A Times investigation has revealed that approximately 65 British citizens per year are accepted for assisted death at Pegasos, a Swiss assisted suicide clinic — and the facility does not require applicants to be physically ill.
Pegasos, founded in 2019, accepts applicants based solely on a mental capacity assessment as required by Swiss law. It rejects only those who fail that assessment. A spokesman for Pegasos confirmed the clinic has “a wider interpretation of who will qualify” compared to other assisted suicide clinics. Eighteen percent of Pegasos’s paying supporters are British.
The figures come as the UK Parliament debates its own assisted dying legislation. Assisted suicide remains illegal in Britain, carrying a maximum 14-year prison sentence for those who help another person end their life. The Swiss clinics represent the only legal option for Britons seeking assisted death — a journey that typically costs upward of £15,000.
Five British people are accepted at Pegasos every month. The absence of any physical illness requirement sets Pegasos apart from older facilities like Dignitas and places it at the far edge of what Switzerland’s permissive assisted dying framework allows. The data lands in the middle of Britain’s most consequential parliamentary debate on the issue in decades — and raises direct questions about where legalization leads once it begins.
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