Mal Fletcher comments

According to an article published in the Journal of Medical Ethics in 2008, 21% of people receiving assisted dying in Dignitas do not have a terminal or progressive illness, but rather 'weariness of life'.

For these people, Dignitas merely offers them a sure-fire way of committing suicide: it is an act of convenience and not in any sense one of necessity. Surely, we would see an increase in suicides were assisted dying to be legalized in Britain - and many studies bear out the devastating impact a suicide has on those who are left behind, including family and friends.

A very generic law would be absolutely useless in the case of assisted dying. Given the possibilities for abuse and even criminal acts, regulations would need to be iron clad, leaving little room for interpretation.

Yet the law would be dealing in the highly subjective areas of psychological and emotional trauma, so it could not possibly hope to be concise and definitive.

In the end, we all fear the pain and the loss of control that either severe sickness or old age may bring, but how would assisted dying laws possibly decide when it is appropriate for an individual to act on those fears? Would it be six months before debilitation occurs? A year? Perhaps longer? When exactly would it be legal for someone to set up a contract to die?

And how can the law possibly hope to define debilitation? What is totally debilitating for one person may be quite manageable for another, especially if they are given the kind of patient care for which many hospitals and hospices have become well known.

What we're really talking about with assisted dying is not a change in law as much as a realignment of our basic cultural values. This is the side of the story Mr. Pratchett's programme fails to acknowledge.

The idea of the sanctity of human life is a cultural more that has given us great strength as a civilisation. It is one of the core values which has allowed us, thus far at least, to avoid the kind of collapse seen in earlier civilisations. Almost invariably, a tolerance for killing gradually crept into great civilisations over time, mortally weakening social structures.

Supporters of assisted dying will argue that safeguards can be installed to protect the more vulnerable members of society. But this is naive - it places far too much faith in systems that are set up and run by fallible human beings.

For all the talk about safeguards, present euthanasia laws in Europe are wide open to abuse. No law is water tight; there are always loopholes and people are able to twist laws, especially when they're loaded, as these laws can only be, with subjective language.

Far from protecting the weak, assisted dying laws will make things harder for many of the more vulnerable people in society. Is there a bottom age limit for making such a choice? What should that limit be?

Dutch laws allow 12 to 15 -year-olds to request euthanasia, as long as that their parents approve. We all know how impressionable and vulnerable 12-year-olds can be, which is why we have such tight laws to protect them from pornographers, for example.

So, how can 12 -year-olds be expected to make a totally 'voluntarily and well-considered' decision to end their lives, as Dutch law requires, especially when they're seriously ill? And what kind of hope are we sending our children, when we tell them their best hope in all the world may be death?

Some people will use a 'quality of life' argument to defend assisted dying. Indeed, this seems to be Mr. Pratchett's position. If he can no longer do what he loves, he says he would rather die.