E-mail: dhumphry@efn.org Home Page http://www.FinalExit.org/dhumphry "The right to choose to die when in advanced terminal or hopeless illness is the ultimate civil liberty." -- Derek Humphry

• A brief biography of his writing and campaigning career. (Updated to November, 2000)
  
• List of his journalistic appointments from l945 to 1992.
  
• Bibliography of the twelve books written by Derek Humphry. Or go direct to the ERGO bookstore for his books on euthanasia.
  
• List of the magazines and journals which have interviewed, written about, or involved him.
  
• Honors and awards (l972 and l992).
  
• Read a selection of essays about euthanasia (Dutch, Nazi, personal, etc.) written by Derek Humphry. You may download this material for educational purposes.
  
• Look up your local right-to-die group anywhere in the world by accessing the Euthanasia World Directory.
  

WORDS AND ACTIONS

Derek Humphry is a journalist and author who has spent the last twenty years campaigning for lawful physician-assisted dying to be an option for the terminally and hopelessly ill. He started this campaign in l975 after the death of his first wife, Jean, from bone cancer which had become so painful and distressing that she took her own life with his help.

Born on April 29, l930, in Bath, England, of a British father and an Irish mother, he was raised on the Mendip Hills in Somerset. His education was slender because of a broken home followed by the l939-45 war when most English schools were in chaos. He attended perhaps a dozen different schools, leaving at age 15 intent on pursuing a career in journalism.

His first job was as an editorial messenger boy in the London office of the Yorkshire Post , a large provincial newspaper. After a year he secured a post as a cub reporter on the Bristol Evening World until being drafted into the British Army at 18. He served for two years as an infantryman in the army of occupation in Germany and Austria (l948-50).

Not long after rejoining the Evening World, he left to become a junior reporter on the Manchester Evening News , which was the largest evening newspaper in the United Kingdom. He worked as a general news reporter for this journal from l951 to l955, when he transferred to the Daily Mail , a national newspaper, as a news reporter. Later he became assistant news editor (city editor) but in l961 decided to return to provincial journalism as deputy editor of The Luton News . Two years later he was made chief editor of the Havering Recorder, a provincial tabloid in an area of outer London which contains the Ford of Europe motor works and headquarters.

After a disagreement in l966 with the owners over editorial policy, he resigned and joined the London Sunday Times as a writer. He says of this particular period of his journalistic career: "I was fortunate enough to be involved in the golden era of Sunday Times journalism when it led the world in investigative and advocacy journalism. I joined an extremely talented team, led by a brilliant editor, Harold Evans." Derek Humphry specialized in writing about the problems of race relations, immigration, prison conditions and police brutality and corruption. For ten years he was on the revolving team of specialists who reported the civil war in Northern Ireland -- no Times journalist was kept in Ulster for more than a couple of weeks at a time because of the stress.

Using the excess of material which he had gathered for his newspaper, Humphry wrote Because They're Black in l971. It was an attempt to explain the way of life of black immigrants to the white population. (Several chapters were contributed by Gus John, a black activist.) Published as a Penguin Special paperback, it ran through several editions and won them the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize for its contribution to racial harmony in Britain.

He followed up this book with another attacking the British police for being racist. Entitled Police Power and Black People, it received enormous media attention and became required reading in many colleges, but sold few copies. His next book was Passports and Politics, an account of the forced emigration from Uganda to Britain of thousands of Asians who fell foul of President Idi Amin. This exodus caused an upsurge of racial hatred in Britain, which Humphry documents.

Combining with BBC reporter David Tindall, Humphry co- wrote a biography of a black Muslim leader in Britain, Michael X, who modeled himself on the American Malcolm X. But the British version was totally corrupt, ended up being executed for murder, and the book (published l977) was therefore called False Messiah.

In l978 the era of great journalism at the Sunday Times was drawing to a close because of industrial unrest amongst the printers, and a change of ownership. Humphry decided to make a drastic change, accepting a job offer to become a special feature writer on the Los Angeles Times. This same year he was to publish the book which was to radically alter his life and career, Jean's Way.

In l975 he had helped his first wife, Jean, to take her life when the pain and indignity of inoperable bone cancer became too much for her. Encouraged by his second wife, an American, Ann Wickett, he wrote a simple account of Jean's life and manner of death, with no holds barred. Despite his established position as a journalist and author, he had difficulty finding a publisher for such an unusual book. But when it appeared in March, l978, it caused a sensation worldwide. Within a week the translation rights into most major languages were snapped up and there four Hollywood offers to make the book into a movie. The book ran through sixteen editions.

The police asked Humphry if the book was true, because assisting a suicide in Britain for any reason carries with it a penalty of up to fourteen years in prison. Humphry admitted his guilt but refused to name the physician who had supplied him with the drugs. After six months of inquiries, the Director of Public Prosecutions in London announced that there would not be a prosecution. Soon after Humphry was in California working for his new newspaper and planning other books. (The movie of Jean's Way was never made.)

