‘Better Off Dead?’ by Liz Carr and James Routh

In this 2024 BBC documentary, actor and disability campaigner Liz Carr explores reasons why assisted dying, which she calls assisted suicide, should not be legalised in the UK. Carr interviews friends, experts and advocates from both sides of the debate, including her mum, who reads out sections of the diaries she kept while Carr was becoming disabled as a teenager. In the UK, Carr speaks to politicians for and against assisted dying, plus palliative medicine doctor Katherine Sleeman, concerned for the safety of society’s most vulnerable, and columnist Melanie Reid, who became disabled after a fall and wants the option of an assisted death in the future. Carr also travels to Canada where the law on medical assistance in dying (MAID) was extended in 2021 to include people experiencing unbearable suffering but who are not terminally ill. There, she meets Ellen Wiebe, a contraception and abortion doctor whose practice now includes MAID cases, Alicia Duncan whose mother was approved for an assisted death despite perhaps requiring treatment for an undiagnosed mental health condition, and Amir Farsoud who applied for MAID while unable to secure suitable housing. Many of Carr’s conversations with interviewees hinge on interpretations of the concepts of control and autonomy. She believes a change in the UK law would allow disabled people, who already live in an ableist world, even less control over their own lives, while advocates for assisted dying believe it grants control to people who desperately need it. The programme ends with Carr meeting disability activist friends who describe the autonomy and dignity that they experience thanks to good care packages and supportive communities. Carr concludes that legalising assisted dying would entrench the discriminatory division established during the COVID-19 pandemic between ‘normal’ people and those who are older, disabled or have underlying health conditions.

The documentary is unusual for constituting a mainstream programme that openly opposes any legalisation of assisted dying. Carr bases her advocacy on the social model of disability which assumes that the surrounding culture and environment dictate the quality of life experienced by disabled people and their perception by others. This approach is evident when she speaks to Amir Farsoud who sought MAID when he could not house himself while on Canadian disability benefits: he changed his mind when his story was picked up by news channels and his debts were paid off through crowdfunding. Part of the documentary’s strength is its communication of the vitality of people living with disability. Carr and her team deliberately include a mix of confronting narratives and evidence alongside upbeat music and light-hearted jokes (Carr shouts “I’m going down the slippery slope” as she descends a ramp in Canada). These have the effect of undermining any image the audience might have of disabled people living tragic or pathetic lives – as one friend quips, ‘to want to kill yourself over who wipes your backside?!’. At the same time, some reviews picked up on the way Carr does not interview anyone with a terminal illness and talks to a Canadian doctor who is unusually gleeful and unsympathetic. ‘Better Off Dead?’ has not yet been cited in parliamentary debates but is likely to be a touchstone in the future; Carr herself has spoken on these issues to both UK and Australian parliamentarians. Notably, while the show has been widely cited by anti-assisted dying groups, there has been far less engagement from pro-groups. For example, Dignity in Dying ran a whole piece on Carr’s 2013 radio programme on the topic but have not publicly reacted to the 2024 documentary.