Sky TV criticised for assisted death film

Sky television was criticised on Wednesday for plans to screen the final moments of the life of a terminally ill man who chose to commit suicide.

The film of 59-year-old Craig Ewert's death in 2006 in a clinic in Switzerland is part of a Right to Die documentary made by Canadian filmmaker John Zaritsky and the first time British television has shown someone committing assisted suicide.

"If I don't go through with it, my choice is essentially to suffer, to inflict suffering on my family, and then die," Ewert says in the film, parts of which were shown on Sky News.

Sky was due to broadcast the full documentary at 10 p.m. (Malta time).

With his wife Mary at his side, Ewert, who was partially paralysed by motor-neurone disease, is at shown the Dignitas suicide clinic in Zurich drinking a mixture of sedatives and turning off his own ventilator.

Anti-euthanasia campaigners said the broadcast was irresponsible "euthanasia voyeurism" which would create a false impression of a growing demand for assisted suicide in Britain.

"This will only intensify the pressure felt by such people, whether real or imagined, to contemplate taking their lives for fear of being a burden upon loved ones, carers or a society that is short of resources," said campaign group Care Not Killing, an alliance of around 50 concerned organisations.

Assisted suicide has been allowed in Switzerland since the 1940s if performed by a non-physician who has no vested interest in the death. Both Dignitas, and another suicide clinic there called Exit, use lethal drugs prescribed by a physician to end the lives of those who seek their help.

But writing in The Independent newspaper, Ewert's wife said her husband -- an American-born university professor who lived in Yorkshire -- had wanted his death to be shown to help allay peoples' fears about death.

"He was keen to have it shown because when death is hidden and private, people don't face their fears about it. They don't acknowledge that it is going to happen, they don't reflect on it they don't want to face it," Mary Ewert wrote.

"He wanted to remove a veil so that people could see how comfortably someone could die who -- without this option of assisted suicide -- maybe would have had a very painful death".

The film's Oscar-winning director Zaritsky told BBC radio he felt it was important to show the full process.

"We would be less than honest if we were to do a film about the process of assisted suicide and not actually be able to see the whole of the act," he said. "Otherwise we would be left open to charges that the death was unpleasant or cruel."

"By putting it out there in its entirety, people can judge for themselves."

According to figures released last month, between 2001 and 2004, 91 percent of those who died with help from Dignitas were foreigners, mostly from Germany, France and Britain.