

“I walked away from that house and thought we were both murderers,” she said in the video, which was judged by The Times.

Mr Humphry went into the ‘Damage Control’ mode, he told The Times. He posted an advertisement of half a page in the newspaper in which he explained his side of the story.

“Unfortunately, Ann was pursued for a large part of her life by emotional problems,” the advertisement said, adding that “suicide for reasons of depression never was part of the Hemlock credo.”

The death of Mrs. Wickett Humphry and her reservations about the movement of the right to die caused tensions within the Hemlock Society. Mr Humphry resigned as executive director in 1992 and founded the Euthanasia Research and Guidance Organization.

The Hemlock Society eventually fell apart into various new groups, including the Final Exit Network, which Mr Humphry helped set up.

He married Gretchen Crocker in 1991. She survives him, together with three sons from his first marriage; Three grandchildren; And one great -grandchild.

Lowrey Brown, an ‘exit guide’ of the Final Exit Network that helps terminally sick patients to plan their death, said in an interview that her clients sometimes credit Mr Humphry and ‘Final Exit’ because they have given them the courage to one End their lives.

“It was the Hemlock Society and the book ‘Final Exit’ that really exceeded the threshold to get this as a discussion topic in the living rooms of ordinary Americans,” said Mrs. Brown. “You could talk about it at the Thanksgiving dinner table.”

If you have suicidal thoughts, call or text 988 to reach the suicide and crisis lifeline or go to Speakingofsuicide.com/resources For a list of additional sources.