The broadcaster is currently undergoing treatment for stage four lung cancer.
Broadcaster Dame Esther Rantzen has told the BBC that she has joined an assisted dying clinic as she undergoes treatment for stage four lung cancer.
Speaking during an interview with Amol Rajan and Nick Robinson on the Today Podcast, Rantzen said that she was currently waiting to hear whether the treatment is “performing its miracle or whether it’s given up”.
She also revealed that she was exploring the possibility of assisted dying in the event that the treatment does not prove successful.
“I have joined Dignitas,” she said, referring to the Swiss organisation that provides “physician-assisted suicide to members with terminal illness”.
“I have in my brain thought, ‘Well, if the next scan says nothing’s working, I might buzz off to Zurich,’ but it puts my family and friends in a difficult position because they would want to go with me.
“And that means that the police might prosecute them. So we’ve got to do something. At the moment, it’s not really working, is it?”
She added: “I explained to them that, actually, I don’t want their last memories of me to be painful, because if you watch someone you love having a bad death, that memory obliterates all the happy times, and I don’t want that to happen.
“I don’t want to be that sort of victim in their lives.”
Despite the difficult news, Rantzen began the interview in a positive mood, sharing the fact that she is glad to be able to celebrate Christmas, which she said was “very unexpected”.
“Having decided that it would probably be better to tell people the truth when I got the diagnosis back in January, I thought I’d fall off my perch within a couple of months, if not weeks,” she said.
“I certainly didn’t think I’d make my birthday in June, which I did, and I definitely didn’t think I’d make this Christmas, which I am, it appears. Although, anything can happen – I live in a forest, a tree could fall on me!”
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