On Air Now
Heart Breakfast with Jamie Theakston and Zoe Hardman 6:30am - 10am
Dame Esther Rantzen 'not responding to medication' says daughter in heartbreaking update
28 March 2025, 12:25
Dame Esther Rantzen's daughter Rebecca has shared a devastating update on her mother's battle with terminal lung cancer.
Listen to this article
Loading audio...
Dame Esther Rantzen's daughter has revealed that her mother is no longer responding to the medication she was put on to battle stage four lung cancer.
Rebecca Wilcox shared the heartbreaking update on the veteran broadcaster's health during an interview with 5 News about her mum's grave condition.
The 84-year-old, who famously founded Childline, was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 2023 after she discovered a lump in her armpit.
Last year she was placed on an "amazing" new drug to ease her condition and delay the spread, but Dame Esther's middle child Rebecca confessed the treatment had sadly stopped working.
When asked about the former journalist's current state and whether the medication was slowing her mother's condition, she told host Julian Druker: "I really wish that was true but I don't think that's the case anymore."
Both Dame Esther and her daughter Rebecca have openly spoken out in support of assisted dying and are in favour of it becoming legal in the UK.
During the 5 News interview, Rebecca also addressed the news that the implementation of the Assisted Dying Bill had potentially been postponed to 2029.
She said: "I just wish that people understood that all the assisted dying bill is, is choice for people that want it.
"All it is, is giving you peace of mind and that peace of mind, I cannot tell you how powerful that would be right now for my mum.
"I'm a witness to the trauma of uncertainty, to the trauma of stress around what is going to happen.
"The fact that she doesn't know how her death is going to happen, how the pain is going to progress, the exhaustion, the fatigue, what symptoms are going to come in.
"She is a person who has fought her whole life for other people, and she has no control now.
"Why can't we give people like my mum with a terminal diagnosis, with no other choice, some choice as to when and how and where they die?"
Dame Esther, who hosted the BBC series That's Life! for 21 years, previously admitted she was considering the possibility of passing away at Dignitas – an assisted dying clinic in Switzerland.
However, now her condition has worsened, Rebecca revealed her mother's potential plans were no longer feasible.
"Frankly Dignitas is out of the window for us as well," she continued to 5 News.
"You have to be relatively healthy to do that, if she had gone, she would have gone months before she would have died here."
During an interview with The Today Podcast on BBC Sounds, Dame Esther said that a change in UK law around assisted dying "would mean that I could look forward in confidence to a death which is pain-free surrounded by people I love".
"The only other way of having a pain-free death to look forward to in confidence is to go to Dignitas in Switzerland without my family - because if my family go with me they could be investigated by the police for killing me, or pressuring me to die."
- Read more: What cancer does King Charles have? What we know about his health condition
- Read more: Prince Harry's visit to King Charles after cancer diagnosis
- Read more: Why did Ruth Langsford and Eamonn Holmes split? Real reason for their shock divorce explained
