I can say that I did watch Terry Pratchett’s 2010 Richard Dimbleby Lecture, Shaking Hands with Death. The Dimbleby Lecture is an annual address broadcast by the BBC. Previous lecturers have included the great and the good from a variety of fields, Bill Clinton, the Archbishop of Canterbury, eminent scientists and scholars, and so forth. Pratchett was the first novelist to deliver the lecture. Pratchett discusses the Martin Amis quote,
Very recently an impassioned outburst by Martin Amis in an interview he gave to the Sunday Times called for euthanasia booths on every street corner. I firmly believe it was there to trap the hard of irony, and I note that it has done so – he was, after all, a novelist talking about a new book. Did it get publicity? It surely did. Apart from being tasteless, the idea is impractical, especially if there happens to be a photo booth next door.
If Pratchett’s Dimbleby lecture is anything to go by, the criticism of the documentary may be overblown. In addition, the documentary was accompanied by a Newsnight discussion of the issue of assisted death, hardly tabloid sensationalizing – think NewsHour with Jim Lehrer levels of seriousness and sophistication.
Just to get the disagreements out of the way at the outset, I don’t agree with the particulars of Pratchett’s public policy proposals on assisted suicide. (My posts on assisted suicide here and here.) Pratchett envisions a state appointed tribunal of over 40-somethings who assess a patient’s request for an assisted death. Pratchett’s assertion “My life, my death, my choice” is leavened with explicit consideration of the vulnerable, it was a bit unnecessarily libertarian for my taste though (in all the wrong ways, less consideration of the community, atomistic individuals, etc.).
That said, it is an excellent lecture that deals sensitively, and sometimes humorously, with a really difficult topic. I’m glad I watched it in 2010 and I’m glad I found it on the internet. The transcript here (via Paulkidby.com). And a (hopefully stable) video of the lecture below. Well worth the 50 minutes if you’re interested in the topic.
The idea of euthanasia booths on every street corner is ridiculous. We only need a fraction of that number.