Dame Esther Rantzen's 'amazing' cancer drug no longer working
Dame Esther Rantzen's cancer is no longer responding to the "amazing" medication that had been keeping the disease at bay.
Dame Esther Rantzen's cancer is no longer responding to medication.
The 84-year-old broadcaster was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer in 2023 and despite being told she had just weeks to live at one point, she revealed last year she was being treated with an "amazing" new drug that was keeping the disease "at bay".
However, her daughter, Rebecca Wilcox, has now revealed that is no longer the case.
Asked on '5 News' if the medication Esther is taking "was an improvement", Rebecca said: "I really wish that was true but I don't think that's the case anymore."
The Childline founder and her daughter have been campaigning for assisted dying to be made legal in the UK and Esther had previously considered travelling to Switzerland's Dignitas clinic to end her life, but Rebecca revealed she would no longer be able to do that as a result of her current health situation.
She said: "Frankly Dignitas is out of the window for us as well.
"You have to be relatively healthy to do that, if she had gone, she would have gone months before she would have died here."
Last May, Esther spoke of how her medication had extended her life but was aware it wouldn't keep working forever.
She told The Sunday Times newspaper: "It doesn’t cure it, it delays it — and at some point, it will stop working.
“But I have scans to see if it’s still working and at the moment it is. I’m awfully glad I put in the tulips now. I’m having to make the same decision about my birthday [on June 22] — I didn’t think I’d ever be 84 and now it looks like I might be. I’m keeping everything crossed for that.”
And in September, she admitted she was doing "much better" than she expected.
Speaking on ITV's 'Lorraine', she said: "I'm much better than I thought I would be, because I've got one of these amazing new drugs which seems to be holding the cancer at bay, to my surprise."
Esther also spoke of her campaigning to give people greater end-of-life choices in the UK, and she is hopeful of change even if it doesn't happen in her own lifetime.
She said: "Even if it doesn't happen in my time, I do hope that other people in my situation will be given the choice.
"That's all I ask, to shorten their death, if that's what they want."
