Man with multiple sclerosis becomes 17th to die from assisted suicide in Italy

A 55-year-old man with multiple sclerosis has become the 17th person to die from assisted suicide in Italy.

Key Takeaways:

• The Luca Coscioni Association, which supports assisted suicide, announced that a man named Christian has died from assisted suicide at the age of 55.

• Christian had multiple sclerosis (MS), a condition for which there is no cure, although treatment is available. Life expectancy is most often not shortened, and MS is very rarely fatal.

• Assisted suicide was decriminalized in Italy in 2019, though Tuscany is the only region to have formally legalized it.

The Details:

The Luca Coscioni Association issued a press release last week announcing that a man named Christian had died via assisted suicide in Lombardy, Italy. According to the organization, which supports assisted suicide, Christian is the third person in Lombardy, and the 17th overall, to die by assisted death in Italy.

Christian was 55, and reportedly had multiple sclerosis (MS). The press release did not say that he was dying, but that he sought assisted suicide due to "the irreversibility of the disease and the progressive worsening of his condition."

According to the Cleveland Clinic, MS is not a fatal condition except in very rare instances. While there is no cure for MS, and it can lead to disability, there are treatments available, and life expectancy for the majority of people with MS is the same as the typical population.

Christian applied for assisted suicide in February, and he was killed last week. Marco Cappato and Filomena Gallo, the Treasurer and National Secretary of the Luca Coscioni Association, said:

Christian’s case confirms the full applicability of the Constitutional Court’s sentence throughout the national territory, not only in Tuscany and Sardinia. It is also confirmed that when a healthcare company fulfills its tasks in a timely manner, the patient manages to avoid having to suffer a long agony against his will. However, because the situation is different from one health care company to another, in Lombardy as in the rest of Italy, it is imperative that regional rules clarify the procedures to be followed, in order to guarantee those “quick times” required by the Constitutional Court, and that citizens and doctors are informed.

The Big Picture:

Before assisted suicide was decriminalized in Italy, the Luca Coscioni Association would help take people to Dignitas in Switzerland, a notorious assisted suicide and euthanasia business. Now, the organization works to help Italian doctors kill their patients.

The legal status of assisted suicide and euthanasia in Italy remains murky, though. Euthanasia is still prohibited in the Italian Criminal Code. In 2019, the Italian Constitutional Court ruled euthanasia is not a crime if it is committed due to a chronic, non-life-threatening condition or for “intolerable” pain, and that anyone who commits assisted suicide or euthanasia under those circumstances would not be charged with a crime. However, the Italian parliament never came to a decision, despite being ordered by the court to put the new guidelines into statutory law, meaning there is no national legal framework in place for assisted suicide.

Due to Parliament's lack of action, regional governments were instead able to make their own laws regarding assisted suicide and euthanasia. Tuscany was the first region to officially legalize assisted suicide in 2025.

The Bottom Line:

Killing someone is not compassion, and the fact that people with disabilities, like Christian, are able to be approved for assisted suicide shows just how dangerous this practice is.