The Dark Side Of Swiss Death Clinic Dignitas

So, the pro-death-no-suffering angle of the BBC "documentary" which showed the death of one person and an interviewed with another before his death was not as rosy as Terry Pratchett would have us believe.

OUR MOTHER CUDDLED HIM BUT DIGNITAS TOLD HER TO STOP

A MULTIPLE sclerosis sufferer who killed himself at a Swiss clinic during filming of a BBC documentary took 90 minutes to die, the Sunday Express can reveal.

Andrew Colgan had built up such a tolerance to medication that his death came more than an hour later than the usual 20 minutes. more

Yes, There Are Hopeful Alternatives To Assisted Killing

We need many more pieces like this - countering the inevitability of assisted killing and euthanasia.

Choosing to die misses the depth of life

We have just had a visit from our old friends, Jill and Dan. They are a remarkable couple. She was left a paraplegic after a motorbike accident 52 years ago. What a dire prospect for an active girl still in her teens! But she went on to be married, despite family pressure, to Dan, who lived in the same village. She wanted to have a family, and it of course seemed she'd have to have a baby by Caesarean section. In fact she was the first paraplegic to have a natural birth, watched by doctors from around the world, and went on to have two more boys. After their first was born, Dan was told: "You know, paraplegics normally survive just 10 years." more

A Good Retort To Brit TV Assisted Killing

Here's an excellent counter to the TV assisted killing aired on Brit TV last Monday night.

JAN MOIR: Don't fall for this toxic idea that the old are disposable

What awaits us in old age? Well, the triumph of actually reaching old age for a start — not a privilege offered to all. Yet if one was to look on the downside, the scenario that looms large gets bleaker with each passing year — and economic crisis.

Dwindling pensions, soaring fuel bills, children who plot to murder us in our sleep, doctors who don’t care if we live or die? more

UK Media Reaction To Monday Night's TV Assisted Killing

Here's a summary of how the UK media reacted to Monday night's showing of an assisted killing on Brit telly.

Terry Pratchett: Choosing to Die

British author Terry Pratchett. Picture: Getty Images

Should we be allowed to choose to die? That was the polarising question raised by author Terry Pratchett in a documentary aired on the BBC on Monday. more

I Agree: Death Should Not Become A Lifestyle

Anther wholly sane response to Terry Pratchett's pro-death "documentary" boradcast by the BBC last Monday.

Allison Pearson: Death should not be as easy as going to the dentist

Two stories of the week.  . . . Meanwhile, in Switzerland, Sir Terry Pratchett, the best-selling novelist, was leading a campaign for another mortal right.

“Peter Lawrence Smedley, are you sure you want to drink this medicament with which you will sleep and die?”

 “Yes, I’m quite sure.”

It sounded like a marriage, but it was actually a new rite of passage for humanity. The death ceremony. Peter, a charming retired hotelier, was pledging himself to Hades. more

UK: Showing Of Assisted Killing Leaves Many Questions

Here's a good piece about Terry Pratchett's Monday night "documentary" showing an assisted killing, and how misguided and wrong it was. I agree.

Assisted suicide critic ‘worried’ by Pratchett documentary

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff is one of the UK’s leading opponents of attempts to legalise assisted suicide. She gives her reaction to the controversial BBC documentary, which filmed a man dying at the Swiss Dignitas clinic

“THE more I see of this, the more worried I get and the BBC documentary only reinforced those worries.” more

UK: More Fallout From Last Night's TV Assisted Killing

Here's more fallout about the showing of an assisted killing on UK TV last night.

Sir Terry Pratchett's assisted suicide film denounced

Charities and religious groups have condemned the BBC for broadcasting the final moments of a man's 'assisted death' on screen, reports the Daily Mail. It says many viewers took to social networks and online message boards last night, to debate the BBC2 documentary, Terry Pratchett: Choosing To Die. They accused the programme makers of 'romanticising' and 'normalising' assisted death and warning it would lead to copycat suicides. more

UK: Backlash Builds To Assisted Killing On TV

I hope you have the time to view last night's BBC 'documentary" showing an assisted killing. There has been a serious backlash over this voyeuristic piece masquerading as reporting. It was completely in the tank for pro-death. BTW: This was not euthanasia, as the headline suggests - it was an assisted killing.

