The BBC will soon air a documentary on assisted death. Hosted by Terry Pratchett, diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s disease in 2008 and now a campaigner for the choice to end one’s life, he will meet people suffering from degenerative conditions, and will be with a man as he carries out an assisted death at the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland.
I’ve never fully understood how people can be against assisted death, when the person who’s dying has made the choice and has been confirmed of sound mind, over an extended period of time. Even religious arguments dumbfound me, going on about the sanctity of life over the quality of life. Sadly, this has been the reaction to the BBC documentary in the press.
Unsurprisingly, the Daily Mail was first out of the gate with Amanda Platell’s Pratchett’s a hero, but on this he’s plain wrong. Platell starts well, but it doesn’t take long for the mask to slip. Initially, she lauds Pratchett as a “compelling champion” for research into the treatment of Alzheimer’s, noting he’s:
raised the profile of the debilitating disease and talked movingly about the horrific way it robs victims of their minds.
She also states:
He has also calmly spelt out his own desire to end his life when he chooses, not when the disease does. He won’t want to be pitied, but it is impossible not to feel deeply for Sir Terry, and one can understand only too easily why he might in time choose to take his life.
But then the article turns, violently. She talks about the aforementioned BBC documentary, using provokative language (my emphasis):
In Terry Pratchett: Choosing To Die, the author sits beside the 71-year-old man known only as Peter, who suffers from motor neurone disease, and watches him die slowly from a lethal cocktail of drugs in a Swiss clinic.
It will be the first time the moment of a suicide victim’s death is screened on television.
It’s accurate that the drugs are ‘lethal’ in that they kill you, but it’s not like Peter will neck a bottle of painkillers and hope they do the job. The drugs Dignitas use are essentially designed to make the person fall asleep. And while Peter is committing suicide, calling him a ‘victim’ seems a bit of a stretch—he’s chosen this end, for his own reasons.
More mask-slippage follows:
Whether or not you agree with assisted death and what goes on at the controversial Dignitas clinic in Switzerland where the suicide takes place is almost beside the point.
To my mind, this is the almost pathologically liberal BBC at its worst, producing a propaganda film for the pro-euthanasia lobby and deliberately offending the significant number of Britons who believe in the sanctity of life.
And there, in a nutshell, is Platell’s objectivity utterly removed. The BBC, by doing something brave and giving us insight into Peter (also doing something brave) and his reasoning, perhaps enlightening viewers and providing understanding, is ‘almost pathologically liberal’. (Is the BBC ‘almost pathologically religious’, too, for screening Songs of Praise, Platell?)
But these are the words that most anger me:
deliberately offending the significant number of Britons who believe in the sanctity of life
You know what? Tough. Too bad. If you’re that ‘offended’, don’t watch the damn show. If you believe in the sanctity of life over the quality of life, bully for you. But other people have other viewpoints, and the BBC’s remit requires that all are catered for. Just because some people are going to be most upset because of their ideals and beliefs (rather than because a man is deciding to die) shouldn’t stop the BBC from running this kind of programme, especially if it does an extremely good job in showing everything that happens during the process (as in, the process from the decision onwards—not the final moments).
Platell doesn’t get this at all:
What makes this all the more insidious is the high moral tone adopted by the corporation. ‘The BBC does not have a stance on assisted suicide, but we do think this is an important matter of debate,’ says a spokesman.
Giving Sir Terry free rein in a documentary on this highly sensitive matter seems like a pretty strong stance to me.
Again, no more a stance than the BBC being overtly religious for screening Songs of Praise. (Note: in case you’re wondering, no I don’t think the BBC is being overtly religious for screening Songs of Praise.)
And the very fact that Sir Terry is the front man is in itself a form of moral blackmail.
Gosh, yes, good point. It makes no sense at all to have the show hosted by someone with a vested interest in the subject. It would have been much better to have you host it, Platell, yelling “WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS? GOD HAS A PLAN!” at Peter, every step of the way.
