Sati used to be an abhorrent practice in India, till the advent of the British - women being burnt alive on the funeral pyre of their husbands. Cut to modern times, and a Canadian woman wants to die along with her terminally ill husband. A Swiss assisted-suicide clinic Dignitas is facilitating the process.

Ludwig Minelli, founder of Dignitas, described suicide as a “marvellous opportunity” and felt it should not be restricted to the terminally ill or people with severe disabilities.

"Suicide is a very good possibility to escape a situation which you can't alter," he said and argued that it would also save the National Health Service a lot of money.

For more than 10 years the centre has operated in a legal limbo – permissible under Swiss law so long as no one has assisted in the suicide for selfish gain.

So far nearly 1,000 people from across Europe and beyond have travelled there for the chance to give themselves a lethal dose of barbiturate.

They are left alone in a room as do so but their death is filmed and the footage handed to a coroner to prove that there has been no coercion.

Last month it emerged that Swiss prosecutors have demanded the organisation open its accounts amid questions over where the £6,000 fee patients pay goes.

There have been claims that one woman was charged as much as £61,000 and claims that patients' ashes have been illegally dumped in a lake.