Biel-Benken, is a small and beautiful village at the extreme tip of Switzerland. Here I work as a determined family doctor with many home visits. In my 25 years of practicing I have seen many patients die. I always tried to let my patients die at home and not in a hospital. I found satisfaction in palliative care, because this meant that I was able to care for my patients at their home up to the last moment.

In 2006, I learned about the valuable work of organizations for assisted dying, through my father's assisted voluntary death. My father fell asleep in my arms through the ingestion of sodium pentobarbital (SP) at the age of 82, after having performed a pill-suicide attempt, one month earlier at my home, because of long, serious and incurable illness. "Thanks" to his urgent desire for suicide, I got to know an up to this moment unreflected kind of assisted death. My self-determined, from time to time stubborn father went on to his last journey with an unimaginable joy and dignity.

This experience influenced my development. Two years after this event I became a consultant physician for the organization Dignitas, which accompanies mainly foreigners into a voluntary death. I saw destinies that you cannot imagine. People, who are most severely handicapped by incurable diseases, travel halfway around the world to Switzerland, only to be able to redeem themselves of their unbearable suffering by an assisted suicide in dignity and safety.

In English, Spanish, Italian, French, these people express their gratitude towards Switzerland. They are so very greatful, that they have had the possibility of an accompanied farewell, surrounded by their relatives, in Switzerland. Through these experiences I was more and more convinced that it is my life's mission to promote the assisted voluntary death not only in Switzerland, but to do everything, to push the legalization of assisted voluntary death abroad also.

Since Dignitas cannot offer me the possibility of my own initiative, I decided in summer 2011, to establish a new organization. With the association lifecircle I can plead for self-determination in life and at the end of life, and especially for the preservation and promotion of life's quality. With the founding of the association lifecircle I want to address like-minded people who are willing to actively strive together with me to reach those goals.

With a membership in the associationlifecircle you say Yes to life and to self-determination. I recommend every person with full mental capacity to create a living will, so that self-determination can be enforced even in case of mental disability. All members of lifecircle are asked to fill in the provided documents for their living will. Only with a valid living will, lifecircle is enabled to get physicians and nursing staff to respect your will.

Life is the most precious gift we have ever received. But life can also become an intolerable torment, if life's quality is replaced by mere suffering. To protect and to improve this quality, is our task. This is what all employees and members of lifecircle are aiming for.

With the establishment of the Eternal SPIRIT Foundation I would like to provide the opportunity to apply for an assisted voluntary death to all incurably ill people anywhere, and to realize an assisted voluntary death in Switzerland, if it is approved by the board of the Eternal SPIRIT Foundation. At the same time, through the Eternal SPIRIT Foundation I have the possibility to stand up for the legalization of assisted voluntary death in other countries. There is suffering, which cannot be made bearable by anything. Whether it still makes sense to exist in such a condition, can only be judged by the person him or herself. In this situation, a voluntary death might be the only dignified and humane possibility. I do respect also this path, as I have seen too much suffering to close my eyes and my heart to the wish of an assisted voluntary death. For this reason lifecircle offers its members through the Eternal SPIRIT Foundation the opportunity of an accompanied farewell, with a drug that results in safe and painless death.