A 54-year-old engineering executive who suffered a massive stroke and lives “locked-in”, able only to move his head and eyes, today [Monday] launched a legal attempt to allow his wife to kill him.

Tony Nicklinson wants the director of public prosecutions to give guidance on whether the Crown would press murder charges against his wife if she administered a lethal injection. The case could reach the supreme court in a landmark attempt to have the law on murder changed to allow for “consensual killing”.

Nicklinson is not terminally ill and is not in pain, but he has said he expects to “dribble his way into old age” and is “fed up” with his life. In a statement placed before the court, he says he wishes he had died when he suffered a stroke while on business in Athens in 2005.

The former rugby player used to work in the United Arab Emirates and travelled across the Middle East and far east before he fell ill but is now fed liquidised food twice a day and almost never leaves his home in Wiltshire. He has stopped talking to most people as it is so frustrating to communicate using an alphabet board.

“I need help in almost every aspect of my life,” he said in a statement sent to the court today”I cannot scratch if I itch, I cannot pick my nose if it is blocked and I can only eat if I am fed like a baby – only I won’t grow out of it, unlike the baby. I have no privacy or dignity left. I am washed, dressed and put to bed by carers who are, after all, still strangers.

“I am fed up with my life and don’t want to spend the next 20 years or so like this. Am I grateful that the Athens doctors saved my life? No, I am not. If I had my time again, and knew then what I know now, I would not have called the ambulance but let nature take its course.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/jul/19/locked-in-syndrome-die-dpp

The BHA campaigns for the legalisation of assisted dying for the terminally ill.