Broadcaster Dame Esther Rantzen has revealed that she might commit suicide if her lung cancer treatment fails.
Dame Esther, who founded Childline and That’s Life!, revealed in May that she had stage four cancer.
She joined Switzerland-based Dignitas, an assisted suicide advocacy group, recently.
She said it’s “important that the law catch up with what the country wants” and advocated for a party-free vote on assisted dying on the BBC’s Today podcast.
On the podcast, she said her next scan will show “whether the miracle drug is performing its miracle or whether it’s given up.”
Her words: “I have joined Dignitas.” If the next scan shows nothing is functioning, I’d rather go to Zurich, but my family and friends would want to come with me.
This suggests that the police may take legal action against them. So, we have to do something. Right now, it’s not really functioning, is it?”
Assisted suicide is prohibited in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. A maximum term of 14 years in prison is possible for offenders.
The Health and Social Care Committee will shortly publish a report on assisted dying in England and Wales, having begun its examination in December 2022.
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“I explained to them that actually I don’t want their last memories of me to be painful because if you watch someone you love having a bad death, that memory obliterates all the happy times, and I don’t want that to happen,” Dame Esther said, adding that her family told her it was her choice.
“I don’t want to be that sort of victim in their lives.”
She said that she had not been sure she would make it to her final birthday in June and that it had been “very unexpected” that she would be able to spend the Christmas season.
The announcer went on, “Anything can happen; I live in a forest, and a tree could fall on me.”
“For some reason, I must return my perch; I’m 83 years old, so I ought to be ecstatic, and I am.”
Dame Esther presented the topical show That’s Life! from 1973 to 1984. It was both amusing and investigative, drawing in over 15 million viewers.
She established the UK youth organisation Childline in 1986. Childline and the NSPCC combined in 2006.
She established The Silver Line, a nonprofit that helps elderly individuals live alone, in 2013.
In 2015, she was named a Dame for her services to the elderly and impoverished.
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