Assisted suicide, Massimiliano, suffering from multiple sclerosis and died in Switzerland: “I would have liked to do it in Italy”

He was 44 years old, suffered from multiple sclerosis, was almost completely paralyzed and could hardly speak. Massimiliano, Tuscan, is died yesterday in a Swiss clinic, with assisted suicide. For two years she couldn’t take it anymore and she began to read up on the Internet on painless suicide methods. “I already knew that a firearm was enough, but unfortunately I don’t have one,” she said in a video shot a few hours before her death. “The I wanted nothing more than to die painlessly. And I finally achieved my dream.”

Maximilian was accompanied in Switzerland by Felicetta Maltese71 years old, member of the Luca Coscioni Association and activist of the Legal Euthanasia campaign and by Chiara Lalli, journalist and bioethicist. Both, for this action of civil disobedience, risk up to 12 years in prison for the crime of assisting suicide. Today both are reporting themselves to the Carabinieri station Santa Maria Novella in Florence. Marco Cappato will also report himself (even if he did not accompany Massimiliano), as the legal representative of the Civil Rescue Association which organized and financed the trip to Switzerland.

Maximilian managed to put an end to his suffering, but he would have liked to be surrounded by his affectionsas he abandoned himself to death. «It’s a pity that I didn’t reach my dream in Italy, but I had to go abroad. And this is a bit ugly, I say. Because I can’t do it here in Italy, at my home, even in a hospital, but at my home it’s better, with relatives and friends nearby who support me. No, I have to go to Switzerland. It just doesn’t seem logical to me, this. And so I’m forced to go away, to get away».

Even Massimiliano’s father, Bruno, had launched an appeal in a video: «He is aware of his life. He he is clear of mind. He got to this point here because he can’t take it anymore. He can’t take it anymore. It is continuous suffering, day after day. It is her will, because she must deny this will. The body belongs to her, he feels what he suffers. And we can’t say no. It would only be selfishness, to make him suffer even more. I wish it were something made in Italy».

Massimiliano had asked to be helped to die in Italy, but was unable to do so because he was not “kept alive by life support treatments”, therefore, he did not fall within the cases envisaged by sentence 242/2019 of the Council on the Cappato\Dj Fabo case for access to assisted suicide in Italy.

In Italy, thanks to sentence 242 of the Constitutional Court which has the force of law (following the civil disobedience of Cappato for the help provided to Fabiano Antoniani), assisted suicide is possible and legal when the sick person who requests it is affected from an irreversible pathology, a source of intolerable suffering physical or psychological, fully capable of making free and informed decisions and kept alive by life-sustaining treatments. And these conditions must be verified by the National Health System.

– Fabio Ridolfi’s appeal: «Dear Italian State, help me to die»

– Fabio Ridolfi: «Since the State doesn’t help me to die, I choose deep sedation»