Sky attacked over 'assisted suicide' doco

11 Dec 2008, 8:48 am   -   Source: AAP
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British pay TV broadcaster Sky has come under fire for planning to screen the final moments of a man who committed suicide in a Swiss euthanasia clinic.

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Rupert Murdoch's British pay TV broadcaster Sky has come under fire for planning to screen the final moments of a man who committed suicide in a Swiss euthanasia clinic.

Sky plans to broadcast on Wednesday a documentary showing retired university professor and motor neurone disease sufferer Craig Ewert taking his last breath.

While terminally ill patients have previously been seen dying on British TV, Sky's Right To Die documentary marks the first time audiences will witness an assisted suicide.

Anti-euthanasia groups and Britain's TV watchdog have condemned Sky's Real Lives channel for airing the documentary.

But the head of Sky Real Lives Barbara Gibbon has defended the documentary, saying it shows Ewert's "exceptional courage" and would stimulate debate about euthanasia.

Ewert died with his wife Mary at his side, 45 minutes after swallowing a lethal dose of sedatives and using a mouth-operated switch to turn off his ventilator at the Dignitas clinic in Zurich on September 26, 2006.
   
Moments before he passed away, his wife bid him an emotional farewell.
   
"Can I give you a big kiss?," she says in the documentary.

"I love you sweetheart so much. Have a safe journey and see you some time."
   
Ewert, who was originally from the United States but moved to Yorkshire in England after taking early retirement, paid £3,000 ($A6,720) to the suicide clinic.

He had been diagnosed with motor neurone disease five months earlier, with doctors telling him he had between two and five years left to live.
   
Three days before his death, he told the documentary makers that suicide made "a whole lot of sense to me".

"By this point I have two choices, either actually go through with it or say: 'You know what, I am too scared right now and I do not want to do it'," he said.

'Tough choice'
   
"If I do not go through with it then my choice is to suffer and to enforce suffering on my family and then die in a way that is considerably more stressful and painful.

"I have death or I have suffering and death."

The head of Britain's media watchdog John Beyer attacked Sky's decision to broadcast the documentary.

"This subject is something that is quite an important political issue at the moment and my anxieties are that the program will influence public opinion," he told The Times.
   
"Documentary makers produce all manner of programs and no one can stop that or intervene unless they fail to comply with the requirements of the Communication Act.

"If this program is not impartial and promotes euthanasia then it would be in breach of the act - in short it must not influence members of the public or a change in the law."

Switzerland allows 'assisted suicide'

Switzerland is the only country that allows foreigners to die using assisted suicide methods.

While many terminally ill British people have travelled to Switzerland to end their lives, their friends and family risk prosecution if UK authorities believe they helped administer the lethal dose.
   
British police recently investigated the death in September of 23-year-old rugby player Daniel James, who died with the help of Dignitas in September after becoming paralysed from the chest down when a scrum collapsed on him in March 2007.

However, prosecutors on Tuesday decided they would not charge his parents, despite them having travelled with him to the Swiss suicide clinic.
 

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