Craig Ewert in the Dignitas clinic, Zurich. (Reuters)

London, Dec. 10 (Reuters): Britain’s Sky television was criticised today for plans to screen the final moments of a terminally-ill man who chose to commit suicide.

The film of 59-year-old Craig Ewert’s death in 2006 in a clinic in Switzerland is part of a Right to Die documentary made by Canadian filmmaker John Zaritsky and the first time British television has shown someone committing assisted suicide.

“If I don’t go through with it, my choice is essentially to suffer, to inflict suffering on my family, and then die,” Ewert says in the film, parts of which were shown on Sky News.

With his wife Mary at his side, Ewert, who was partially paralysed by motor-neurone disease, is shown at the Dignitas suicide clinic in Zurich drinking a mixture of sedatives and turning off his own ventilator. Anti-euthanasia campaigners said the broadcast was irresponsible “euthanasia voyeurism”.

Assisted suicide has been allowed in Switzerland since the 1940s if performed by a non-physician who has no vested interest in the death. Both Dignitas, and another suicide clinic there called Exit, use lethal drugs prescribed by a physician to end the lives of those who seek their help.

Asked in parliament about the broadcast, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said it highlighted “very difficult issues”.

“I believe that it is necessary to ensure that there is never a case in the country where a sick or elderly person feels under pressure to agree to an assisted death,” he said.

“That is why I have always opposed legislation for assisted deaths.” But writing in The Independent newspaper, Ewert's wife said her husband had wanted his death to be shown to help allay peoples’ fears about death.