Sean Davison is a New Zealand-born South African scientist and author. In 2010 he was arrested in New Zealand and charged with the attempted murder of his terminally-ill mother, Dr. Patricia Ferguson. As a result of his arrest and High Court trial, he became an international campaigner for changes to the law regarding assisted dying under legally defined criteria. He is the founder and director of the pro-euthanasia organisation Dignity South Africa and served for five years as president of the World Federation of Right-to-Die Societies. Both organisations support the decriminalisation of voluntary euthanasia. In 2019 Davison was convicted of murder for assisting the suicide of three paralyzed men in South Africa, In 2024 he was arrested in England for the assisted suicide of an elderly woman he accompanied to Switzerland to have a legal assisted death. The police are investigating 29 similar charges. For 18 months during 2023 and 2024 Davison served as a director of Exit International and was involved with the development of the Sarco suicide pod. He subsequently became associated with Pegasos, a voluntary assisted dying organisation in Switzerland.
Early life and career Born to an Irish father and British mother in Auckland, New Zealand, Sean Davison was raised in Hokitika, on the west coast of New Zealand. He obtained a PhD in microbiology from the University of Otago (New Zealand) in 1990. Following the completion of his PhD studies, he moved to South Africa and became a citizen of that country. He carried out post-doctoral research studies at the University of Cape Town (1991–93), before accepting an academic post at the University of the Western Cape where he established a molecular virology and a DNA forensics laboratory. The DNA forensics lab had notable success in identifying the remains of anti-apartheid activists, who were buried in mass graves by the apartheid-era police. Davison's lab has also developed a DNA rape kit for identifying individual perpetrators in cases where there is more than one rapist. Davison's research interests include cognitive neuroscience where he demonstrated that suicide can be considered a rational thought in certain circumstances. Davison co-founded and is director of the Innocence Project: South Africa, an organisation supporting the exoneration of prisoners incarcerated for crimes they did not commit, proven via the use of DNA testing of biological material from the historical crime scenes.
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