Esther Rantzen, 'assisted death' campaigner, welcomes new lease on life with breakthrough cancer drug
Esther Rantzen, a former British television broadcaster who hosted several highly popular shows for decades, is 84 years old, and is suffering from lung cancer. She announced her illness in January, 2023, and just a few months later was already talking about the possibility that she would head off to the Swiss suicide facility known as Dignitas, if her prognosis became grim enough.
As the months passed and her cancer progressed to stage four, Rantzen began speaking out about others in similar circumstances, promoting the idea that UK law should be changed to permit what is often referred to as “assisted dying.” She has been far from the only voice on this side of the debate, but it was her name that UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer cited when he explained his decision to hold a parliamentary debate and vote on the subject, as he had “promised Esther Rantzen.”
That debate and vote was held in the first months of Starmer’s government and the result was that “assisted dying” is now on its way to being legalized in the United Kingdom
Rantzen, meanwhile, has unexpectedly been granted a new lease on life which she delightedly announced in an article published in the Daily Mail. She now hopes to live for many more years, not just months — and yet, she does not regret for a moment her support for “assisted dying” for those given a six-month estimate of life left to live, even though she herself was once similarly written off.
In search of a good death
Rantzen was first diagnosed in late 2022. By May of 2023, her cancer had progressed to stage four and it was considered unlikely that she would live out the year. By December she had started a new drug regimen after other treatment programs had failed, and she appeared to view this as her last chance.
[My next scan will show] whether the miracle drug is performing its miracle or whether it’s given up.
She added that in the event that the “miracle drug” failed, she was seriously contemplating suicide:
I have joined Dignitas. I have in my brain the 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?
Explaining her decision to cut her life short, she told the BBC:
I explained to [my family] 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.
Her daughter agreed that it was Rantzen’s choice to make, calling the alternative (natural death) “appalling.”
The alternative of a painful death is unthinkable.
It's horrific having to fight for this when all we should be doing is cherishing the best moments we have, rather than worrying about the worst moments to come.
Surely a good death represents a good life. If you’ve had dignity in life, why wouldn’t you have dignity in death?
The “miracle drug” Rantzen referred to is Osimertinib, and the results of its clinical trials were recently published in The New England Journal of Medicine. In randomized trials, cancer patients on the drug had an 88-percent survival rate at five years. Cancer patients in the placebo group had a 78-percent survival rate over the same period.
Of note is that the drug was tested on people with stage two or three cancers, not stage four as in Rantzen’s case. And yet, she recently announced that “the new wonder drug I’m on” may hold back the spread of her cancer “for months, even years.”
Wonderful wonder drugs
Understandably, being granted a new lease on life after receiving a grim prognosis of having only months to live has proven transformative for Rantzen in many ways, as she describes in an article she titled, “The ten things that make me so happy to be alive.”
Thanks to a wonder drug, I have more time than I expected after my lung cancer diagnosis. My mortality has led me to a revelation... and it’ll cheer you too.
When I was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer in January last year, I thought, that’s it, goodbye life. It turns out I was quite wrong...
Apparently, her doctors were “quite wrong” too.
The new wonder drug I’m on – Osimertinib, a cancer growth blocker – may hold back the spread of my disease for months, even years.
So now, aged 84, I’ve been given time to reflect. And instead of blotting out happiness, my diagnosis, the blunt reminder of my mortality, has intensified my appreciation of little things. And this has made me unexpectedly happy.
In our youth, when life stretches endlessly before us, we can often ignore these moments, underestimate them, our eyes fixed on our towering dreams and ambitions. But when the horizon draws really close, your gaze focuses on the details, you consciously enjoy each moment.
Treasure every moment, unless...
Rantzen writes that her happiness now lies in “a combination of small pleasures, a very personal patchwork of delight.”
I find every moment has the capacity to cheer, bringing something to appreciate.
In fact, she is so delighted with her life now, even though she acknowledges that she is frequently exhausted, that she has “learned to embrace insomnia.” Why? Because being awake is experiencing being alive, even though she still has cancer and has been a widow for over two decades:
I now treasure each minute I have left, even the insomnia I used to struggle against, desperately trying to fall asleep and failing. I welcome the dark hours around three in the morning when I wake with a snap and stay awake. Even though I am on my own...
What's the point in planting trees?
She also enjoys planting spring bulbs, with the expectation that she will be alive to see them flower, adding:
When I thought I would drop off my perch in a matter of weeks, there seemed little point in ordering bulbs which would not flower for months. Happily the new drug has postponed my perch-dropping for months, even years, so I’m surviving and this winter’s bulbs are in the soil.
But she also describes the “delight” she takes in trees, not just gazing at them but also planting them, even though she definitely won’t be alive to see them in their full maturity.
I'm so grateful to the previous generations who planted them. I've followed their example, adding to the oaks, apples and beeches as an investment for the future I won’t see.
Other sources of pleasure are “cups of tea,” television which “gives so much pleasure,” the company of her neighbor’s cat, and birdwatching.
And of course, “friends and family”:
We humans need company, someone to care about, who cares about us...
If you haven’t got neighbors who lift your spirits, do reach out into the community ... you may find people who add real joy to your life.
She concludes:
So what makes life worth living?
This is the year I never thought I would survive, a Christmas I never thought I would still be around to enjoy...
So I commend to you this New Year, if you have a moment,while others are resolving to lose weight or drink less, set down a list of the small joys life can give you over the next 12 months. Not the big ones, the little ones.
Relief now that committing suicide is easier
Nowhere in her article does Rantzen give any consideration to how the “small joys of life” would have been obliterated had the “wonder drug” not been given a try. Nowhere does she explain why the “delight” she now experiences every minute can only be experienced along with the hope of living for years to come and not mere months.
In fact, she writes that one of her sources of satisfaction over this past year has been seeing the “assisted dying” bill pass its second reading in Parliament.
There have been moments in the past 12 months of high excitement – the huge relief when the assisted dying Bill, which I supported, passed its second reading, something I never expected to see.
She then adds,
But such extremes are rare. They aren’t what make us glad to wake up in the morning.
On Friday, November 29, 2024, MPs in the British Parliament voted 330 to 275 in favor of state administered death. The new law will allow terminally ill adults with a prognosis of six months or less to live to seek assistance from the state to end their life.
The bill’s sponsor, Labour MP Kim Leadbeater, publicly thanked the “inspirational” Dame Esther Rantzen for her “steadfast campaigning on changing the law to give terminally ill people (like her) a choice at the end of life.”
