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THE MACHINE itself is nothing much to look at. It’s just a standard laptop
computer connected to some common-or-garden syringe-driving equipment. What is
truly unsettling is the far from prosaic use to which it has been put. Just by
hooking themselves up to it and tapping in a few very basic commands, four
terminally ill patients have managed to end their own lives under the watchful
eyes of their doctors.

It was developed by an Australian doctor, Philip Nitschke. In the mid-1990s,
the government of the Northern Territory passed a law permitting voluntary
euthanasia under strictly defined conditions. This law was in force for only a
few months before the Federal House of Representatives legislated to override
it. In this short period, however, four patients obtained permission to end
their lives, and did so with the help of Nitschke’s machine.

So why did we decide to buy and display this machine in the biggest ever
development in the Science Museum, the Wellcome Wing? The answer is simple.
Voluntary euthanasia is a big issue. Whether doctors should be permitted to help
terminally ill patients who want to die is an agonisingly difficult question
about which honest people of good conscience manifestly disagree.

Indeed, one MP has written to criticise us for staging a public debate on the
issue of voluntary euthanasia. Yet surely facilitating a better informed debate
on the morally and socially contentious areas is an essential part of the remit
of a museum of science and technology or art?

Certainly, the Science Museum is committed to dealing with substantial issues
that concern the public, however delicate or difficult they may be. For example,
one of the first exhibits on the ground floor of the Wellcome Wing will deal
with the extremely controversial question of the use of drugs in international
athletics. This is such a contentious subject that parts of this exhibit have
had to be approved by the museum’s lawyers to protect us from court action.

So the new wing was absolutely the right place for it. In keeping with the
times, the Wellcome Wing won’t simply impart information, it will try to engage
visitors in dialogue about the wider questions that 21st-century scientific
ideas and innovations are raising. Through multiple electronic terminals dotted
around the wing, visitors will be able to express their own views on the
scientific, medical and technological issues of the day.

Nitschke appears to have been motivated by two main desires: to leave the
final decision to die in the hands of the terminally ill themselves, and to
provide them with a means of dying that allowed them to be surrounded by their
loved ones at the key moment rather than by professional carers.

The museum’s motives are very different. Our main aim is to stimulate
informed public debate about what is unquestionably an important ethical, legal
and social issue.

The Wellcome Wing opens to the public on 3 July