In the Age, Green Guide for November 23rd, The Critic’s View, Mr Gordon Farrer provides an independent overview of the documentary. I appreciate his review and thank him for his considered opinions. Fair and balanced.Really strange to have one’s actions judged by someone who has no idea about my strengths and weakness of which they’re many and varied……When I talk about individual choice for living and dying, from my POV there is nothing “odd” about not wanting to live with pain – been there, done that…..don’t want to be there again…..
Like taking holidays to different destinations, I didn’t enjoy the hospitality of the first experience, so I don’t catch the same train…..I want a different route, a different journey, a different experience.
Steve Guest and Judy Bayliss were the living proof of capacity for tolerating pain than I could never envisioned for myself. Dr Nicholas Tonti-Fillipini spoke strongly against voluntary euthanasia but then that is the choice he makes for himself while enduring his own degree of genuine pain.
My views are entirely my own. Based on chronic and terminally illnesses……
That Dr Tonti-Fillipini “needs life in order to feel free”, begs the response that for some of us, “we need death to feel free”…..
Your body, your choice Dr Tonti-Fillipini…..
My Body, my choice leads to different choices for the individual depending on their definition of the word freedom……. Freedom from intolerable pain sounds wonderful to me….for others they believe they need to walk the entire path of life, regardless of pain, in order to feel fulfilled in their reason for existing. I don’t share that view.
I am a Humanist – I believe I am responsible for me
Gosh, it is just too hot for words! 40 degrees and staying!, can’t sleep, can’t be bothered doing anything much……
I am taking so much stuff to try and help my immune system to get upwardly mobile and working again….feeling exhausted from doing nothing and all I can think is, thank goodness I’m not working any more….that I don’t have to drag this body anywhere today…..
On Monday I took off the morphine patch I’d had prescribed for bone pain, which remains undiagnosed but which is definitely not bone cancer!
I realised last week my ten year anniversary went unnoticed from being diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Now I believe I am cured!!! ha ha..when I pointed out to my other half (better?) that I missed the bells and whistle of a formal celebratory dinner, he pointed out that I was in no physical shape to enjoy any celebrations….But that was last week! I thought about asking for a rain check and then realised it wouldn’t be the same. The moment had been lost!
Never mind, I will just try and survive today and let next week take care of itself…….
A strong advocate for choice and dignity in dying makes the following suggestions to the rest of us.
“the fact that the members of EXIT & the societies are elderly is a big
reason why we don’t behave like other advocacy organisations. We
don’t have any real online advocacy and very little public displays of
objections etc ….
-there are few members online – not many at all.
-there are few members that can get out and participate in a public
meeting or march (I was at one of them and there were about 15 people
only ….)
But one thing that the elderly members will generally have is children
and grandchildren …. so that 1 member might have 2 children, 4 or 6
grandchildren …. and maybe some close friends too.
I hear you all saying that their kids don’t have anything to do with
their parents and VE etc….
THIS is where EXIT and the societies could start to put certain ideas
etc forward with their members.
Firstly – the easiest example I can give is grandchildren. People who
are grandchildren of our members are probably 15 – 35 years old (?).
People of this age are very
- open minded
- into things like human rights
- into things like wanting to be heard
- would LOVE to have a grandparent acting in such a way as to be
trying to change the laws and do something good (be a type of “radical”)
- would be really PROUD of their grandparent for having the guts to
want to be heard.
….—-> chances are that if the grandchild thought that the
grandparent was seriously going to do something “outragious” and in
the public eye (where there are going to be police present etc) they
might even like to go along and push their grandparent’s wheelchair.
They might like to go along and be PROUD of their grandparent.
Can anybody from the states see how this can be very very useful if we
only try to start “rallying the troops” in this way of thinking…..
Can it work??
Then you’ve got the member’s adult children – is ther ea way that the
elderly VE member can get their 40 or 50 year old children to help
their parent take part in anything? To join in too? (etc etc)
Can you see where I’m coming from? This was something else I thought
of while I was in bed …. so I haven’t thought it through more than this.
