A BBC documentary charting the decision of a Briton with motor neurone disease to take his own life at the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland has been blasted by the Church of Scotland and Scotland's Catholic Church.
Choosing to Die was presented by author and Alzheimer’s sufferer Terry Pratchett and broadcast on Monday.
The programme followed 71-year-old hotelier Peter Smedley, from Guernsey, as he travelled to Zurich to end his life with a self-administered lethal dose of barbiturates given to him by the Dignitas organisation.
John Deighan, parliamentary officer for the Catholic Church in Scotland, said the documentary promoted euthanasia. He said: “It was another example of the one-sided campaign by the BBC and a masterpiece of propaganda, with all the music and so on. It worked at the emotions, with very little analysis.
“The film-makers just put up a straw man about what the problems are and Terry Pratchett gets straight to work on shooting them down and showing they’re not a problem at all. It was irresponsible and dangerous.
“People justify it by saying ‘we need to have the debate’, but we’ve just had this debate with Margo Macdonald’s bill in parliament. Those who participated in it were convinced of the case against.
“Resurrecting the debate again seems to me a misuse of public finance to showcase the BBC’s pet subject. How many of these programmes have we had? There was A Short Stay in Switzerland with Julie Walters, Panorama’s coverage of the Kay Gilderdale case, the Dimbleby debate.”
Both Mr Deighan and the Reverend Ian Galloway, Convener of Church of Scotland’s Church and Society Council, expressed fears that a change in the law could see vulnerable people under pressure to end their lives.
Mr Galloway said: “Sir Terry Pratchett’s Choosing to Die programme trod a dangerous line. Assisted suicide contravenes the societal prohibition on killing, and yet this programme promoted it.
“The people featured were self-confident, articulate and surrounded by loving families; no mention was made of what pressures would almost certainly be brought to bear on frail or vulnerable people without these advantages should assisted suicide be legalised.
“Choosing to Die was not a balanced broadcast. There is a range of opinions on this issue and yet only one view was presented. There was, for instance, very little mention of the importance and work of the hospice movement and palliative care services.”
Broadcast industry regulator Ofcom said it received only a handful of complaints from viewers about the programme, while the BBC said it had attracted a 162 complaints, bringing the total since news of the programme first emerged to 898.
A spokeswoman for the BBC denied the corporation had taken a stance on euthanasia, but defended its right to provoke debate. She said: “Across all BBC output, we have looked at assisted death, hospice care and palliative care in a variety of different ways including documentaries and news debates. Pratchett is a public figure, and his journey is of particular significance at a time when assisted death is in discussion.
“Immediately following the documentary, a Newsnight debate gave different voices the chance to take part in a wide-ranging debate about assisted death. We had hoped that both programmes would spark a constructive national discussion that engaged people across the spectrum of opinion, and it is clear that this was achieved.”
A spokeswoman for pro-choice group Dignity in Dying said the documentary as “deeply moving and at times difficult to watch”.
Meanwhile a phone-in on Kaye Adams’s Radio Scotland show yesterday morning heard from a Scots mother who travelled to Dignitas last October with her once-athletic son, Robert, aged 33, paralysed from the neck down in an accident, after he chose to end his life.
Named only as Helen, a mother-of-four from Cardonald, she said: “His life was terrible. He suffered every single day. He couldn’t do anything for himself but sit there. He was just a head and didn’t want to be like that.”
She said her son had had a “peaceful ending” and that she would welcome legalisation of assisted dying in Scotland.
“I’d have liked to have been able to do this in our country,” she said. “The thing that really upsets me is that I have had to take my son to Switzerland and had to leave his body there and wait for his ashes to come back. That’s quite hurtful for a mother.”
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