Sir David Attenborough has given his qualified backing to assisted dying, saying he would consider taking his own life if disease meant it had become too wretched to carry on.

In an interview welcomed by campaigners for voluntary euthanasia, the veteran broadcaster was asked if he supported the right to die.

“I suppose I do really, but [only] if you could solve all the problems of dealing with the misuse of such a right,” he said.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Costing the Earth programme, Attenborough said he would consider ending his own life if he “was compos mentis and … really having a wretched life”.

He added: “When you see poor people, poor in the sense of having some wretched disease, pleading for their lives to be brought to an end … It’s difficult to think that they don’t deserve to have that right.”

His comments come two months after MPs overwhelmingly voted against changing the law to allow doctors to help terminally ill people end their lives.

Attenborough acknowledged the complexity of the subject, saying: “These issues of how long people should live are very complicated and involves not only medical issues but philosophical issues.”

The 89-year-old broadcaster also repeated his concern about rapid population growth, pointed out that the number of people on the planet had tripled since he started making TV programmes in the 1950s.

Asked what message he would deliver to world leaders due to gather at next month’s climate summit in Paris, Attenborough said: “I would say, ‘Please allow your population to choose whether they have bigger families or smaller families: to give the right to say how many children you will have to women.’ If all the women in the world had that choice I’m fairly convinced that the birthrate would fall.”

He said he would have no hesitation in delivering that message to the pope. Asked if the Catholic church had got it wrong on contraception, Attenborough said: “Yes I do. I think it is an extraordinary blind spot.”



Sarah Wootton, chief executive of Dignity in Dying, welcomed Attenborough’s remarks about assisted dying. She said they were “in line with the overwhelming majority of the British public who want to see a change in the law on assisted dying for terminally ill, mentally competent people”.

She said: “Other countries are already giving dying people choice at the end of life. [The US state of] Oregon has had assisted dying for almost 20 years and has been working safely, while next year California will adopt their own law.

“We should no longer force people to suffer against their wishes or travel abroad to have the death that they want.”