Esther Rantzen "too frail" to travel to Switzerland (Dignitas)

[ItWasnaMeGuv]

Hopefully a family member of friend will take her and she can get her wish.

The problem is that what you appear to be advocating for here is not assisted dying, it is the right for medical professionals to have the ability to legally kill a patient. If the person can neither consent nor participate with the process in any way then it is the responsibility of the medical professional to make the decision and carry out the killing.
Apart from this being outside of the remit of even the current, flawed and potentially dangerous, proposed bill, I am deeply uncomfortable with putting this power and responsibility in the hands of doctors, a central tenet of whose calling is to save lives where possible.
There seems to me to be a significant ethical difference between removing certain treatments from an unconscious patient, at end of life and in accordance with that patient's previously documented wishes, and the deliberate ending of a life, by a doctor, of someone who can no longer consent to this act.

The key is choice. More and more countries are adopting AD for those that choose it, France, New Zealand and others among them.

I want AD to be legal in the UK. I am very clear, if I develop any sort of dementia and lose capacity, I do not wish to continue to “live”. At all. Nor do I want the death that I’ve witnessed from multiple family members. Long, drawn out, dignity free and hugely painful, even WITH good quality hospice care. I wouldn’t do that to a dog.
And as for “prosecution”? My DH has also expressed very clear wishes. If he wanted to go to dignitas but was too unwell to physically get there? I’d take him and face the consequences. His comfort, his wishes, his dignity would be paramount, let them prosecute me, I’d know I’d done right by him. And he would do the same for me.

That is not what is being proposed in the UK though is it? The comments on here and elsewhere show that there is clearly an appetite to extend the bill past it's current proposed parameters, which make the assurances made that it will only apply to terminally ill people ring hollow.
Maybe you would be comfortable to live in a country like Canada where sick and disabled people can feel obliged to 'put themselves out of their misery', often for the convenience of others, but I would personally rather live somewhere that respected and valued the dignity of all human life, even those of us who live, often very fulfilling lives, with the kind of disabilities people on this thread would probably consider to be the type of suffering they would rather die than endure.

No, of course that isn’t what AD is for. And I don’t think anyone would support that. A lot of people support choice. If it’s not your choice while you have capacity, it can’t happen, even if you no longer have capacity.
Where is the evidence that in Canada disabled people are “putting themselves out of their misery for the convenience of others”?

Yes, I agree. I think most countries that have brought in AD, it has been successful and hasn't resulted in the death of people who don't want to die. It's been about choice, so that those who want an AD can have an AD.

Yes there was a recent case in Canada where a woman who had said explicitly to a MAID assessor that she did not want assisted dying was euthanised without her consent after her husband experienced ‘carer fatigue’ and put in an emergency request for MAID.

The assessor she had talked to refused to agree, so in order to get the second assessor concurrence required by federal law, the one the husband contacted shopped around until they found one who approved it. She was euthanised hours later:

In 2023, there were 65 same-day MAID deaths, and another 154 the day after a patient was deemed eligible.*
Mrs. B’s MAID death occurred the same day two MAID assessors approved her for MAID as required by federal law.
The day before she died, Mrs. B — who experienced complications from an artery bypass surgery — met with a MAID assessor. During this assessment, Mrs. B said she no longer wanted MAID and instead wanted to continue at-home palliative care.
The next morning, Mrs. B and her spouse visited an emergency room. Doctors discharged Mrs. B after determining she was fine, but said her spouse had caregiver burnout.
Mrs. B’s doctor requested she be moved to palliative care because of caregiver burnout. The request was denied. Her spouse’s caregiver burnout was not enough to make Mrs. B eligible for palliative care.
Later that day, Mrs. B’s spouse called the provincial MAID coordination team and requested she have an urgent MAID assessment.
A new MAID assessor found Mrs. B eligible. The MAID assessor who saw Mrs. B the day before was contacted and expressed concerns about caregiver burnout. This assessor asked to meet with Mrs. B the next day. The MAID provider declined, saying Mrs. B’s case was urgent.
A third MAID assessor found Mrs. B eligible after a virtual assessment. Her MAID death occurred that evening.
“Some [committee] members expressed their concern that access to MAID was more easily organized and accessible in this circumstance than the previously requested and preferred option for end-of-life care,” the report says.*
https://www.canadianaffairs.news/2025/04/16/death-too-fast-ontario-report-details-same-day-maid-deaths/

I’m not wrong about air ambulances. If what you said was true, then all the airlines flying from UK to Zurich would have been prosecuted already.

See @Fast800goingforit people. Tell me has any Chunnel train driver or ferry captain or airline pilot ever been arrested for transporting a person on their way to Dignitas?

ODFOD - it is not the same as chartering a plane!