STARTS HEMLOCK

But the publication of Jean's Way in America in l979 started events which led to Humphry founding theHemlock Society in l980. So many people approached him for help similar to that which he had given his first wife that Humphry realized the need for an organization to campaign for a change in the law, but which would also give information about methods and means to those dying in the meantime. With the help of Ann Wickett, Gerald A Larue and Richard S Scott, he planned and announced the Hemlock Society and became its only employee, working out of the garage in his back garden in Santa Monica. Funding for the new group came from the royalties of Jean's Way.

The next year he published the world's first public book (there had been two British pamphlets previously, privately circulated) describing how a patient could end his or her life. For the first six months Let Me Die Before I Wake was sold only to members but after trade and library pressure to release it publicly, it was put on the open market in l982. This paperback sold a steady 25,000 copies for the next ten years and was the foundation of Hemlock's reputation and income. In l986 Humphry and Ann Wickett published (Harper & Row) a thorough history of euthanasia entitled, The Right to Die. It became a widely-used reference book.

As executive director of Hemlock (also president l988-90), Humphry gradually built up the organization until it had some 50,000 members and 90 chapters in America. Hemlock provided substantial financial backing to the ballot initiative campaigns for physician-assisted suicide in California (l988), Washington (l991), California (l992) and Oregon (l994). Only the Oregon initiative succeeded, and that was to be bogged down in the courts by challenges from the pro-life movement.

The marriage of Ann Wickett and Derek Humphry broke up in l989 and she sued for divorce. There were no children of this marriage. (Jean and Derek had had three sons, the youngest one adopted.) In early l991 Humphry married Gretchen Crocker, youngest daughter of a Oregon farming family. Later that year Ann Wickett committed suicide during a recurrence of the depressions to which she was prone.

PUBLISHES 'FINAL EXIT'

When Humphry started Hemlock, and for its first ten years of existence, the Society's credo embraced assisted dying (preferably medical) for the terminally ill and the hopelessly ill, such as patients with advanced ALS or MS, or extreme old age with severe health problems. But as Hemlock became more involved in state politics in its drive to change the law to secure physician-assisted suicide, it dropped the other illnesses and spoke only for "the advanced terminally ill." While recognizing this as necessary political expediency, Humphry stays firm in his belief that many more persons also deserve assisted dying. This conviction keeps him on the 'radical left' of the movement. But he remains convinced that it is never, nor should it in the future, be any part of the right-to-die movements role to advance assisted dying for the mentally disturbed, including the depressed, nor for the disabled or the handicapped.

Today (l995) Humphry operates from an office in the garden of his wooden, two-bedroom home in the hills overlooking Eugene, Oregon. He devotes himself to helping dying patients and families with information and advice about all euthanasia matters, briefing the print news media, and appearing on radio and television locally and nationwide. He sails, goes white water rafting, and enjoys gardening and walking.

PERSONAL FAVORITES

Composers: Mozart, Bach and Beethoven
Modern Novelist: John Le Carre
Classic Novelist: Thomas Hardy
Poets: John Donne and William Shakespeare
Car: Volvo 740 Turbo Wagon
Flower: Daffodil
Tree: Oak
Bird: Swan
Hero: Charles Darwin
Painters: Gaugin and Van Gogh
Television series: Brideshead Revisited
Actor: Jeremy Irons
Actress: Emma Thompson
Movie: Amadeus

For a full and independent biography of Derek Humphry, see Current Biography , Volume 56, Number 3, March l995, published by the H W Wilson Company, New York. See also Who's Who in the World, Contemporary Authors, and Who's Who in Writers, Editors and Poets. Most books about the right to die make references to his work.

E-mail: dhumphry@efn.org
Phone/fax: 541-998-1873

WEB PAGES

Euthanasia World Directory: http://www.FinalExit.org
DEATHNET (news,library) http://www.islandnet.com/~deathnet/ergo.html
Derek Humphry: biography http://www.FinalExit.org/dhumphry

Address: 24829 Norris Lane, Junction City, Or 97448-9559 USA

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To purchase any book on `right-to-die' by Derek Humphry visit Amazon Books or go to the ERGO Bookstore.

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HONORS and AWARDS

• l972 Martin Luther King Memorial Prize (UK) for the contribution to racial harmony of the book, Because They're Black .
  
• l992 The fifth annual Robert Green Memorial Award (USA) for distinguished contribution to the movement for death with dignity.
  
• 1997 The Socrates Award for right-to-die activism.
  
• 2000 The Saba Medal for services to the world right-to-die movement.
  

TELEVISION and RADIO

Derek Humphry has appeared on hundreds of radio and television shows throughout the English-speaking world talking about (in the l970s) race and civil liberties, and (in the l980s and 90s) voluntary euthanasia. He has appeared on such television shows as 6O Minutes, Donahue (3 times), Face the Nation, Nightline (3 times), all three national breakfast television shows, and many others. ("I've lost count," he says.)

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Order one or more of Derek Humphry's books, including two best sellers.

Write to Derek Humphry: dhumphry@efn.org.

The above material may be downloaded and photocopied for scholastic or research purposes only. It may not be reproduced in any printed book or journal form without the written permission of Derek Humphry. © Derek Humphry, 2000.