Dame Esther Rantzen’s daughter has said the cancer drug her mother was put on last year is no longer working.
The Childline founder and broadcaster, 84, was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer in 2023, and at one point was told she had just weeks to live.
Last year the star raved about an ‘amazing’ new drug which had delayed the spread of her cancer, telling The Sunday Times that it had allowed her to plan ahead.
On Thursday though her daughter Rebecca Wilcox gave an update on her mother during an interview on 5 News, revealing that the medication was no longer working.
Host Julian Druker asked if the medication she was on ‘was an improvement’ only for an emotional Rebecca to admit: ‘I really wish that was true but I don’t think that’s the case anymore.’
Both Dame Esther and her daughter are advocates for making ᴀssisted dying legal in the UK.
Dame Esther Rantzen’s daughter Rebecca Wilcox has said the cancer drug her mother was put on last year is no longer working (Rebecca and Esther pictured in 2017)
Speaking in response to the news this week that there are delays to implementing an ᴀssisted dying bill, Rebecca explained: ‘I just wish that people understood that all the ᴀssisted dying bill is, is choice for people that want it.’
‘All it is, is giving you peace of mind and that peace of mind, I cannot tell you how powerful that would be right now for my mum.’
‘I’m a witness to the trauma of uncertainty, to the trauma of stress around what is going to happen.’
‘The fact that she doesn’t know how her death is going to happen, how the pain is going to progress, the exhaustion, the fatigue, what symptoms are going to come in.’
‘She is a person who has fought her whole life for other people, and she has no control now.’
‘Why can’t we give people like my mum with a terminal diagnosis, with no other choice, some choice as to when and how and where they die?’
Dame Esther has previously considered travelling to Dignitas, in Switzerland, for an ᴀssisted death, but Rebecca has revealed that her declining health has now made that impossible.
‘Frankly Dignitas is out of the window for us as well,’ she told 5 News. ‘You have to be relatively healthy to do that, if she had gone, she would have gone months before she would have died here.’
The Childline founder and broadcaster, 84, was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer in 2023, and at one point was told she had just weeks to live (pictured in 2021)
On Thursday though her daughter Rebecca Wilcox gave an update on her mother during an interview on 5 News, revealing that the medication was no longer working
Speaking to the BBC Today’s programme a year ago Dame Esther said a change in the law regarding ᴀssisted dying ‘would mean that I could look forward in confidence to a death which is pain-free surrounded by people I love’.
‘The only other way of having a pain-free death to look forward to in confidence is to go to Dignitas in Switzerland without my family – because if my family go with me they could be investigated by the police for killing me, or pressuring me to die.’
ᴀssisted dying is legal for terminally ill people in several US states, as well as large chunks of Australia, and in New Zealand, Canada, Austria, Spain and Ecuador. A handful of other countries have broader euthanasia laws for the seriously ill.
ᴀssisted dying laws were been pᴀssed by parliament on the Isle of Man on Tuesday and are awaiting Royal ᴀssent.
Proposals are also moving forward on Jersey, while MPs voted in support of a Bill from MP Kim Leadbeater to legalise it in England and Wales last November.
Ms Leadbetter’s proposal would allow terminally ill adults with less than six months to live to end their lives.
Scrutiny of the bill, by the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill Committee of MPs, has just been completed, and it is due for further debate at report stage in Parliament, likely sometime in the next month, before the third stage debate.
If enacted, it could take four years to come into effect after the ᴅᴇᴀᴅline to implement it was doubled, to the fury of campaigners in favour of the law.
