Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly . COVER STORY . Right to Live . August 26, 2005 | PBS

Leslie Burke, the British man fighting to not be killed by his doctors (via dehydration and starvation) when his disease progresses to where he can no longer talk, was just featured on Religion & Ethics Newsweekly on PBS (public television in the United States).

He came across very well, I thought, and the broadcast itself was more even-handed on the subject than I've come to expect from public broadcasting.

Liz Sayce, of the Disability Rights Commission, was given a chance to put in some good points, including that nondisabled people shouldn't be making assumptions about how 'awful' life is for someone with a disability - that once a person adjusts to a disability they can have a great quality of life.

Charles Wilkes, a spokesman for the Catholic Bishops' Conference, was allowed to explain why the bishops held back their support for Burke's legal campaign (short answer: in their view, as presented, it opens the door for euthanasia).

Dr. Graeme Catto of the General Medical Council, and Dr. Michael Wilks of the British Medical Association were also interviewed, and expressed their concerns about patients being allowed to ask for more than was good for the patient or the system (I'm paraphrasing, and perhaps not charitably. After all, it would be impossible to cover all patient requests, if the law enshrined patient wishes as the end-all and be-all of allocating resources. But I do think they're over-reaching in this case. Burke simply wants to have food and water guaranteed for as long as his body can deal with it. It's not like he's asking for anything fancy, hard to get, or experimental.)

Transcript and video

I only have a couple of quibbles with the broadcast. First of all, it refers to "artificial nutrition" - a term I think is ridiculous and harmful, since getting food by tube isn't that drastically different than getting food and water by mouth - it's still basic nutrition, nothing artificial about it. And, secondly, it assumes, as do most media reports sadly enough, that end-of-life care is hugely expensive and therefore drains the overall health care budget - which I concede is possible, but not if what people are fighting for, like Leslie Burke, is to die of natural causes instead of having their death imposed by dehydration. If a person isn't demanding extensive care, but only wants to spend their last days in peace, there's no way that's hugely expensive. We're back, I think, to the initial, honest hospice idea, where the idea was to fend off the doctors, hospital administrators, social workers, et al, and be more sensible, sane, and caring during someone's last days.