Derek Humphry

Derek Humphry (born 29 April 1930) is a British-born American journalist, author and principal founder in 1980 of the Hemlock Society USA and past president of the World Federation of Right to Die Societies, both of which support the notion of decriminalization of voluntary euthanasia. He is the author of Jean's Way and the best-seller Final Exit; he is also the president of the Euthanasia Research & Guidance Organization and advisor to the Final Exit Network. He lives in Junction City, Oregon.

Early years

Born to a British father and an Irish mother, he was raised in Somerset. His education was slender because of a broken home followed by World War II, when many English schools were in chaos, finally leaving at the age of 15, when he became a messenger boy for the Yorkshire Post. In a 30-year journalistic career Humphry worked and wrote for the Bristol Evening World, the Manchester Evening News, the Daily Mail, the Sunday Times and, lastly, the Los Angeles Times. ^[1]

Personal life

His first wife, Jean Humphry, ended her life on 29 March 1975, in The Cotswolds with her husband at her side, with an intentional overdose of medication; she was suffering from terminal breast cancer. He told that story from his perspective in the best-selling Jean's Way. Derek and Jean Humphry had three sons, the youngest one an adoptee.

Humphry wrote the 1991 suicide handbook, Final Exit. From 1993 onwards Humphry has been president of the Euthanasia Research & Guidance Organization (ERGO), and chairs the advisory board of the new Final Exit Network (formed 2004 to replace the Hemlock Society dissolved the previous year in mergers).

His marriage to his next wife, Ann Wickett, an American and a co-founder of the Hemlock Society, ended in 1989 when she filed for divorce; they had no children. Ann Wickett committed suicide, at the age of 49 on 2 October 1991, during a recurrence of depression and Borderline Personality Disorder. She had been battling breast cancer, but the cancer was in remission and she was not considered "terminally ill". In her suicide note, she claimed that Humphry was a "killer" and that his first wife, Jean, had died of suffocation.^[2][3] He denied these allegations as groundless.^[4]

In early 1991 Humphry married Gretchen Crocker, youngest daughter of an Oregon farming family.^[5]

Affiliations

Humphry is an advisor to the World Federation of Right to Die Societies by virtue of his past presidency and in appreciation of his 26 years of involvement with that organization. Since it was founded in 2004, Humphry has been an adviser to the Final Exit Network. After four members of the organization were accused in Georgia of assisting a suicide ^[6] he launched the Final Exit Liberty Fund which paid most of their legal costs.

In 2014 Derek Humphry was given the World Federation of Right To Die Societies "Lifetime Achievement Award" for 'contributing so much, so long and so courageously to our right to a peaceful death. The award was presented by world president Faye Girsh at the 20th international conference in Chicago on 9/19/2014. It is the first time this award has been made. ^[7]

Books and publications

Humphry was newsletter editor for the World Federation of Right to Die Societies for a number of years.

As of 2016, the paperback Final Exit was in print in English, Spanish and Italian. It has sold more than one million copies in twelve languages since 1991. In April 2007 the editors and book critics of USA Today selected Final Exit as one of the most memorable 25 books of the last quarter century.^[8] In 2008 he completed his autobiography, Good Life, Good Death: Memoir of an Investigative Reporter and Pro-choice Advocate.

Derek Humphry bibliography

• Because They're Black (1972) (awarded the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize)
• Police Power and Black People (1973)
• Passport and Politics (1974)
• The Cricket Conspiracy (1975) (ISBN 0-901108-40-5)
• False Messiah: The Story of Michael X (1976)
• Jean's Way: A Love Story (1978) ISBN 0-9637280-7-5
• The Right to Die: Understanding Euthanasia (1986) (ISBN 0-9606030-9-3)
• Final Exit: The Practicalities of Self-deliverance and Assisted Suicide for the Dying (1991, updated 2002, 3rd edition) (ISBN 0-385-33653-5)
• Lawful Exit: The Limits of Freedom for Help in Dying (1993) (ISBN 0-9637280-0-8)
• Dying with Dignity (1992) (ISBN 0-517-14342-9)
• Freedom to Die: People, Politics & The Right-To-Die Movement (1998) (ISBN 0-9637280-1-6)
• Let Me Die Before I Wake (& Supplement to Final Exit; 2002) (ISBN 1-4011-0286-7)
• The Good Euthanasia Guide: Where, What & Who in Choices in Dying (2006) (ISBN 0-9637280-8-3)
• Good Life, Good Death: Memoir of an Investigative Reporter and Pro-Choice Advocate (2008) (ISBN 978-0-9768283-3-4)

See also

• Euthanasia
• George Exoo
• Jack Kevorkian
• Philip Nitschke

References

• 5. ^Curiosities of Literature, pages 141, 248-9. By John Sutherland/ Arrow Books 2008.
• NOTE: For a full and independent biography of Derek Humphry, see 'Current Biography', Volume 56, Number 3, March 1995

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Derek Humphry

• Good Life, Good Death
• Assisted Suicide.org website
• Bowker Biography on Derek Humphry
• Amazon Bibliography for Derek Humphry
• In Search of Gentle Death on YouTube