Pratchett calls for euthanasia tribunals (From This Is Local London)

Pratchett calls for euthanasia tribunals

1:12pm Monday 1st February 2010

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FORMER Bucks Free Press reporter and bestselling author Terry Pratchett today called for euthanasia to be legalised – and used his time as a journalist to back up his argument.

The Discworld author – who is suffering from the early stage of Alzheimer’s– has said tribunals should be set up to determine whether a person should be granted the legal right to die.

He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “There are plenty of people I think like me who would like to die when the time comes to die and not spent an awful lot of time in a waiting room for God.”

He said: “I think it should be possible with some care and goodwill that something like that could be done.

“When I was a young journalist I was very impressed by the coroners who have to deal with sudden death and how they held their courts and they were compassionate men.

“I think it should be possible to have what I would call a non-aggressive tribunal to determine these cases.”

Mr Pratchett, who raised in Beaconsfield, will make his case in the annual Richard Dimbleby Lecture on BBC One at 10.35pm tonight.

The author, who revealed he has the degenerative disease in 2007, worked as a reporter and sub-editor at the Free Press in the 1960s and 1970s.

He was given an honorary doctorate from Buckinghamshire New University in 2008.

Click the link below to listen to the interview.

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