Push Back Against Brit Documentary Showing Man Dying

Here's some push back to the death documentary to be show on the BBC tonight.

Andreas Whittam Smith: Television is not how to witness the passing of a life

My unease starts from the fact that for most of the audience this will be the first time they have been in the presence of death. For death has been institutionalised

In a straw poll I took this week, I discovered that few of us have ever seen somebody die. I wanted to find out how acquainted we were with death because I was thinking about the BBC One programme due to be screened this evening at 9pm entitled Inside the Human Body. It shows the death of an elderly man from natural causes. This is not quite a first. Sky showed an assisted suicide in a film called Right to Die? in 2008. In 1998 Robert Winston's BBC documentary, The Human Body, dealt with the final moments of an elderly German called Herbie. A documentary on Alzheimer's made by Terry Pratchett and due to be screened in the summer also shows an assisted suicide, this time at a clinic in Switzerland. more