Dame Esther Rantzen is slamming Britain’s approach to assisted dying as a “mess” as her family face being accused of murder if they help her pass away.
Dame Esther Rantzen is slamming Britain’s approach to assisted dying as a ‘mess’ as her family face being accused of murder if they help her pass away
The 83-year-old broadcaster, who presenter the BBC’s ‘That’s Life!’ for 21 years, is pushing for an immediate law change in the issue on the UK after being told she has terminal stage four lung cancer and signing up to Swiss suicide clinic Dignitas.
She told 65-year-old LBC host Nick Ferrari about how she wants the public to join her campaign by writing to their MPs: “The intentions are to protect people in the last days of their life from being coerced into something by greedy relatives or other crimes of that kind.
“But as I have terminal cancer it is a possibility my life will become too painful (and) my suffering will be too great that even with the great palliative care skills that exist in this country, and in my local hospice, they won’t be able to help me and I want to die.
“If they go with me to Dignitas, where I have signed up just in case the law doesn’t change in time for me, they could be accused of murder or conspiring to bump me off. It’s a mess.
“What we need is people to have individual choice at that moment, which is literally life and death.”
Dame Esther launched a petition in January with the Dignity in Dying charity and is demanding a debate and a free vote by MPs on assisted dying.
It has been signed by 122,000 people including famous faces such as historian and royal biographer Jonathan Dimbleby, 79, whose brother Nicholas has motor neurone disease – as well as former ‘Woman’s Hour’ host Dame Jenni Murray, 73, who lost her mother to Parkinson’s and dad to lung cancer, as well as ‘The Great British Bake Off’ judge Dame Prue Leith, 83, whose brother David died from bone cancer.
Assisting someone to die is illegal and prohibited by the Suicide Act 1961 and carries a 14-year jail term.
Dame Esther, who is a grandmother of five, lost her TV producer husband Desmond Wilcox, 69, to heart disease in 2000.
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