Neighbours’ star glad he didn’t take assisted suicide drugs

The star who played Harold Bishop in the long-running soap Neighbours has said he is glad he refused assisted suicide.

Ian Smith revealed he was leaving the show last December after being diagnosed with pulmonary pleomorphic carcinoma, an aggressive form of lung cancer. He was told he only had a few months left, and that he qualified for voluntary assisted dying (VAD), the Australian assisted suicide scheme.

A pharmacist called to offer him the lethal drugs, explaining they could send them to his home to allow him to choose the moment to take them, but he turned it down. After starting a new form of treatment, his next scan showed a dramatic remission and his doctor told him he would now have years left to live.

In remission

Smith commented: “Apart from being 86, I feel good. I’m in no pain. I know how strange that sounds.”

He said he is “awfully glad” he rejected the offer, and admitted: “there have been times I would have taken it. I really would have. And I would have missed out on that wonderful day in December when I was told of my progress.

“My first thought was: ‘I could have been dead.’ And I would have been, if I’d had the mixture at home”.

While Smith is in favour of assisted suicide, he has likened drugs being stored at patients’ homes to “a loaded gun.”

‘Happy to be alive’

At the end of last year, Dame Esther Rantzen, one of the most prominent supporters of Kim Leadbeater’s Bill, revealed in a list of “ten things that make me so happy to be alive” that she is now reaping the benefits of a new ‘wonder drug’ to treat her stage-four lung cancer.

She says the new drug, Osimertinib, could extend her life by years, but Telegraph Assistant Editor Michael Deacon pointed out that, had assisted suicide been legal a year ago, “Dame Esther might no longer be with us. Because she herself might well have taken advantage of the opportunity she has so passionately campaigned for”.

He continued: “the celebrity figurehead of the ‘assisted dying’ campaign has unwittingly highlighted the crucial point that, even if a couple of doctors reckon that you’ve got only a few months left to live, they might well turn out to be wrong.

“Your life, like Dame Esther’s, may yet be prolonged by some marvellous new medication – enabling you to continue revelling in the everyday joys that she celebrates in her list.”