Anti-euthanasia backlash hits BBC after 900 viewers complain about Terry Pratchett documentary showing death at Dignitas

Almost 900 people contact the BBC to complain over programme

Former bishop of Rochester says the documentary was 'propaganda on one side'

Hundreds of viewers have complained about the BBC broadcasting the final moments of a man's 'assisted death' on screen - warning it would lead to copycat suicides.

Many viewers took to social networks and online message boards after watching Peter Smedley, 71,  beg for water and take his last gasp before slipping out of consciousness on the programme, Terry Pratchett: Choosing to Die. more

UK: Why The Disability Community Are Against Assisted Killing

The fallout from the BBC's showing of an assisted killing last night is drawing a good amount of attention. Here's a piece explaining why the disability community  fears that legalized assisted killing will make them even more vulnerable than they already are.

Dominic Lawson: Why the disabled fear assisted suicide

Last night, courtesy of the BBC, we could watch a man being killed – voluntarily. The much-heralded climax of the documentary Choosing to Die was of 71-year-old Peter Smedley being administered a lethal dose of Nembutal helped down with a praline chocolate (this was in Switzerland, after all). In his comments to accompany Smedley's death, the presenter, Sir Terry Pratchett, declared: "This has been a happy event."

It certainly seems to have been one for Sir Terry, who since his diagnosis with a form of Alzheimer's disease has become Britain's most prominent campaigner for "assisted suicide". It was only last year that the BBC gave Pratchett the great platform of the Richard Dimbleby lecture; the novelist used it to mount a forceful argument in favour of what he calls "the right to die" for those unable to commit suicide without assistance. more

Here's The BBC Piece On Assisted Killing Aired Last Night

Here's the much-trumpeted BBC "documentary" by pro-deather Terry Pratchett that hit the telly in the UK last night. Judge for yourself.

Terry Pratchett Prepares For His Assisted Killing

Terry Pratchett, whose film showing an assisted killing airs in the UK tomorrow evening, keeps pushing the envelope. He has announced that he's getting everything in order to go to Switzerland to undergo assisted killing. The macabre obsession with death continues to grow in the UK.

Sir Terry Pratchett Obtains Assisted Death Paperwork

Beloved British author and health campaigner Sir Terry Pratchett has applied for paperwork which could lead to his own assisted suicide in Switzerland. more

Media Says Assisted Killing Peaceful: I See A Macabre Circus

Brit Terry Pratchett's "documentary" filming an assisted killing is getting advance spin from the media about how heroic, etc. it is. That’s what this piece is about. But read carefully the part about the actual assisted killing - I see a macabre circus where the duty to die lurks just beneath the surface.

I saw a stranger die. It's a Rubicon moment, not necessarily in a bad way

Terry Pratchett's controversial new documentary, Choosing to Die, ends in a man's death. Peter Smedley had motor neurone disease and chose to go to the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland before he lost the ability to "self-determine" (article 8 of the Human Rights Act upholds for us all the right to self-determination).

In the film, which airs on BBC2 on Monday evening, Smedley ends his life at 71 with a glass of lethal medicine, his wife on one side, a Dignitas helper on the other, Pratchett standing aside, Pratchett's assistant at the door. more

UK Push Back To BBC Showing Of Assisted Suicide

Here's a report of pushback to the "documentary" showing as assisted sucide on the telly.

BBC film of sick man taking his life sparks major row

THE BBC is at the centre of a storm of controversy over its decision to film a man's last moments at the Dignitas clinic in a documentary fronted by bestselling author Terry Pratchett.

In a five-minute sequence in the BBC2 programme, Pratchett witnesses Peter, a British man in his early 70s who has motor neurone disease, taking his own life at the Swiss clinic.

Last night the broadcaster was forced to defend its decision. The corporation's commissioning editor for documentaries Charlotte Moore said that she did not believe the "carefully edited but unflinching" scene could have been left out. more

UK's Pratchett: Let's Have Take-Home Suicide Kits

Here's Terry Pratchett with another wild idea (see post below). He wants take-home suicide kits available in the UK. Aren't we lucky?

