WJacob M. Appel is an American author, poet, bioethicist, physician, lawyer and social critic. He is best known for his short stories, his work as a playwright, and his writing in the fields of reproductive ethics, organ donation, neuroethics and euthanasia. Appel's novel The Man Who Wouldn't Stand Up won the Dundee International Book Prize in 2012. He is the director of Ethics Education in Psychiatry and an associate professor of psychiatry and medical education at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, and he practices emergency psychiatry at the adjoining Mount Sinai Health System. Appel is the subject of the 2019 documentary film Jacob by director Jon Stahl.
WKarl Ludwig Lorenz Binding was a German jurist known as a promoter of the theory of retributive justice. His influential book, Die Freigabe der Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens, written together with the psychiatrist Alfred Hoche, was used by the Nazis to justify their T-4 Euthanasia Program.
WMarius Job Cohen is a retired Dutch politician and jurist who served as Mayor of Amsterdam from 2001 to 2010 and Leader of the Labour Party (PvdA) from 2010 to 2012.
WSean Davison is a New Zealand-born South African scientist and author. In 2010 he was arrested in New Zealand and charged with the attempted murder of his terminally-ill mother, Dr. Patricia Ferguson. As a result of his arrest and High Court trial, he became an international campaigner for changes to the law regarding assisted dying under legally-defined criteria. He is the founder and director of the pro-euthanasia organisation Dignity South Africa and president of the World Federation of Right-to-Die Societies. Both organisations support the decriminalisation of voluntary euthanasia.
WFu Da-ren was a Taiwanese television presenter who received a Golden Bell Award in 1980.
WDavid William Goodall was an English-born Australian botanist and ecologist. He was influential in the early development of statistical methods in plant communities. He worked as researcher and professor in England, Australia, Ghana and the United States. He was editor-in-chief of the 30-volume Ecosystems of the World series of books, and author of over 100 publications. He was known as Australia's oldest working scientist, still editing ecology papers at age 103. Long an advocate of voluntary euthanasia legalisation, he ended his own life in Switzerland via physician-assisted suicide at age 104.
WAvril K. Henry was an English activist who campaigned for the legalisation of voluntary euthanasia and former professor of English medieval culture at the University of Exeter. In her works Dr. Henry researched theory of typology.
WDerek Humphry is a British-born American journalist and author notable as a proponent of legal assisted suicide and the right to die philosophy. In 1980, he co-founded the Hemlock Society and, in 2004, after that organization dissolved, he co-founded the Final Exit Network. From 1988 to 1990, he was president of the World Federation of Right to Die Societies and is the current president of the Euthanasia Research & Guidance Organization (ERGO).
WMichael Henry Knox Irwin is a British doctor, formerly a GP and a Medical Director with the United Nations. He is a humanist and secular activist, campaigning in particular for Voluntary Euthanasia and Doctor-Assisted Suicide.
WAnnelien Kappeyne van de Coppello was a Dutch politician of the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD).
WSir Ludovic Henry Coverley Kennedy was a Scottish journalist, broadcaster, humanist and author best known for re-examining cases such as the Lindbergh kidnapping and the murder convictions of Timothy Evans and Derek Bentley, and for his role in the abolition of the death penalty in the United Kingdom.
WMurad Jacob "Jack" Kevorkian was an American pathologist and euthanasia proponent. He publicly championed a terminal patient's right to die by physician-assisted suicide, embodied in his quote, "Dying is not a crime". Kevorkian said that he assisted at least 130 patients to that end. He was convicted of murder in 1999 and was often portrayed in the media with the name of "Dr. Death". There was support for his cause, and he helped set the platform for reform.
WArthur Koestler, was a Hungarian British author and journalist. Koestler was born in Budapest and, apart from his early school years, was educated in Austria. In 1931, Koestler joined the Communist Party of Germany, but he resigned in 1938 because Stalinism disillusioned him.
WJacob Kohnstamm is a retired Dutch politician and jurist who was State Secretary for the Interior from 1994 to 1998. He is a member of the Democrats 66 (D66), which he chaired from 1982 to 1986.
WHans Küng was a Swiss Catholic priest, theologian, and author. From 1995 he was president of the Foundation for a Global Ethic.
