Derek Humphry Reviews

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

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

When the wife to whom he was married for 22 years improved inoperable cancer, then he nursed her two years before she asked him to help her die. Close to the finish, Jean chose to end their life with deadly drugs to avoid additional suffering. He married again and moved into America.

Derek published in l978 a tiny publication Jean's Way describing Jean's final years and his part in aiding her die peacefully. It became a bestseller and has been translated into major languages.

The public reaction to the publication caused him to start the Hemlock Society USA from 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.

Jean's preferred method of perishing prefigured the legislation later passed to get physician-assisted suicide by prescription. 'Jean's Way' (1978-) helped alter the debate from 'voluntary euthanasia' into the acceleration of passing with a terminal patient deciding to drink a prescribed deadly potion. These laws are now (2017) in place in Oregon, Washington, California, Colorado and Vermont.

SILVER ANNIVERSARY OF BOOK 2016
Derek built Hemlock into a national company, with 40,000 members and 80 chapters. In l991 he wrote 'Fina

Derek Humphry Quality Chart