THE AUTHOR Terry Pratchett is calling for euthanasia tribunals to give sufferers from incurable diseases the right to medical help to end their lives. Pratchett will insist in his Dimbleby lecture, to be broadcast tonight, that “the time is really coming” for legalising assisted death.
Two polls published today back his views. Of more than 1,000 people interviewed for a BBC Panoramaprogramme, 73 per cent believed friends or relatives should be able to assist the suicide of a terminally ill loved one. A YouGov poll of 2,053 people for the Daily Telegraphproduced even stronger support, with 80 per cent saying relatives should not be prosecuted, and 75 per cent backing a change in the law.
Pratchett, author of the bestselling Discworld fantasy novels, was diagnosed two years ago with a rare form of early onset Alzheimer's disease. In his lecture, Shaking Hands With Death, the author will volunteer to be a test case before a euthanasia tribunal himself.
The tribunal panels would include a legal expert in family matters and a doctor with experience of serious long-term illness.
“If granny walks up to the tribunal and bangs her walking stick on the table and says ‘Look, I’ve really had enough, I hate this bloody disease, and I’d like to die, thank you very much young man’, I don’t see why anyone should stand in her way.” He said there was no evidence from countries where assisted dying is allowed of “granny” being coerced into dying so relatives could get their hands on her money.
"If I knew that I could die, I would live. My life, my death, my choice." Pratchett is the first novelist invited to deliver the annual BBC lecture, the 34th in honour of the veteran broadcaster Richard Dimbleby. – ( Guardianservice)