AS part of its propaganda for the legalisation of assisted dying, the BBC showed the contrived death of 71-year-old Peter Smedley in a Dignitas clinic in Zurich.

I’m sure the intention of the programme- makers was to show us how easy and peaceful medically-assisted killing really is. After all “euthanasia” is an ancient Greek word meaning “easy death.”

It didn’t exactly turn out like that though: Mr Smedley had, according to reports, experienced some distress and had his request for water refused.

The BBC documentary did not show this bit. Hardly fair and unbiased was it to omit a large part of what really happened?

I have read an account written by Karen Royle who delivered her mother, Rona, who was suffering from motor neurone disease, to the same Zurich clinic.

Karen said she imagined the clinic would be a hospitable place perhaps with a view of the Alps, “just like the pictures in the book Heidi which I’d loved as a child.” In fact, she said, “it was like a blue tin shed” on a barren industrial estate with no views. Karen’s partner David was upset by the place: “It reminded me of a gas chamber.

I felt I was taking Rona to her execution.”

And assisted death does not come cheap.

The family paid a £1,750 deposit for the “accompanied suicide” and another £9,500 just before they travelled to the clinic.

Rona’s husband was present at the end.

Karen said later: “Watching mum die seemed to totally disconnect dad. He was very confused and wouldn’t settle when we returned to our hotel. In the early hours we had to call a doctor.”

Karen’s father died six months later. Karen said: “Compared with mum, dad had the better death without a doubt. Although his body was riddled with cancer, he died peacefully at home with us.”

So we see it is not only the person mercifully poisoned, so to speak, who is the subject of these assisted deaths. Families are often traumatised and relatives sometimes end up not on speaking terms. And sadly, occasionally there could be mixed motives (“We could do a lot with gran’s money and gran’s house if she weren’t around…”). And what must performing all these mercy killings do to the clinicians who administer the poisonous cocktails? Those Dignitas clinicians have assisted more than 1,000 suicides since 2002.

That must have a weird effect on their consciousness.

No man is an island. One person’s unnatural death diminishes all those who observe it.

Of course, we should have great sympathy for people who come to the conclusion that their illness is unbearable and their prospects even worse, but suicide is not the only answer. As a priest all my working life, I have seen many people die. I know that their last days can be peaceful and meaningful – especially given improved standards of palliative care and pain relief. The hospice is one of the most creative and humane inventions of our times.

The hospice movement has a slogan: “The last days can be the best days.” It doesn’t always work out like that and we should not romanticise this business of dying. But there are worse things than coming to the end of our lives surrounded by the love and comfort of family and friends.

And in any case, life and death are not so cut and dried after all. As poet Arthur Hugh Clough said: “Thou shalt not kill, but need not strive officiously to keep alive.”