This is Prospect’s rolling coverage of the assisted dying debate. This page will be updated with the latest from our correspondent, Mark Mardell. Read the rest of our coverage here
23rd January
What does a good death mean? There’s an intentional irony in the phrase. Surely death is to be shunned and avoided? A good death is simply the opposite of a bad death—a death without pain, without horror. Good only in the sense that it is contained, either peaceful and natural or controlled and wished for by the person doing the dying.
We’ve looked at many jurisdictions, many laws that allow people to decide upon their death in advance. Proponents of these laws are defining a good death as death by medicine: an injection or a swallowed liquid. A grey, dignified death as lacking in unpleasantness as any death can be. For many, this conception is comforting, for many others, it is unnatural and wrong. But for at least one artist it is boring: lacking any sense of drama, ritual or fun.
Yes, fun.
The Lithuanian artist Julijonas Urbonas has created a machine that, he claims, would make the ritual of death “merrier”. His invention, which exists only in his imagination and in miniature, is called the “Euthanasia Coaster”. He says it is “a hypothetic death machine in the form of a roller coaster, engineered to humanely—with elegance and euphoria—take the life of a human being.” It would be a death, in his words, that is imbued with meaning, ritual and individuality.
I am not pretending any of this is new. He invented the coaster in 2010, and there was a fairly disturbing film about it five years later. There’s been plenty of comment about them both ever since. But it meets my definition of new—new to me, perhaps new to you. It is what happens when you go diving around, scrubbing through strange corners of the internet. You discover things that intrigue, surprise and perhaps give you pause.
Urbonas is also a designer and engineer who ran an amusement park in Lithuania between 2003 and 2007. Drawing on what he describes as his firsthand experience in crafting situations that involve “gravitational aesthetics”, he conceived a hypothetical, imagined and, of course, entirely fictional roller coaster. This is literally the ultimate trip—the ultimate high.
His design involves a coaster that slowly climbs to 510 metres, roughly 1,700 feet, before plunging down through seven loops at a speed of 100 metres per second. That’s 224 miles per hour. He claims the ride is designed to give its passengers a range of experiences—from thrills and sensory overload to loss of consciousness, and, eventually, death.
Not surprisingly, many have interpreted this idea as a sick joke, especially considering some of his other art installations, which are clearly humorous and playful. His recent True Moonshine is “a micro-distillery producing high-proof liquor under the direct light of the Moon. A motorised lunar-light-tracking telescope is incorporated in the spirits equipment, channelling the light into the alcohol steam before it liquidises.”
Or Cumspin (2015), “an orgasm-enhancing funfair machine. Based on the principle of a centrifuge, it exposes the love riders to variable gravitational forces.” But then jokes about sex aren’t exactly rare. Those about death are less commonplace.
One eminent neuroscientist, Antonio Damasio, doesn’t find it at all funny. He remarked: “Death is the stuff of tragedy, and euthanasia compounds this with myriad questions about the circumstances in which it may or may not be acceptable… The euthanasia coaster is not fun at all as art, and it is preposterous as a technical device. Curiously, though, it does work as provocation. Regardless of intent, it is mostly sad, sad, sad.”
But what if it’s just a joke? Damasio has this covered. “Conceivably, Mr Urbonas was simply indulging in flippant outrageousness for the sake of novelty and sensation, but an interview he gave at the time suggests otherwise. He does say that his creation would be helpful in dealing with problems such as ‘overpopulation’ and ‘living too long’.”
The artist himself responds to this criticism by saying: “When I talk about it as a means of dealing with overpopulation, I am referring to sci-fi, or specifically to Kurt Vonnegut’s Welcome to the Monkey House, where euthanasia is depicted as a citizen’s patriotic duty. Here, the coaster could be seen as a tangible design interpretation. Unfortunately, this insight was cut in the video by the editor.”
It is good to see a conceptual artist clinging to an old hack’s rule, “when under fire, blame your editor”! But he is unrepentant when he continues, “First, regarding my view on euthanasia. I want to stress that I do not encourage assisted suicide, nor do I discourage. I just state the fact that euthanasia is legal in some countries and it is executed in an extremely boring fashion. Proposing ‘humane’ voluntary death could be more meaningful, personal, ritualistic.
“Second, pleasure. I use the term referring to physiological, semantic and aesthetic definitions of pleasure. GLOK, aka G-force-induced Loss Of Consciousness as well as cerebral hypoxia, are often accompanied with euphoria. Even though nausea and discomfort may take part as well, they would be very momentary. It is also quite possible the rider would barely be aware of all of it, being already deprived of sensorial awareness or unconscious.”
Personally, I do find this funny. I have always disliked roller coasters—partly because of the fear they might suddenly collapse and kill you, but also because, for me, any sense of exhilaration isn’t worth the terror. And that’s precisely the idea he’s toying with, isn’t it? People go on them because they’re thrilling, teetering on the edge of terror, but Urbonas has designed—or imagined—something that takes this to its ultimate conclusion: a ride that doesn’t just scare you but actually kills you.
It also plays with the funfair as a standard trope in horror films. All that’s missing is a leering clown to make it the full nightmare. Yet I think it achieves—or at least aspires to—what so much great art should: it provokes thought and reflection. There’s a stark beauty, too, in the idea of someone choosing to end it all in exhilaration, perhaps with a few whimpers before the big bang.
What do you think?