Can we PLEASE discuss this a bit more because in my experience it’s
only by discussing things – thrashing out ideas – that you come to
other ideas too. The above may not be correct but it might lead us to
something else” …..
name deleted
Footnote: Dear heart, there is only so much talking the elderly, sick and frail can do. We are too busy saving our energy for living with whatever means we have left to us. Just recently I’ve been quite ill with as yet an undiagnosed ailment which has been extremely debilitating. I hadn’t showered in four days until this morning, I couldn’t bend, reach, walk, or lie without pain….I believe until younger and fitter people pick up the cudgels and run with the ideas then I’m afraid this generation is slowing down fast. I thought about a running diary just to keep track with the general public but it was too much effort quite frankly.
Those who want a hastened death, I believe, will have to make their own arrangements. Without Government Legislation pending, we have no alternative but to seek our own Counsel and act on it at the appropriate time. I know I am not relying on anyone to help me……
Email received from a contributor: Is there any one living in Sydney and able to attend and perhaps let me know the outcome by email?
“I stumbled on this while I was surfing on a different topic – Philip will be involved in a public debate
”Covered by The Sydney Morning Herald and broadcast nationally by ABC Radio and ABC Digital Television, the programs are designed to reach a wide audience and attract as speakers the top experts, specialists and passionate advocates for both sides of each issue to be debated.”
Speakers include Dr Philip Nitschke, Green’s leader Bob Brown and Professor Peter Baume for the motion, with The Hon Tony Abbott and Father Frank Brennan against.
We should legalise euthanasia
3 February 2009
Some people suffer terrible deaths – riven by uncontrollable pain, denied the dignity of choice, willing but unable to end life without the aid of others.
Yet deliberately to end a human life is, for many, always wrong – an affront to nature, a crime against humanity, a sin against God.
When the terminally ill ask us to help them to die, then should a fatal act of compassion in every circumstance be proscribed by law?
Speakers
For:
* Dr Philip Nitschke is director and founder of Exit
International, the world’s leading organisation for advocacy of
voluntary euthanasia.
* Senator Bob Brown is a Greens Senator and trained medical
doctor, and is sponsor of a private member’s Bill supporting
legalisation of euthanasia.
* Professor Peter Baume is a former Federal Health Minister, a
Liberal Senator and patron of the NSW Euthanasia Society.
Against:
* Hon Tony Abbott is a former Federal Health Minister and
pro-life advocate.
* Father Frank Brennan SJ AO is a distinguished Jesuit scholar
and author.
* Dr Maria Cigolini is a GP who has worked in the community,
home, institutional settings and hospitals providing extended and palliative care for 20 years. She trained in Palliative Care at
> Melbourne University and is on the Medical Advisory Committee of
> Longueville Private Hospital in Sydney, which specialises in
> palliative and aged care. She receives referrals for patients in the treatment phase of advanced cancers and diseases, as well as in the end of life phase, and has contributed cases for papers used in ethical discussions on end of life decision making. She is a clinical teacher in General Practice at the University of Sydney.
Chair:
Dr Simon Longstaff is Executive Director of St James Ethics Centre.
Simon spent five years studying and working as a member of Magdalene> College, Cambridge. Having won scholarships to study at Cambridge, he read for the degrees of Master of Philosophy and Doctor of Philosophy.
He was inaugural President of The Australian Association for
Professional & Applied Ethics and is a Director of a number of
companies. He is a Fellow of the World Economic Forum and a member of the International Advisory Committee of the Foreign Policy Association, based in New York. Simon has been Executive Director of St James Ethics Centre since shortly after it was founded.
Footnote: Why simply can’t it be proven to be ethical to allow each person the dignity to die in their own way. If you look at the people speaking against euthanasia (a good death) you will see they are Christian orientated. The vast majority of Australians whether they believe in a God of any creed still want a peaceful death. Some of us want it in a brief span of time so as not to suffer needlessly when death in inevitable. Others may choose for religious reasons to believe that suffering in this life will help their cause in the next life.
