The Washington monthly's Monthly Journalism Award.

GAUTUM NAIK

"Last Requests: The Grim Mission Of a Swiss Group: Visitors' Suicides" The Wall Street Journal, November 22, 2002

By intertwining profiles of a Swiss euthanasia advocacy group and a terminally ill 66-year-old Frenchwoman, Gautam Naik immerses readers in the ethical and social dilemmas of assisted suicide. The Frenchwoman, stricken with breast cancer that has spread to her bones and lungs, has traveled to Switzerland to die, and spends her last morning in a seedy Zurich cafe drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, and cutting up her credit card. She has come to Zurich courtesy of Dignitas, a four-year-old euthanasia group that is testing Switzerland's policy of permitting assisted suicide by offering services to non-citizens. Local officials worry that the group's acceptance of such clients as Alzheimer's victims and schizophrenics, denied permission in their own countries, will earn Zurich an unwanted reputation as "the city to die in." Dignitas' founder, a former journalist who wrote about human rights abuses, insists he must help those in need. For her part, the Frenchwoman hopes her testimony...