Still, that’s the Daily Mail, eh? But, sadly, looming into view comes Who is to judge which lives are worth living?, by Barbara Ellen in The Observer.
Ellen’s tone is a little more impartial, but there are a lot of elements of her article that are unhelpful at best.
Pratchett says: “Everybody possessed of a debilitating and incurable illness should be allowed to pick the hour of their death.” Clearly, with him, the dignity of choice is paramount. However, while one has enormous sympathy for Pratchett suffering such a vile disease, the fact remains that he is a rich, powerful man and it is highly unlikely that his wishes would be ignored. With respect, euthanasia laws are not in place to protect people such as him. What of those who may have their “choice” taken away, even if they don’t want to die?
That is quite a leap, on a number of levels. Choice doesn’t always fully exist under the current system. Doctors make decisions every day on people’s conditions that lead to ‘care’ being withdrawn, regardless of the wishes of the patients (since said wishes often don’t exist, or aren’t available or accessible, for various reasons). But, more to the point, Ellen seems to assume that Dignitas has no safeguards, or that if the UK adopted some kind of more liberal euthanasia laws, there’d be shady characters with black bags, roaming the streets and knocking off pensioners.
What people like Pratchett are campaigning for is the right to die. He’s not campaigning for the equivalent of a drive-through death centre—it’s clear that any changes in law would make a British approach to assisted death lengthy, with many levels of protection, not only to ensure coercion isn’t happening, but also to guarantee that this is what the person who wants to die really wants (as opposed to a relatively fleeting decision).
The filming of the death seems secondary – for me, it has the opportunistic whiff of a medicalised snuff movie, but that’s just my opinion. No one is forced to watch, just as no one is forced to watch all the births on television these days.
Will people watch for ghoulish reasons? Perhaps. But that doesn’t make this a snuff movie. The documentary isn’t about the death—it’s about the reasons behind it and the fact someone in the UK cannot die in this manner in their own country, despite us—last time I looked—no longer living in the Middle Ages.
There are bigger issues at stake, not least the arrogance of the pro-euthanasia able bodied towards the profoundly ill – the unseemly rush to pronounce the lives of others “not worth living”.
I don’t know any ‘pro-euthanasia able bodied’ rushing to pronounce the lives of others “not worth living”. I would never seek to suggest to someone whether their life is worth continuing with or not, for the very obvious reason that I simply do not—and cannot—know. All I know is my own life; and should I ever be in the situation where I either cannot take any more pain or am literally slipping away (the thing Pratchett is scared of—and something I watched happen with my grandmother, who recognised no-one and remembered almost nothing of herself during her last year alive), I would hope the law is such that I at least have the right to die. I’m not saying I’d make that choice—but it should be my right.
A recent study discovered that some sufferers of locked-in syndrome – as many as three out of four of the main sample – were happy and did not want to die. Such studies are flawed (some sufferers are unable to articulate either way), but it should still give us pause for thought before blasting off about “lives not worth living”.
Again, this is misdirection. No-one’s talking about doctors visiting people with a checklist. It’s not like you get a score and—whoops!—if you’re under 3/10, out comes the needle! Any decision must come from the sufferer—and that’s what people are campaigning for.
Likewise the knee-jerk: “They wouldn’t have wanted to end up like this.” Of course not – who would? – but that might not be the end of the story. How individuals feel when they are fit may change considerably when their health fails. Like those with locked-in syndrome, they may adjust to a life that is very different, often difficult, but just as precious. Who are we to judge?
Who are we to deny someone the right to end their life if they haven’t adjusted after a long period of time with whatever condition they have? It’s their life, not yours.
Personally, if I ever get something nasty, I’d rather be with a God-botherer than somebody who decides I’m looking peaky, books a Swiss flight and whisks me off to the ghouls at Dignitas. Or maybe I wouldn’t – maybe I’d be begging for death. The hope is that I’ll choose.
And the point is, in the UK right now, you do not have that choice.