Esther Rantzen has to talk about death too much. In 2023, the former BBC That’s Life! presenter and founder of Childline was diagnosed with lung cancer. Her diagnosis made her value every new day, she tells me over email, and stop feeling bored. It also made her sign up to membership of Dignitas, the Swiss euthanasia clinic.
Rantzen, now 84, has since become a passionate advocate for assisted dying, urging people to write to their MP to back the current bill before parliament. With the debate looming, I ask if she feels the legislation is likely to pass. “I am optimistic but not confident,” she writes. “There are such strong feelings on both sides.”
The bill, proposed by Labour MP Kim Leadbeater, permits assisted dying for patients with six months to live. Rantzen would prefer a wider remit—she notes that the law would not apply to people with chronic progressive diseases like Parkinson’s: “But I think we have to create a tightly controlled set of criteria to have the chance of the bill getting through. So I do think it’s a good one.”
She is dismissive of the “slippery slope” theory—that assisted dying could be expanded further than just the terminally ill, or even beyond those given six months to live. Other countries which allow people with mental illnesses to die, such as the Netherlands, have always had different criteria, she notes. “We’re proposing an assisted dying law like Oregon’s, which has remained the same for over 20 years. And here any change would be decided not by the courts but by parliament, which is an added protection.” Each country has chosen legislation that suits them—and none, she points out, has reversed its own law.
Rantzen was “very disappointed” by health secretary Wes Streeting’s public opposition to the bill. Streeting voiced his concerns that assisted dying could take away resources from palliative care. “Of course we need to strengthen the palliative care provision in this country,” she counters. “But the evidence from other countries is that legalising assisted dying can have a positive effect on palliative care—people value it even more highly so it gains more resources.”
What does she think the most effective argument is for assisted dying? “That’s the crucial question—I wish I knew.” She approves of Leadbeater’s argument that terminally ill patients have three choices: “suffering, Switzerland or suicide”.
“I say I’m not seeking to shorten my life, only my death,” she adds. “And of course it’s about choice. We nowadays can choose if and who we marry, if and when we have children. Surely we have the right to this choice, too.”
She acknowledges the fear that disabled people could be pressured into an early death, but clarifies that public opinion polling of disabled people indicates that most “would want the choice” if they become terminally ill.
Signing up to Dignitas was an elaborate process, she says. She will not make the journey to Zurich to die—which can cost around £15,000—without a prognosis of death within the next six months. But that may not happen for a while, as a new “game-changer” drug is holding her cancer at bay very effectively. “I may well survive to see my second Christmas since my diagnosis, which astonishes me.”
Rantzen would prefer to have the choice of an assisted death in her own country. “It would mean I could look forward with hope and confidence to a good death. Although realistically I don’t expect a new law could be brought in, in time for me,” she says. “But then my miracle drug has surprised me before, so I suppose it could do it again!”
