Extremis

I think that there are some places that cameras just don't belong - and an intensive care unit that's home to a couple of terminally ill patients is just one of them. To my mind, it doesn't matter if it gives us an "insight" into some of the appallingly difficult ethical dilemmas faced by families and clinicians because any such access can only serve to reinforce what we already believe about people's right to choose their own exit strategy. I think it's fair to say that most governments - even societies in general - don't trust their individual citizens with such momentous decisions, yet when you watch features like this that do - as one contributor reflects - look like a form of torture, you wonder why we don't put the life cart before the horse and insist that people make living wills early enough in their lives that stipulate their own minimum standards for living; their own acceptable quality of life - and if these are not met for whatever reason then the question is not so much about assisted dying as one of unassisted living. Of letting nature take it's course in as pain-free a fashion as possible. The medical profession cannot do right for doing wrong. Questions are bound to be asked about familial motivations: love, comfort and/or even expectations (in the Dickensian sense of the word) yet what we see here seems to illustrate so clearly how little actual say the patients themselves have as their lives beep and whirr towards their conclusion. As a piece of provocative television, this certainly has lots to say - but I felt like a prurient and uninvited interloper during processes that are as private as they are distressing and emotionally turbulent.