22nd January
12pm
Start as you mean to go on: very early in the first meeting of the committee on Leadbeater’s bill the chair, veteran MP Sir Roger Gale, felt the need to issue a stern warning. According to the Press Association, he said: “We are going to spend quite a lot of time together and I think it would be helpful if, reflecting the tone of the debate that took place on the floor of the House, we were civil and courteous to each other. And that the debate was conducted throughout not only these proceedings, but right throughout the entire committee stage, with customary candour and decency.”
This followed a spat between Danny Kruger and Kim Leadbeater, the bill’s sponsor, over who should be called to give oral evidence. This rather answers my question yesterday, whether Danny the Wrecker or Kruger the conciliator would be to the fore. Kruger objected to the meeting being held behind closed doors, insisting there is a “clear public interest case that the public should understand” why certain witnesses have been chosen and others have not, adding “and if there are concerns about the witnesses, they should be aired publicly”.
It only got worse when Kruger claimed that the bill was “written by a campaign group”. Leadbeater countered that was “categorically not true” and that she took such a suggestion “quite personally offensively”. Kruger apologised—sort of—and withdrew his comment, but added tartly: “I hope she won’t be offended when points are made that she disagrees with.”
If they do manage to be polite in future, the same may not be true on social media—on Bluesky, Yuan Yi Zhu, assistant professor in international relations at Leiden University, posted: “The Leadbeater assisted suicide committee has just voted 14 to eight against hearing evidence from the Royal College of Psychiatrists. Both ministers on the committee voted against. This is shameful. The entire scrutiny process has been discredited before it even began.”
(You may gather that, like a growing number of people, I am a refugee from X. Follow me instead at @markmardell.bsky.social)
It is certainly true that the committee did vote against. But Leadbeater’s office tells me: “Kim agreed at the committee yesterday to add another session of evidence and has advised all MPs on the committee that she proposes to invite the Royal Colleges of Psychiatry and GPs.”
Anyway, the existing list of witnesses who’ll give evidence over a packed three days is pretty impressive—from Jonathan Sumption to Chris Whitty. You can check it out here yourself.
Let’s hope the committee keep their cool with the great and the good.
This article was amended on 23rd January to reflect that the committee did vote against hearing evidence from the Royal College of Psychiatrists.
21st January
3pm
The vital committee stage of the assisted dying bill begins today with what was expected to be a private, formal discussion of process—when to meet and so on.
It was always clear that Conservative MP Danny Kruger was going to be self-appointed trouble-maker-in-chief for the bill, and he did not disappoint, telling BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I am a bit concerned we haven’t had enough opportunities to get a balanced process here. There have been suggestions about the committee’s composition, the MPs involved, the process, and now the witnesses. So I hope we’re going to have proper compromise from Kim Leadbeater, who’s the sponsor of the bill, who of course decides how this whole process works.”
Kruger is one of the few committee members who is opposed in principle to assisted dying, and he’s objecting to this first meeting being behind closed doors.
“The other problem we've got with the process [and] discussion we’re having today is that it’s going to be held in private. It’s supposed to be a public meeting, but the decision has been to have that in private...”
You can listen to the whole interview here a few minutes from the end (2 hrs 48), including pushback from pro-bill committee member Lewis Atkinson. Kruger listed the main sticking points: “Amendments have been going down from MPs already about how doctors assess a person’s capacity to make this decision without having any undue influence on them or having a mental illness... and how the judge at the end of the process decides there’s been no coercion.”
“A key concern is eligibility—what constitutes a terminal illness? How do we ensure that those genuinely at the end of life are distinguished from individuals who might feel despair after a terrible diagnosis? The broader issue is protecting vulnerable people, particularly those with disabilities, who might feel their lives are less valuable. How do we ensure the bill is limited to the small group of people the public agrees should have this option?”
So the presenter, Jonny Dymond, asked a key question: “Many people respect you for the position you take. I suspect they may be concerned that you are now on this committee and that you could essentially act as a wrecker for the bill. That's not your intention, is that correct?”
Kruger replied: “Absolutely not… I don’t have the opportunity to wreck the bill. Kim Leadbeater has got a majority on the bill. So my job is, like everybody else’s, to try and make sure that if the bill passes, it’s as safe as possible. I do have a lot of concerns. I mean, my objection in principle is that I don’t think it’s possible to devise a law that’s safe. But my job is to try and do the best we can. And certainly, there are a whole number of areas in which we can make the bill better. We can protect vulnerable people more because I’m afraid this bill is not, at the moment, certainly not the safest in the world. And nowhere in the world is a bill safe. But let’s do our best, and my job is to be as constructive as possible and to work, you know, very much in the spirit of what the committee is supposed to do, which is examining the detail. And I hope we have a genuine opportunity to do that.”
I’ll be watching closely to see, over the next few weeks and months, whether Danny the wrecker or Compromising Kruger is to the fore.
4pm
Danny Kruger’s BBC interview—and his behaviour beforehand—has already irritated fellow members of the committee.
There’s a feeling he’s determined to refight old battles, whereas the committee is for detailed scrutiny. It is not the place to go back over arguments about whether the law should be changed.
One of Leadbetter’s key allies points out she has discussed her proposals at every stage, whereas Kruger published his at the last minute without consulting most of the rest of the committee. His proposed witness list removes people who have been selected for their expertise, not as advocates for or against the bill. People such as the Chief Medical Officer and Chief Nursing Officer, as well as representatives from big organisations like the British Medical Association, the Royal College of Nursing and the General Medical Council.
Supporters of the bill feel he’s basically suggesting replacing key medical professionals and organisations with people who are against the whole principle of the bill. The verdict? “Not exactly collegiate.”
