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Star Trek actor Sir Patrick Stewart reveals support for organisation seeking to legalise assisted death
The actor Sir Patrick Stewart has spoken out about his decision to join an organisation campaigning for the legalisation of euthanasia, declaring that the choice to have an assisted death should be a right.
"I have a strong feeling that, should the time come for me, having had no role in my birth, I would like there to be a choice I might make about how I die," he said in an interview with the Sunday Times.
Speaking publicly for the first time about his membership of Dignity in Dying, Stewart referred to a recent tragedy involving a friend, as well as his own diagnosis of having coronary heart disease five years ago. "I am reluctant to go into details. Enough to say this person was driven to an extreme situation of ending their own life in the most ghastly way," he said of the friend. "There's got to be an alternative when someone is suffering so badly and is ready to go."
Asked if he believed that the choice of ending one's life should be a human right, he replied: "yes", adding: "Everything that medicine can do to keep somebody alive doesn't automatically follow as the best option."
Stewart, a stage and film actor best known for his television role in the Star Trek series, said: "To be trapped in a painful body, to lose those elements of communication, of sharing, and to not be able to act, terrifies me."
He added that that his views had been influenced by a personal health scare five years ago when he started to experience chest pains while exercising. "A lot of it was to do with my age. I had a heart procedure five years ago. I turned 70 last year and there is something about achieving three score years and 10, isn't there?"
The actor is one of a number of public figures who have given their backing to Dignity in Dying. Another member is the author Sir Terry Pratchett, who is to appear in a BBC documentary in which the last moments of a terminally ill British man who travelled to a Swiss suicide clinic will be shown.
Others patrons listed by the organisation include the writers Ian McEwan and Sir Terry Pratchett, who is to appear in a BBC documentary about assisted suicide, the comedian Jo Brand, the Falklands war veteran Simon Weston, the former England cricketer Chris Broad as well as the actors Zoë Wanamaker, Brenda Fricker and Janet Suzman.
A poll conducted for the BBC's Panorama by Comres in January found that a clear majority of Britons support allowing assisted suicide for the terminally ill. It found that 73% of respondents agreed that family or friends should not fear prosecution if they help a loved one to die although opinion was evenly divided if the patient was in chronic pain but not dying.
