Visits to the end-of-life Centres Visit to Athanasios

“they have come all this way, they have paid all this money, how can they be sure this is for real and not just a myth ?”

Athanasios was launched in the middle of March 2025.   When I visited them in Basel five weeks later, they had completed their first eighteen applications for Assisted Voluntary Deaths (AVDs).   This was an impressive start.

However, the team already had a great deal of experience.   Carlos Cabrera had been a senior nurse at Pegasos – it was his job to insert the cannula into a patient’s arm and to ensure that all equipment was working properly.   Sylviane Geist had also worked for Pegasos and before that had helped Erika Preisig at Lifecircle.   Flemming Scholaart is Chairman of the Danish Right to Die Society and has many years’ experience of helping people to go to Switzerland for an AVD.   They work with two medical doctors and three psychiatrists, all of whom have also worked either for Pegasos or Lifecircle.   The evaluation of each application involves six staff members altogether, starting with an individual “personal advisor”.

Athanasios operates from a house in Allschwil, a suburb of Basel about four miles west of the city centre.   It is also four miles from Basel Mulhouse airport.   The Allschwil house is both their office and the location of their AVD apartment.   It does not possess the rural scenery of Pegasos’s Roderis property but is not so “industrial” as the two apartments in Liestal.   Internally, it resembles the Blue House used by Dignitas near Zurich, though it is more urban and not so large.

Like the others, they use Nembutal (pentobarbital of sodium) as their medication.   They also use the cannula method of application, thus giving them a basically different methodology to Dignitas – where the patient is usually asked to drink it.

Their basic philosophy is expressed as 

“We are convinced that self-determination is a fundamental human right, especially during life’s most difficult moments.”

In their application of this approach, however, they are much nearer to Lifecircle than to Pegasos.   Whilst Pegasos has often been reported, probably wrongly, as almost offering suicide on demand, Athanasios take definite steps to ensure that the reasons for the patient’s choice do make absolute sense from the patient’s own viewpoint.

They do not expect a patient to be terminally ill.   Age is relevant, however.   A patient in their late seventies or eighties might be accepted on the basis of several “co-morbidities”, none of which are individually fatal.   A younger person in their thirties would find it much more difficult to qualify.  Similarly, an individual in their forties or fifties experiencing a divorce or acute bereavement might also have an uphill battle to persuade Athanasios that their life was unlikely to improve, unless they were quite ill and had a diagnosis to demonstrate that.

It was Carlos, then at Pegasos, who attended to the AVD of psychologist Daniel Kahneman, the winner of the Nobel Prize for economics in 2002.    Dr Kahneman was 90 at the time of his death in 2024 and was not terminally ill.   His farewell letter, a masterpiece of its kind, forms part of this website as Appendix Three.

An approach to Athanasios could well make sense for patients in the UK who have been told that they must find a local psychologist or psychiatrist to support their applications for an AVD.   Such people are virtually impossible to find, whatever the strength of the patient’s case.   They are often required to certify that the patient still passes the “sound mind” test in spite of a relatively mild neuro-degenerative illness or when suffering from some kinds of depression.   Athanasios do not insist that such a mental health consultant must be a practitioner in the UK.   Instead, they are prepared to ask one of their own psychiatrists to do that job.   It will usually, of course, involve a video call during which a very detailed examination must take place.   Even without such a video call, Athanasios might, in appropriate circumstances, be prepared to rely upon a personal visit in Switzerland at least one day before the AVD itself.

The Athanasios team were also keen to emphasise that AVD visitors do require close personal reassurance.   In the words of Sylviane “They have come all this way, they have paid all this money, how can they be sure this is for real and not just a myth ?”

It is not necessary to be a member of Athanasios before making an application for Assisted Voluntary Dying.   They do require an advance donation of 100 Swiss Francs (£90 or $120).   This is usually paid at the same time as the application is made.   Athanasios then proceeds immediately.   Their paperwork requirements are virtually the same as the others, as is stipulated by Swiss law, and are outlined clearly when the application form is downloaded from their website.   Their total costs come to CHF 9,500 (£8,600 or $11,900), which includes CHF 2,500 for the application process and CHF 2,500 for the funeral and cremation services (see section 6 of this website)

You are not expected to pay everything up-front.   For foreign applicants, an initial payment of CHF 4,500 needs to be paid, with the second of CHF 5,000 paid no later than nine days before your arrival for the VAD.   Some applicants, understandably, are worried about losing their money if they fail to qualify for an AVD or if the AVD needs to be cancelled or postponed.   These circumstances are covered in some detail upon Athanasios’s own website and can also be discussed with the appointed personal advisor (see below).

With continuous care in mind, as soon as a completed online application form has been received together with the initial CHF 100 donation, a “personal advisor” is appointed to the case.   That personal relationship will remain throughout any subsequent process.   The advisor will make contact with the applicant to clarify any questions and to discuss their situation in detail.

Capacity

Athanasios is starting with the capacity to handle up to one AVD per day.   That would imply around 200 per year in total, or approximately 30% of the estimated total of annual AVD visitors to Switzerland.   It is unlikely that they would reach that figure in their first year of operations, although both Pegasos and Dignitas are currently very busy – and demand from the USA is increasing rapidly.

My overall impression was that the Athanasios people are seeking to fill the role left by Lifecircle.   That role, was indeed distinctive.   It sought to be less formalised than Dignitas but with an enhanced degree of individual attention for each patient.   It was not so flexible as Pegasos in its willingness to accept applicants but, nonetheless, prepared to do so in genuine cases.   When Lifecircle itself closed its books to new members in the Autumn of 2022 it left a big philosophical gap between the other two.   It is that gap that Athanasios is now hoping to fill.

Your choice of hotel is left entirely to you.   I stayed at the Hotel Krafft which was bang next door to the Rhine, had an excellent restaurant, helpful staff and my room which gave a whole new meaning to the word “minimalist”.   Athanasios do not recommend anywhere but have named the Hotel Im Schlosspark in Binningen (looks good, very Swiss and near to the office), the Essential by Dorint (bank of the Rhine, central, business hotel and apparently more reasonable) and the Grand Hotel Les Trois Rois which looked very expensive but suitable for a special occasion – which yours probably is.