1 The Death Cult

On an evening last week, I watched the late evening news broadcast on the BBC. You will probably wonder why I do or why I still pay the licence fee, when the corporation is, in my view, unashamedly institutionally biased. But it’s complicated. I am not the only one in our household and I also want to hear how the BBC report the news. I want to know what they say, how they say it and what they don’t say. On that evening there was a report by their medical editor, Fergus Walsh on his trip to California to see how Assisted Dying was doing there. They interviewed a man who had chosen to die and he explained the reasons why. He didn’t have long to live, he hated hospitals and didn’t want to be hooked up to tubes and machines etc. He apparently suffered from a multitude of serious, chronic and painful conditions, although in the interview he looked remarkably good. There are times when I have looked a lot worse. It was all the usual less-than-subtle propaganda we are well used to from the corporation. But what followed still shocked me to the core. The crew came back to film a second interview but this time it was to allow us to witness his death in real time. The horror was compounded by how reasonable and even compassionate it was portrayed. It was simple and easy a mixture of white powder in a jar (guaranteed to be fatal) with some fruit juice. He swallowed it closed his eyes and that was that. 30 minutes the doctor said. The family hugged and the crew left with a sweet shot of a bamboo branch waving in the wind against a cloudless Californian sky, but I felt sick to the bottom of my stomach. 

Tell me please, if you can, because I can’t make sense of it.

We are exercised about harmful material on- line, we have an on-line safety bill and an on-line regular in place ready to take action against a pro-suicide forum which is believed to promote and facilitate suicides, has tens of thousands of members and is linked to more than 50 deaths including children. (I got that from the BBC) . At the same time the main evening news shows the video of an actual suicide, someone taking their own life and explains how it was done.

There is something here that I just can’t make sense of. How can you hold these two things together without doing violence to any sense you might have of reason or integrity?

If you can explain it, I would love to know.