Blur drummer Dave Rowntree has called the UK’s current assisted dying law “psychopathic” after his terminally ill ex-wife travelled to Dignitas in Switzerland to die alone.
The 60-year-old supported former music industry and charity sector worker Paola Marra – who he married in the 1990s – as she battled breast and bowel cancer before she flew alone to Zurich in March following a terminal diagnosis.
She made the decision because the “pain and suffering can become unbearable”, she said in a film released after her death at the age of 53 called The Last Request.
Rowntree told The Guardian the current legal system showed “absolutely no empathy for the sufferer”.
He said he was joining calls for a change in the law ahead of the second reading later this month of a bill proposing the legalisation of assisted dying in England and Wales under strict controls.
Dave Rowntree. Pic: Dave Hogan/Hogan Media/Shutterstock
The Parklife musician said the choice of criminalisation or a slow and uncomfortable death was “brutal” and he was “bloody angry” about the situation.
“If you’re considering taking your own life, you are to do it isolated and alone, and anyone that is even suspected of helping in any material way can be arrested [and] you can get 14 years in jail,” he told the paper.
“It’s utterly brutal for the ill person because anyone they tell is potentially at risk of arrest, so they have to creep around like a criminal.
“Not only that, but when the time comes, if they do decide to die with dignity and end their life at a…
