All eyes on David Goodall as he undergoes assisted suicide today

David Goodall

On April 4, this year, an exuberant group of about eight people assembled at a house in the Australian city of Perth for a birthday party. As the gold bottle champagne popped and the candles burned slowly on top of a modest round cheesecake, the camera panned across the room, slowly revealing the excited faces of the attendees as they passionately sang out a birthday song.

Yet, amidst all the exuberance in the room, an old white-haired man with a heavily wrinkled face sat oddly on a wheelchair in the corner, gazing around the room, uncomfortably and visibly impatient for the charade to end.

When the “Happy Birthday Dear David” song finally ended, the man, Dr David Goodall, quickly leaned forward, showing little concern. As his arms rested against the wheelchair, he blew the ‘104’ red birthday candles and almost immediately, reclined in his wheelchair.

As the small group of family and friends smiled and laughed over small talk, Dr Goodall slowly gulped on his glass of champagne, visibly uninterested in the celebration.

Later, in the video by Australian broadcaster ABC News, Goodall is shown two years earlier, walking feebly outside, dressed in black shoes, blue trousers and a discoloured grey sweater, with a black backpack. As the guests eat the cake, Goodall clearly struggles to put the spoon in his mouth, as his weak hands tremble.

Even though the 104-year-old Australian scientist is an accomplished man, he did not come to the limelight until in 2016, when the Edith Cowan University, where Goodall worked, controversially sought to eject him. Then aged 102, Goodall had worked at the Australian university as an honorary research associate for close to 20 years, a position he cherished deeply even though he did not receive any financial compensation.

It was, therefore, painful for the fiery and seasoned ecologist, having earned three doctorates and publishing over 100 research papers over the course of his 70-year career, to be cruelly shoved out of the position he cherished merely because of his old age.

According to the university, Goodall was unfit and the move to push him out was in his best interests.

When the university contacted Goodall’s daughter Karen, she alluded to Goodall’s love for his job, saying, “It would be the worst thing you could possibly do, I don't know if he would survive it”.

After Goodall won the case and the university allowed him to remain on the campus, he regained the quiet that had surrounded his life.

Last week, Goodall was again thrust into the limelight after pro-euthanasia non-profit group, Exit International, which Goodall has been part of for 20 years, organised a crowdfunding campaign to afford Goodall a comfortable first class air trip to Switzerland, where the ecologist has controversially decided to end his life.

The same week, after the crowdfunding paid off, Goodall was able to travel to Switzerland to undergo voluntary euthanasia, a procedure also commonly known as assisted suicide.

While many people all over the world have grappled to understand why a seemingly healthy elderly, accomplished man with a happy family of four children and 12 grandchildren would want to end his life, Goodall could not be clearer.

“I would much prefer to be 20 or 30 years younger,” Goodall told ABC News during an interview. On numerous occasions, Goodall, an elderly man whose health is okay, has vented his frustrations over the restrictions his increasingly old age brought him.

In the same ABC News interview, Goodall sadly expressed his regret at reaching 104, emphatically stating that he was unhappy and preferred death instead.

Having confessed to three prior suicide attempts, Goodall explained to ABC News that the past year was the breaking point for him, as his degenerating quality of life convinced him beyond doubt that what he wanted more than anything was to die.

While Goodall’s death wish is controversial and difficult to understand, it makes some sense. For a man who led a highly active life, being restricted to a wheelchair was, in a way, worse than death.

An avid lover of travel and the arts, Goodall was forced to give up his theatre acting because he could not drive anymore.

When he reached 90, he was forced to quit tennis because he could no longer keep up with the rigorous sport.

Even the academics that kept him going could no longer motivate him as his eyesight worsened and made reading difficult.

In the past few months, a lonely Goodall said that he had been relegated to his one-bedroom apartment.

Goodall painfully narrated to ABC News how, two months ago, when he fell in his apartment, he had remained on the floor for two days, unable to save himself until his cleaner found him and got him medical assistance.

According to his daughter Karen, Goodall’s inability to complete basic tasks by himself contributed to his desire to die by assisted suicide, since he felt that he had lost his dignity and self-respect.

Yesterday, in what was highly likely his last day alive, Goodall, a passionate botanist and ecologist, lived out his life on his terms, amongst the lush Botanical Gardens of Switzerland’s Basel University, surrounded by his loving family.

In the culmination of a frustrating few years, Goodall will, sometime today, take a lethal cocktail of drugs at an assisted suicide centre in Switzerland, effectively ending his life.