FROM THE DEPT OF LITERAL VOWS

As reported by John Burns in the New York Times:

The controversy over the ethical and legal issues surrounding assisted suicide for the terminally ill was thrown into stark relief on Tuesday with the announcement that one of Britain’s most distinguished orchestra conductors, Sir Edward Downes, had flown to Switzerland last week with his wife and joined her in drinking a lethal cocktail of barbiturates provided by an assisted-suicide clinic.

Although friends who spoke to the British news media said Sir Edward was not known to have been terminally ill, they said he wanted to die with his ailing wife, who had been his partner for more than half a century...
“After 54 happy years together, they decided to end their own lives rather than continue to struggle with serious health problems,” the Downes children said in their statement.

(The Economist has an only slightly less romantic story on the subject of Britain's weird Suicide Act, whereby assisting someone in suicide is punishable by up to 14 years in jail.)

~ EMILY BOBROW