BBC Radio 4’s File on Four programme earlier this week, ‘A Living Death’, featured four case histories of people with serious brain damage. They included Ian Wilson, an Aberdeen man in his 50s, who suffered a severe head injury in a road accident 21 years ago and […]
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Reclaiming dignity in dying
BBC scriptwriters, viewers and listeners fought back over the weekend to recapture the word ‘dignity’ from the assisted suicide lobby. ‘Dignity in death is so important’ TV paramedic Kathleen “Dixie” Dixon told Saturday night’s peak time viewers on the TV drama Casualty. In this week’s storyline, […]
Human rights of the elderly once again being neglected
Today saw the publication of yet another in a series of damning reports on the failures of our care system. The Equality and Human Rights Commission has reported interim findings in a major survey of how care is being delivered to vulnerable people, and has […]
Twenty facts we did not learn from Terry Pratchett’s BBC ‘documentary’ on assisted suicide in Europe
The Sunday Times, in line with its new editorial policy, ran a typically effusive article last weekend about Monday night’s ‘documentary’ in which we saw a British man, Peter Smedley, kill himself on screen by drinking poison at the Dignitas suicide facility near Zurich. Earlier this year […]
World Elder Abuse Awareness Day (15 June) – A reminder to treasure, honour and protect the older members of our community
You are unlikely to read about it in the British press, but today, 15 June, is World Elder Abuse Awareness Day. While most people today are aware of child abuse, it was not always so. Indeed, the concept was only developed in the 1960s. But […]