Craig Ewert, a 59-year-old retired university lecturer form the United States, suffered from motor neurone disease and chose to end his life through assisted suicide rather than endure his painful symptoms.

The controversial scene showing Ewert’s assisted suicide was filmed for a documentary called “Right to Die – The Suicide Tourist,” which will be shown on TV Wednesday night. The film shows Ewert using his teeth to activate a timer which switches off his life support machine in 45 minutes.

As he listens to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, he drinks a heavy dose of barbiturates and his wife holds his hands and kisses him before his last journey. Before his death, Ewert says he is tired of the disease, but he’s not tired of living. “I’d like to continue. The thing is that I really can’t.” “When you are completely paralysed, can’t talk, can’t walk, can’t move your eyes, how do you let someone know that you are suffering?”

Ewert’s wife told the Independent newspaper that this film would help people “face their fears” about death and allowing the cameras to film her husband’s last moments “was about facing the end of life honestly.”

The film has sparked debate in Britain, where assisted suicide is a controversial topic, the subject of a battle between different opinions and arguments pro and against. It will be the first time an assisted suicide is shown on British TV and is likely to trigger a lot of reactions.

Those who oppose the idea of seeing death on TV say the film is dangerous and grotesque, and tends to glorify suicide victims. Assisted suicide has never been legal under Britain’s law.

Earlier this month, Judge Dorothy McCarter ruled that doctor-assisted suicide was legal in the state, in a case involving a Billings man suffering from terminal cancer who had sued the state. The judge stated that a mentally competent person who was terminally ill had the right to get self-administered drugs that rendered them die more quickly if their suffering was impossible to bear anymore. The decision made Montana the third state to declare doctor-assisted suicide legal.