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Heart and Soul

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Personal approaches to spirituality from around the world.

Heart and Soul: Choosing Life: Episode 1

Episode 1

Choosing Life

BBC World Service - Heart and Soul, Choosing Life, Episode 1

Mark Dowd meets Alison Davis, who has overcome her wish to die.

Mark Dowd meets Alison Davis, who has overcome her wish to die and found meaning in life despite disability and constant pain.

In the UK, the campaign to legalise assisted dying so that an adult with a terminal illness could be helped to take their own life, is gathering momentum. 

Novelist Sir Terry Pratchett has run a high-profile campaign for a change to the law since he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 2007, and several British television programmes have accompanied people seeking an assisted death to the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland.  

In the country that pioneered holistic end-of-life care through the hospice movement, why have people lost their faith in the possibility of dying well without intervention

In the first episode of two programmes about the assisted dying debate, Mark Dowd hears from Alison Davis. 

For ten years Alison wanted to end her life but then found a reason to live in the face of disability and constant pain.

Heart and Soul: Choosing Life

BBC World Service

Mark Dowd reflects on two personal stories that surround the debate on assisted suicide.

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