Sir Terry Pratchett argues case for take-home suicide kit

In a fresh appeal for the legalisation of assisted suicide, he said he was “angry” that British people had to go abroad if they wanted to be helped to die, because it meant they were committing suicide earlier than they would do if they could simply take a “magic potion” in their own home. more

UK: Another Assisted Suicide On The Telly

Terry Pratchett is a pro-deather who has suggested that euthanasia booths be set up on street corners. Seeing that he has early stage Alzheimer's disease, he's cutting quite a sympathetic figure. Now he's pushing the envelope by doing a "documentary" on showing someone committing assisted sucide. Hardly an original idea. Yawn.

Terry Pratchett's BBC documentary reopens debate on assisted dying

When his own time comes to die, the author Sir Terry Pratchett has said, he would like to be sitting on a chair on the lawn at his home, with a brandy in one hand and a glass of life-ending chemicals in the other. "And with Thomas Tallis on my iPod, I would shake hands with Death."

The question of his own death – and the right to choose its timing and manner – has become more pressing for 63-year-old Pratchett since his diagnosis in 2007 with early-onset Alzheimer's. more

Good Argument Against The Assisted Suicide/Euthanasia Madness In The UK

Here's an excellent piece from the UK pushing back against the pro-deathers of the moment, Terry Pratchett and Philip Nitschke. This is a good piece to convince your pro-death friends to change their minds.

Why are the Left (and the BBC) so keen to promote this ghoulish culture of death?

Spring, when the trees are in bud and green shoots are thrusting up from the earth, is the season when life robustly reasserts itself.

Yet in the past few weeks we have been assailed by a relentless stream of stories about people wanting to be helped to die. 

First, we learned that the BBC plans to screen a documentary this summer in which novelist and Alzheimer’s sufferer Terry Pratchett advocates assisted suicide.

The programme features footage of a man with motor neurone disease travelling to the Swiss euthanasia clinic Dignitas and being shown dying on screen.

Hard on the heels of this snuff movie came the sickening news that a video featuring notorious assisted suicide campaigner Dr Philip Nitschke, in which he demonstrates how to help people kill themselves, is being shown to schoolchildren in British classrooms. more

More Push-Back To BBC Assisted Suicide Documentary

Here's the latest push-back to the BBC documentary filming an assisted suicide from my colleague and friend Peter Saunders. Note the spin in the title - it's not "assisted suicide" or "assisted killing," but "assisted death."

Terry Pratchett film to show an assisted death

Viewers of the BBC2 show will see the writer, whose Discworld series of books have sold millions of copies worldwide, at the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland with the 71 year–old motor neurone disease sufferer, named only as Peter.

Sir Terry, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 2008, also reveals that he is "a believer in assisted death".

In 2008, a documentary on Sky Television called Right To Die? showed 59–yearold Craig Ewert ending his life. He also suffered from motor neurone disease. more

BBC Bias In Assisted Suicide Documentary Has Proponents On The Defense

Here's more on the proposed BBC documentary that will include a filmed asisted sucide. Given that the documentary's chief mover is a pro-deather, of course it's not going to be balanced. Assisted suicide supporters are getting pretty defensive over charges of bias likely in the documentary. A good sign.

BBC backed on assisted suicide

Right-to-die campaigners have backed the BBC after it was accused of "acting like a

cheerleader" for assisted suicide.

A BBC2 documentary, presented by best-selling author Sir Terry Pratchett, will show the last moments of a terminally ill man who travelled to an assisted suicide clinic to end his life. more

BBC Documentary In The Tank For Euthanasia

I've mentioned Terry Pratchett several times before. He first gained notoriety by suggesting that there should be "euthanasia booths" on many street corners kick the bucket more conveniently. Now he's getting into the spotlight again, having conned the BBC into a documentary filming a "live" assisted sucide at Swiss death clinic Dignitas. Of course, Pratchett is a little late to the game, this precedent having already been set by Craig Ewert a while ago. What's different here is that it's being sponsored by the BBC.

Pratchett presents film on Dignitas

The author Sir Terry Pratchett is to present a documentary about the last moments of a terminally ill man who travelled to the Dignitas assisted suicide clinic to end his life. more