Paralysed man asks State to help him die

(ANSA) - ROME, MAY 18 - An Italian paralysed man who can only move his eyes on Wednesday asked the Italian State to help him commit assisted suicide, which is banned in Italy although the Constittional Court recently found in its favour.
    "Dear Italian State, I've been in this condition for 18 years.
    Every day my condition becomes ever more unbearable. Help me to die," 46-year-old Fabio Ridolfi, from Fermignano (Pesaro Urbino), wrote in a letter.
    Ridolfi is paralysed due to the rupture of an artery that has caused what doctors call 'tetraparesis', a condition in which all four limbs are weak and which is degenerative.
    He communicates with the outside world by moving his eyes to operate an ocular pointer.
    He has written to health authorities in his native Marche region to ask them to act on the precedent established by the case of DJ Fabo, a tetraplegic disk jockey who was helped to commit suicide in a Swiss clinic by the Luca Coscioni right-to-die association. (ANSA).