Don’t be ludicrous. A pilot or train driver doesn’t have any medical knowledge of his/her passengers. They aren’t accomplices if one of the travellers goes on to commit a crime, for example.

But a privately chartered air ambulance will absolutely ask questions about the patient and why they are flying (eg for a world leading surgeon in Zurich or whatever). And if the answer was “to go to Dignitas” then I would absolutely expect either/both the staff and the company not to want to accept the legal or reputational risk.

Obtuse would be missing what is clearly a typo.

You can’t possibly know that is true, given the only people who can confirm this is the case, have been killed.

People who are terminally ill are vulnerable to pressure and coercive control. Many will report feeling like a burden to their family, the wrong kind of person can take advantage of that.

Those seem like very sensible safeguards. I wonder why they were voted down by the committee? I'm now off to Google...

You have to have enormous trust in the government and other people for this. Enormous.
I don't.
I'm getting a bit annoyed at some of the naivety here.

Also getting a bit annoyed at what I perceive the lack of personal responsibility about getting the state to do the dirty work of killing.
The medical profession are not soldiers.

It's hard to express this without sounding offensive but if seeing a relative in so much pain is causing a person so much distress there's an argument that they should put them out of their misery themselves and face the consequences of doing so.
If it's that bad, damn the consequences of potential prison, right? If you care that much.

Why do others expect nurses and doctors to do the job for them? I mean it's sort of selfish is it not, expecting medical staff to kill routinely even when they've been ordered to do it and not completely sure?
Day in day out.

At least the person who puts a much loved relative out of their misery has the knowledge they did the right thing on their side.

All.the attempts to write sensible safeguards into the bill were dismissed.

The reason is that the people who wrote it were motivated by zeal and emotion, and moral righteousness, and couldn't bring themselves to look at the very practical and pragmatic and necessary issues involved.

The entire process was disturbingly cack handed from the start. It should never have been a PMB.

Murder. Plain and simple. That poor woman.

Effectively doctors do have the power to end a patients life with the "do not rescuscitate." My friend agreed to it when his 97 year old mum was in hospital. They took her off all meds, food and water and it took her 3 days to die.

I have chartered private air ambulances and it is easier than you think.

Besides who is going to put in writing ‘going to Dignitas’? No one. Don’t be ridiculous. All the paperwork is done with admin staff.

Many rich people go to Zurich for private palliative care. The baroness is lucky she doesn’t need a hospital to hospital transfer as the air ambulance company usually wants the receiving hospital at destination to confirm a bed is available and have a n ambulance waiting on the tarmac where the air ambulance lands.

The patient’s doctor writes a fit to fly with x level of care on the air ambulance. They can fly people even at ICU level. The level of care determines the staff, equipment, type and size of air ambulance.

You pay for the above, then on the day the flight doctor will check the patient and ensure they are still fit to fly.

NONE OF THE MEDICAL STAFF ON THE DAY ASK ANY WHY ARE YOU FLYING THERE QUESTIONS

Their focus is keeping the patient alive throughout the flight.

True and there were thousands of patients put on DNRs without their knowledge or their families’ during Covid and they ended up being left to die of covid as a DNR meant you were no longer eligible for a ventilator if your Covid got bad enough. Who had this happen to them? Any patient with a disability or elderly. Doctors prioritised the young and abled. Even patients who were healthy and young but had a learning disability or neurodiversity were consigned to death.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd98vpxgp7ko

https://www.mencap.org.uk/press-release/charity-reveals-shocking-treatment-treatment-people-learning-disability-during-covid

How do they know if you are going to Switzerland for that purpose unless someone dobs you in?

I appreciate that it is highly controversial, but I hope that, in time, Assisted Dying is permitted within the UK.

It seems horribly unfair when we allow terminally ill people to have a long, painful and drawn-out death, when we wouldn't permit our beloved pets to go through the same. If terminally ill people are of sound mind, Assisted Dying shouldn't be out of their reach.

Disclaimer: I've had terminally ill relations who suffered for a long time before death. It's so undignified and unfair to prolong their suffering.

I’m glad it failed, I work in palliative care and reckon at any given time approximately 10% of our patients would be at risk of coercion to agree to this. You would not believe how callous some families can be (and that is with good palliative care).

I think that, at least, is the stage, when an assisted death ought to be possible. You hear this happening and days and days pass by in this state of active dying or whatever the term is. I know for me that once I reach the withdrawal of sustenance I want to be helped along. It makes me angry that even this isn’t possible when yes, withdrawal of these things will definitely lead to death, just who knows how long it will take.

Yes.
Dame Rantzen is obviously highly intelligent.
I bet she knows this herself.
She also has lots of money.

Even if it passed yesterday, it would still take beyond her predicted lifespan to sort out.