Rantzen too frail to access Swiss assisted dying, renews UK law plea

Dame Esther Rantzen, the 86-year-old broadcaster and philanthropist, has arrived at one of the quieter tragedies of a life carefully planned: she prepared for a death she can no longer reach. Having joined the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland after a stage four lung cancer diagnosis, she now finds herself too frail to make the journey — the window of capacity and unbearable suffering never quite overlapping. As Parliament prepares to vote on legalizing assisted dying in England and Wales, her situation becomes a human argument that no committee can fully draft away: that the right to choose and