WVincent Lambert was a French man who in 2008 fell into a persistent vegetative state after sustaining critical injuries in a road accident. He had been working as a psychiatric nurse since 2000, and had been married since 2007 to a woman named Rachel, then a nursing student. After an 11-years legal battle between two opposed sides of his family, the courts eventually allowed him to die through starvation in July 2019. Like the Terri Schiavo case in the USA, his case spurred highly publicized activism from the pro-life movement, the right-to-die movement, and disability rights groups, in France and French-speaking countries.
WEmmy Lopes Dias was a Dutch actress and activist who performed on stage, radio, and television. She was a well-known advocate for the right to die.
WMargo Symington MacDonald was a Scottish politician, teacher and broadcaster. She was the Scottish National Party (SNP) Member of Parliament (MP) for Glasgow Govan from 1973 to 1974 and was Deputy Leader of the Scottish National Party from 1974 to 1979. She later served as an SNP and then Independent Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) for Lothian from 1999 until her death.
WValentina Maureira Riquelme was a Chilean teenager who gained international attention after using social media to ask Chilean President Michele Bachelet to allow her to die by euthanasia. Bachelet denied her request.
WBrittany Lauren Maynard was an American activist with terminal cancer who decided that she would end her own life "when the time seemed right." She was an advocate for the legalization of assisted death.
WAnn McPherson CBE FRCGP FRCP SCH was a British general practitioner, author, health campaigner and communicator who co-founded The DIPEx Charity and founded Healthcare Professionals for Assisted Dying.
WLuis Montes Mieza, was a Spanish anesthetist and pro-euthanasia activist. He was the Federal President of the association "Derecho a Morir Dignamente" from 2009 till his death.
WPhilip Haig Nitschke is an Australian humanist, author, former physician and founder and director of the pro-euthanasia group Exit International. He campaigned successfully to have a legal euthanasia law passed in Australia's Northern Territory and assisted four people in ending their lives before the law was overturned by the Government of Australia. Nitschke was the first doctor in the world to administer a legal, voluntary, lethal injection, after which the patient activated the syringe using a computer. Nitschke states that he and his group are regularly subject to harassment by authorities. In 2015 Nitschke burned his medical practising certificate in response to what he saw as onerous conditions that violated his right to free speech, imposed on him by the Medical Board of Australia. Nitschke is variously referred to in the media as "Dr Death" or "the Elon Musk of assisted suicide".
WJack Peterson is an American filmmaker and spokesman for the Incel community.
WSir Terence David John Pratchett was an English humorist, satirist, and author of fantasy novels, especially comical works. He is best known for his Discworld series of 41 novels.
WRamón Sampedro Cameán was a Spanish seaman and writer. Sampedro became a quadriplegic at the age of 25, following a diving accident, and fought for his right to an assisted suicide for the following 29 years.
WDavid Breen Seymour is a New Zealand politician serving as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Epsom and Leader of ACT New Zealand since 2014.
WBarbara Smoker was a British Humanist activist and freethought advocate. She was also President of the National Secular Society (1972–1996), Chair of the British Voluntary Euthanasia Society (1981–1985) and an Honorary Vice President of the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association in the United Kingdom.
WFiona Stewart is an Australian lawyer, sociologist, author and former executive director of the pro-euthanasia group Exit International (2004-7). She is author of Killing Me Softly: Voluntary Euthanasia and the road to the Peaceful Pill and co-author of The Peaceful Pill Handbook. Stewart authored the Peaceful Pill Handbook series.
WSir Patrick Stewart is an English actor who is best known for his work in various stage, television, film and video games in a career spanning six decades. He has been nominated for Olivier, Tony, Golden Globe, Emmy, Screen Actors Guild, and Saturn Awards.
WDesmond Mpilo Tutu is a South African Anglican cleric and theologian, known for his work as an anti-apartheid and human rights activist. He was the Bishop of Johannesburg from 1985 to 1986 and then the Archbishop of Cape Town from 1986 to 1996, in both cases being the first black African to hold the position. Theologically, he sought to fuse ideas from black theology with African theology.
WEtienne Vermeersch was a Belgian moral philosopher, skeptic, opinion maker and debater. He is one of the founding fathers of the abortion and euthanasia law in Belgium. He is also former Vice-Rector of Ghent University.
WPiergiorgio Welby was an Italian poet, painter and activist whose three-month-long battle to establish his right to die led to a debate about euthanasia in his country.