(April 3) - A healthy woman's desire to kill herself when her terminally ill husband dies -- a plan she intends to carry out with the help of a Swiss assisted suicide group -- has ignited a new right-to-die controversy.

Ludwig Minelli, the founder of the Swiss assisted suicide group, Dignitas, talked about the case in a recent interview with The Times of London. Assisted suicide is legal in Switzerland, and the group said it has helped more than 100 Britons die.

Minelli told BBC News his organization plans to test the limits of the Swiss law by helping a healthy person take her own life.

"There is a couple living in Canada, the husband is ill, his partner is not ill but she told us here in my living room that 'if my husband goes, I would go at the same time with him,' " he said Thursday. The couple in question is Betty and George Coumbias of Canada.

Minelli also acknowledged that his group helped some psychiatric patients commit suicide, BBC News said.

"I have a totally different attitude to suicide," Minelli said. "I say suicide is a marvelous possibility given to a human being."

A "suicide assistant" said she resigned from Dignitas because she was concerned about the way the organization dealt with couples and mentally ill people.

"I have no problem at all with assisted suicide, if somebody is terminally ill, my problem is with how Dignitas deals with it," Soroya Wernli told BBC News.

Patricia Hewitt, a former British health secretary, said Minelli's comments pointed to a need to tighten assisted suicide laws.

Dignitas came under fire last year for helping a 23-year-old Briton commit suicide. Daniel James was left paralyzed by a rugby injury but was not terminally ill.

In the United States, two states allow assisted suicide. Oregon sanctions physician-assisted suicide for terminally ill state residents. In Washington state, terminally ill patients with less than six months to live can ask their doctors to prescribe them lethal medication. Two doctors must certify that the patient has a terminal condition and six months or less to live.

In December, a Montana district judge ruled that doctor-assisted suicides are legal. That decision, which was based on an individual lawsuit, has gone to the state Supreme Court.