LONDON — A 58-year-old British man suffering from a condition called locked-in syndrome died Wednesday, six days after the nation’s High Court rejected his request for help in ending his life.
His death is certain to galvanize the contentious debate about assisted suicide in Britain.
Tony Nicklinson, a former rugby player who suffered a stroke in 2005, died at his home in Melksham, 80 miles west of London, according to a statement issued by lawyers representing him.
Nicklinson’s family used his Twitter account to say that he died of natural causes. The BBC reported that he had refused food since the ruling.
After suffering his stroke while on a business trip to Athens, Nicklinson, a civil engineer, developed locked-in syndrome, an incurable condition in which a patient loses all motor functions but remains awake and aware, with all cognitive abilities. He had spent the past seven years paralyzed from the neck down and unable to speak or feed himself.
He had argued in court that he would be physically unable to administer a lethal drug to himself and that his only path to release from his ‘‘living nightmare’’ would be permission from the court to have somebody else — in his suggestion, a doctor — administer the necessary dose without fear of prosecution. Under British law, anyone who knowingly helps a terminally ill person to die faces possible criminal prosecution and a lengthy jail term if convicted.