September 27, 2007
Dublin radio station 98FM wrote a new page in the history of Irish broadcasting. At 8:00 p.m., hosts Paul Connolly and Allison O’Reilly interviewed Derek Humphry, a distinguished journalist, founder of The Hemlock Society, and an international spokesman for the right-to-die movement. This episode of the call-in talk show, “The Inbox,” was the first major radio program ever devoted to the topic of assisted suicide in Ireland.
This subject became Irish front-page news in 2002, when a Harvard-trained American clergyman, the Reverend George David Exoo, traveled to Ireland. He went to provide compassionate companionship and pray with Rosemary Toole as she took her own life in a Donnybrook townhouse near Dublin. Toole was suffering from Cushing’s Syndrome, an extremely painful disease, and years of profound depression. The Irish government demanded that the U.S. extradite Exoo for “assisting a suicide,†which is a felony in Ireland, but not under U.S. federal law. On June 25, 2007, Exoo was arrested and is being held in jail until a U.S. judge determines whether or not the U.S.-Irish extradition treaty applies to Exoo’s case.
Dr. Peter Saunders, a spokesman for Care, Not Killing, a British anti-euthanasia group, was the other invited guest on the program. Of the numerous listeners who called in or sent a text message to voice their opinions, all of them supported Humphry, whose wife had asked him to obtain lethal drugs for her when she was in her last painful days, dying of terminal cancer. The full text of the radio program may be found at www.compassionate-chaplaincy.com
For immediate release. For further information, contact Richard N. Côté, Media Representative for The Reverend George David Exoo
dickcote@earthlink.net / (843) 881-6080
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Editors Note: During the radio program Derek Humphry also spoke about Jean’s Way, the memoir of the death of his first wife. (Jean’s Way available in paperback and eBook at http://www.finalexit.org/ergo-store
