Derek Humphry

Derek Humphry
Derek Humphry in 2009
Born	29 April 1930 (1930-04-29) (age 81) Bath, England
Citizenship	United States
Notable award(s)	Martin Luther King Memorial Prize (1972), Socrates Award (1997), Saba Prize (2000)
finalexit.org/dhumphry/bioframe.html
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Derek Humphry (b. 29 April 1930, Bath, England) 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 decriminalisation 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.^{[citation needed]}

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.^[1][2]

In early 1991 Humphry married Gretchen Crocker, youngest daughter of an Oregon farming family.^[3]

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 organisation. Since it was founded in 2004, Humphry has been an adviser to the Final Exit Network. After four members of the organisation were accused in Georgia of assisting a suicide^{[clarification needed]} he launched the Final Exit Liberty Fund.

Books and publications

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

As of 2011, the paperback Final Exit was in print in English, Spanish and Italian. It has sold more than one million copies in twelve languages. 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.^[4] In 2008 he completed his autobiography, Good Life, Good Death: Memoir of an Investigative Reporter and Pro-choice Advocate (ISBN 978-0-9768283-3-4).

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)

See also

Novels portal

• Euthanasia
• George Exoo
• Jack Kevorkian
• Philip Nitschke
• Euthanasia (ukr)

References

1. ^ Good Life, Good Death: Memoir of an Investigative Reporter and Pro-choice Advocate, Chapter 12, page 244 ("Breaking up")
2. ^ New York Times report on Derek and Ann Humphry
3. ^ Good Life, Good Death: Memoir of an Investigative Reporter and Pro-choice Advocate, Chapter 18, page 329
4. ^ "25 Books That Leave A Legacy". USA Today. 9 April 2007. http://www.usatoday.com/life/top25-books.htm. Retrieved 1 May 2010. 

• NOTE: For a full and independent biography of Derek Humphry, see 'Current Biography', Volume 56, Number 3, March l995

External links

• Good Life, Good Death
• Assisted Suicide.org website
• Bowker Biography on Derek Humphry
• Amazon Bibliography for Derek Humphry
• Derek Humphry

Persondata
Name	Humphry, Derek
Alternative names
Short description	British-born American euthanasia activist and writer
Date of birth	29 April 1930
Place of birth	Bath, England, UK
Date of death
Place of death