German Medical Council to Issue 45-Step Walking Route for Every Death Wish, With Rest Stops and a Souvenir Map

Germany's medical associations will present their first interdisciplinary guideline on assisted suicide not as a text but as a 45-stop guided walking route across the country, with every doctor and nurse required to accompany any patient who expresses a death wish to the final stop in person, the University of Halle announced Thursday.

The route, mapped in full colour and printed on waterproof paper, begins at a clinic in Halle and proceeds through counselling pavilions, ethics benches and a rest area where patients are asked to reconsider while seated. «We found that a conversation alone was insufficiently structured,» said a member of the steering committee. «So we built a path. Each of the 45 recommendations is a place you physically stand on while we explain it.»

Doctors who receive a request must now leave their practices and walk the entire route with the patient, pausing at every stop for a short lecture on free responsibility. Clinics have begun hiring walking companions, and the German Medical Association has ordered a fleet of buses to return exhausted physicians to their towns. Some practices in Bavaria have closed for the week.

The guideline's authors stress the route is voluntary, though they note that anyone who declines to walk it will be asked to explain their decision at a bench near the third stop. A souvenir map is included, and the final stop features a stamp for the patient's card.

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