Dame Esther Rantzen has issued a heartbreaking admission, revealing she feels she is “rapidly running out of time” as she continues her fight for assisted dying reform while battling terminal lung cancer.
The 85-year-old broadcaster and founder of Childline said she still plans to travel to the Swiss clinic Dignitas if her suffering becomes too great. Speaking candidly about her deteriorating health, Esther explained that even if the proposed assisted dying bill were to pass into law, it would likely come too late for her.
She told the Daily Mirror: “I am still planning to go alone to Dignitas if my life becomes unbearable. Even if the new Bill became Law, it could not apply to me because I am rapidly running out of time.”
In a direct appeal to lawmakers, she added: “But I really feel our law makers will be letting down generations of terminally ill patients in the future if they fail to reform the current cruel, messy, criminal law.”
The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill was approved by the House of Commons last June, but it has since stalled in the House of Lords, where peers have proposed more than 1,000 amendments. If it does not receive final approval before the King’s Speech in May, it will fail.
Campaign group Dying in Dignity has launched a petition urging the Government to allow sufficient parliamentary time for the legislation to proceed. Esther publicly backed the effort, saying: “I wish this petition every success, and I hope the House of Lords are paying attention to it.”
Her emotional plea comes after she revealed that a life-extending drug she had been taking since 2024 has stopped working. Writing in The Observer, she reflected on her prognosis with stark honesty: “To my astonishment, thanks to one of the new miracle drugs, I’m still here. Not for much longer.”
She continued: “The drug has stopped working now, and a scan next week will reveal how far my disease has spread.”
Facing the reality of her stage four lung cancer diagnosis, first made public in January 2023, Esther admitted she does not expect to live long enough to see the law change. “I’m definitely not going to live long enough to see the assisted dying bill become law. So if my life becomes unbearably painful and I long for a quick, pain-free death, I will have to go to Dignitas in Switzerland, alone,” she wrote.
Despite her personal prognosis, Esther remains determined that future generations of terminally ill patients should not face what she describes as an outdated and “cruel” system. Her voice, even in the shadow of her own mortality, continues to shape one of the most emotional debates in British politics.
