The release last week by Dignitas of their figures for 2025 revealed a critical point about assisted dying. It is a point that has been entirely neglected by campaigners who continue to resist any change to the law..
The worldwide membership of Dignitas is now 15,968. That is an increase of 6½% on the 2024 total of 14,996. Against that, the number of Assisted Voluntary Deaths carried out by Dignitas in 2025 was just 263. And that represented a fall of 6½% from the 2024 figure of 280. The point ? Simply that the percentage of people actually seeking an AVD from Dignitas is tiny as a proportion of its total membership. It confirms what right-to-die organisations across the world have been saying for a long time: having access to an AVD is like an emergency door; it is comforting to know that it is there but it will not always be used.
Almost 16,000 members. 263 AVDs. That means that for every sixty members only one each year seeks an AVD for themselves. In 2024 it was one in 54.
Within Switzerland itself, most citizens who have considered the use of an AVD have chosen an organisation called “Exit (Deutsche Schweiz)”. At the end of 2025 it had 195,836 members. During that year it had conducted just 1,421 AVDs.
In his closing argument to the Scottish Parliament last week, before his bill to legalise assisted dying was defeated, Liam Macarthur MSP described the case of Lisa Fleming who has lived with breast cancer for nine years and now realises that she will have to live forever with the fear of what her death might involve.
As Professor A C Grayling has argued, “Once you know you can control how your life will come to an end, you can get on with the much more enjoyable task of actually living it.”
Most of the 16,000 Dignitas members will be paying an annual subscription. Do they feel they are wasting their money if only one in sixty wants to take the opportunity that it offers ? Absolutely not. They have taken control. And with that comes re-assurance and freedom from fear.
