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Derek Humphry is an international journalist and author who has been campaigning for the right to choose to die for more than 20 years. He began this fight after his first wife, Jean, dying of bone cancer, asked him to help her commit suicide to escape further suffering. The incongruity of risking imprisonment for a crime that he considered a necessary act of love was the spur to fight for law reform. As a consequence of this experience, he has written six books on the subject of euthanasia - assisted death. Jean's Way was a bestseller in Britain and Australia, while Final Exit was a New York Times bestseller for 18 weeks in 1991. Final Exit has been translated into twelve foreign languages, selling over a million copies worldwide. With a new edition published in 1997, it remains today the top-selling book on the subject. In October, 1998, St. Martin's Press, New York, published his latest book, Freedom to Die, written in collaboration with Mary Clement, a lawyer. Not solely content with writing, he founded the Hemlock Society in 1980 and built it into a nationally known organization, with 80 chapters. He relinquished the reins of Hemlock five years ago to concentrate on writing and lecturing on the subject. He is president of the Euthanasia Research & Guidance Organization and a director of the World Federation of Right to Die Societies. He appears regularly on television and radio discussion programs. British-born, Derek Humphry, aged 68, has worked for the
London Sunday Times and the Los Angeles Times as
a staff writer. He won the 1972 Martin Luther King Memorial Prize
for the contribution of his book, Because They're Black,
to achieving racial harmony. Altogether he has authored or co-authored
12 books. He is married and lives near Eugene, Oregon, USA.
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