Jean's Way (Kindle Edition) [Kindle Edition]

Derek Humphry (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Jean's Way: A Love Story
by Derek Humphry,
founder of the Hemlock Society

Kindle Edition 2010 • Norris Lane Press
ISBN 0-9637280-7-5
160 printed pages

The moving account of a terminally ill woman's carefully planned self-deliverance from suffering.

Description:

This is the true, moving account of a woman with advanced terminal illness who planned to hasten her end with the help of her husband, Derek Humphry. Not only was assisted suicide against the law but it was also a huge taboo.

But Jean Humphry proceeded with her plan so that she could die in peace and dignity in her own home rather than in hospital. This was an individual decision; the couple did not know then (1975) about euthanasia and assisted suicide, which later became highly controversial as the right to die issue mushroomed. Living Wills were then just becoming known.

She had suffered for more than two years from breast cancer, and now it had spread into her whole body. She decided it was her time for an assisted death.

At Jean's request, Derek had secured a lethal overdose from a sympathetic doctor and stored it in a secure place in their home in Wiltshire, England. When the pain and distress became too great to bear, Jean asked for the drugs so that she could die that afternoon.

When she was ready, Derek mixed the lethal potion into a mug of coffee. After saying 'Goodbye, My Love' Jean emptied the drink and died within the hour.

Three years later Derek (already a journalist on the London Sunday Times and author of 'Because They're Black') published this memoir. It became a bestseller in the UK and was translated into four languages.

The popularity of 'Jean's Way' started the movement to legalize assisted suicide as a choice for competent adults at the end of life. It foreshadowed the Oregon Death With Dignity Act, in the passing of which Derek was a team player.

Derek founded the Hemlock Society USA to campaign for greater acceptance of justifiable assisted suicide and also wrote the international bestselling book 'Final Exit.'

Both in the application of the new Oregon law and Swiss law, with legally approved ways of assisting deaths at the end of life, Jean's way is the method used. In Switzerland it is used by DIGNITAS and EXIT.

Product Details

• File Size: 248 KB
• Print Length: 146 pages
• Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
• Publisher: Norris Lane Press (March 2, 2010)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
• Language: English
• ASIN: B003AYF3FK
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• Lending: Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #432,645 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
  • #37 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Professional & Technical > Law > Family & Health Law > Medical Law & Legislation
  • #37 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Law > Family & Health Law > Medical Law & Legislation

More About the Author

Derek Humphry was born in Bath, England, 04.29.1930 and brought up in a broken family. Despite a poor education, further damaged by six years of war, Derek determined to become a writer. Starting as a newspaper messenger boy on the Yorkshire Post at 15, he worked his way up as a reporter on the Bristol Evening World, the Manchester Evening News to the London Daily Mail, the London Sunday Times and finally the Los Angeles Times.

Always an advocacy journalist, Derek wrote books on race relations, police corruption and a biography of Michael X. For 'Because They're Black' he won the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize.

When the wife to whom he had been married for 22 years developed inoperable cancer, he nursed her for two years until she asked him to help her die. Close to the end, Jean chose to end her life with lethal drugs to avoid further suffering. In time, he married again and moved to America.

Derek published in l978 a little book Jean's Way describing Jean's final years and his part in helping her to die peacefully. It became a bestseller and was translated into major languages.

The public response to the book caused him to start the Hemlock Society USA in 1980 from his garage in Santa Monica. Hemlock's purpose was to help people in similar situations as Jean's and also to reform the laws to permit physician-assisted suicide.

Derek built Hemlock into a national organization, with 40,000 members and 80 chapters. In l991 he wrote 'Final Exit' - a 'how-to' book for the dying to bring their suffering to an end if they chose. To much surprise, it became a #1 bestseller within six months. It was translated into 12 languages. Random House keeps the 3rd edition of 'Final Exit' in print in 2010, and it is still in print in Spanish and Italian. USA TODAY in 2007 chose it as one of the most significant books of the past 25 years.

His latest book is a memoir --'Good Life, Good Death' -- covering 79 years of an eventful life -- ranging from an unusual childhood in a broken home, a father in prison, a mother who ran away to Australia, then experiencing an ugly war which started when he was nine. The book relates his remarkable experiences in journalism, outstanding interviews with famous people, and his struggle against racism. Derek immigrated to the USA at age 48.

The second half of the memoir deals with his impact on the right to die movement in America, starting and building the Hemlock Society for 12 years, and pioneering the Oregon Death With Dignity Act (l994), the first such physician-assisted suicide law in North America.

Proud to be a paperback writer, Derek has published 15 books in 40 years. Only two have been hardbacks.

Derek is president of the Euthanasia Research & Guidance Organization (ERGO), chairman of the advisory board of the Final Exit Network (successor to the now defunct Hemlock Society), and an advisor to the World Federation of Right to Die Societies, of which he has been president.

Although unlettered himself, Derek has been a guest lecturer at Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, USC, UCLA, University of Michigan, University of Chicago, and others.

In his book "A Merciful End: The Euthanasia Movement in Modern America,' Ian Dowbiggin
writes: "Humphry ranks as one of the preeminent pioneers of the American euthanasia movement." (OUP. 2003. Page 149). In their book 'Dying Right', the authors Daniel Hillyard and John Dombrink write: "Derek Humphry is widely acknowledged to be the initiatior of the euthanasia reform movement in the United States." (Routledge NY 2001. Page 82.)

A citizen of the USA and UK, he lived in Los Angeles l978-88 and since then in western Oregon. He has been married to Gretchen (nee Crocker) since l991.
[Update: 22 March 2010]