December 10, 2008 10:33 AM
Live euthanasia hits the airwaves in Britain
So here in the U.S., we're rightly horrified when a biploar college student committed suicide with a drug overdose -- live, by webcam, as some users egged him on.
Yet in the UK, suicide is primetime TV: In a documentary that was set to be aired tonight on Sky. MP Phil Willis, in whose district the victim, Craig Ewert, resides, asked Prime Minister Gordon Brown (who thought the program was "dealt with sensitively and without sensationalism") if the documentary was actually in the public interest or was just "distasteful voyeurism."
Obviously, the purpose of the doc is to promote assisted suicide in the UK (the victim in this case went to an assisted-suicide clinic in Switzerland). In light of a Montana judge's ruling that their state constitution guarantees the right to euthanasia, it wouldn't be farfetched to see similar P.R. movements here that would push the envelope on good taste.
Yet in the UK, suicide is primetime TV: In a documentary that was set to be aired tonight on Sky. MP Phil Willis, in whose district the victim, Craig Ewert, resides, asked Prime Minister Gordon Brown (who thought the program was "dealt with sensitively and without sensationalism") if the documentary was actually in the public interest or was just "distasteful voyeurism."
Obviously, the purpose of the doc is to promote assisted suicide in the UK (the victim in this case went to an assisted-suicide clinic in Switzerland). In light of a Montana judge's ruling that their state constitution guarantees the right to euthanasia, it wouldn't be farfetched to see similar P.R. movements here that would push the envelope on good taste.
