Blur drummer Dave Rowntree has criticised what he calls “psychopathic” assisted dying laws after his terminally ill ex-wife went to Dignitas in Switzerland earlier this year. The 60-year-old musician said the current legal system showed “absolutely no empathy for the sufferer” after supporting former music industry and charity sector worker Paola Marra, whom he married in the 1990s, as she went through breast and bowel cancer. Ms Marra made the decision to fly alone to Zurich in March following a terminal diagnosis because the “pain and suffering can become unbearable”, she said in a film called The Last Request, which was released after her death at the age of 53.
She was allergic to powerful painkillers, according to an interview with The Guardian, in which Rowntree opened up about the issue. Rowntree, who lives near Burgess Hill, said the choice of criminalisation or a slow and uncomfortable death was “brutal” and added that he was “bloody angry” about the situation. He told the newspaper: “It is the system washing its hands of difficult problems in a way that I can’t stomach.
“That’s the whole point of the state. The state can declare war ..
. and if the state isn’t going to take these kind of difficult decisions, what the f*** is the point in having the state? “This is psychopathic, where we are now, because the whole point of this (should be) to try to make things easier for the real victim in this – the terminally ill person.” The dru.