There are thousands and thousands of people who given a choice would prefer a hastened death with minimal suffering and while I respect others rights to influence their own beliefs for their own needs, I believe others should have the same respect shown to an alternative point of view.
The right to life advocates talk of the sanctity of life when the reality is they should be addressing the sanctity of death. The term “REST In PEACE” has been derived out of so many people not having a restful life while actually dying, slowly and miserably for all those who love them and witness their pain.
How many of us breath a massive sigh of relief at the time of death of a loved person….Precisely because they are no longer suffering. Mouth open, glazed eyes, unable to communicate….who is the Jesuit scholar that thinks this is preferable to a quick PAD?
ARTS entrepreneur Kym Bonython is urging the state’s politicians to give him the right to die.
ARTS entrepreneur Kym Bonython is urging the state’s politicians to give him the right to die.
Mr Bonython, 88, has cheated death several times and now wants the right to choose how he meets his fate. In a column in today’s Advertiser, the daredevil, entrepreneur and arts lover says MPs should pass euthanasia legislation before State Parliament.
“Some good friends of mine have died painful and lingering deaths, and I know that, given the chance, they would have sought their right to have more control at the end of their lives,” Mr Bonython writes.
“I know that 81 per cent of the population supports such a choice, and that the views of a small minority currently holds sway, which is a real cause for concern.
” . . . Most people want to control their lives and, as part of that, their deaths. I am no different.”
Mr Bonython, who insists he still has “plenty to live for at the moment”, says that compassion for people in pain suffering a terminal illness should prompt an overhaul of euthanasia laws.
Through his long, interesting life, Mr Bonython has raced cars and speedboats, had several potentially fatal accidents and illnesses, and been described as the “godfather” of jazz and art in South Australia.
For his contribution to the quality of South Australian life through the arts, he received the Premier’s Lifetime Achievement Award at last year’s Ruby Awards.
In 2007, he was honoured with a coveted Adelaide Critics Circle Lifetime Achievement award for his work in the arts and music.
“I have cheated death on several occasions in my life. I have been gored by a jersey bull and survived a hydroplane crash, which severely damaged my leg to the extent that I was on crutches for 14 months,” Mr Bonython says.
” . . . As a competitor at Rowley Park speedway in later years, I was involved in spectacular crashes that were reported internationally.
“After riding motorbikes, I must say that being reduced to riding a gopher is a very poor substitute.”
In South Australia, actively helping someone die is considered murder but it is legal to withhold lifesaving care with the consent of the patient. Greens MLC Mark Parnell has tabled a Bill in Parliament seeking to position euthanasia as a form of medical treatment to which people can consent.
Mr Bonython is urging MPs to pass the Bill.
“To the Members of Parliament who must decide on the voluntary euthanasia legislation before them, I say to you it is time for compassion,” he writes. “I am not talking here about choosing to die because your wife dies or you become depressed; it is about being incurably ill with no chance of recovery.
“Obviously there have to be checks and balances to support the legislation, as well as oversight and monitoring, but that is what Parliament is for – to come up with the best legislation to satisfy the needs of the electorate.”
Mr Parnell said the right to escape unbearable suffering should be enshrined in law. “The issue is that people every day are helped to end their lives as an inevitable consequence of the provision of pain-relieving drugs,” he said.
“The doctors know that prescribing this amount will kill the person, but provided their intent was to alleviate pain they’re OK. If a person has had enough, if they’ve tried all the palliative care options . . . my Bill allows them to exit with some dignity, in the manner of their choosing.”
Last month, outspoken euthanasia campaigner Dr Philip Nitschke launched a new euthanasia device – made from common hardware items – in Adelaide. Premier Mike Rann and anti-euthanasia lobbyists condemned the promotion of the device as “dangerous and irresponsible”.
Family First MLC Dennis Hood said the move to legalise euthanasia was a “potentially precarious retrograde step”.
“It’s not possible to build in absolute safeguards in legislation dealing with life-and-death matters,” he said.
“The current law is actually very good. While it does not allow euthanasia, it does allow doctors to treat the pain as their primary focus, knowing that the medication used to treat the pain is likely to kill the patient.”
Mr Hood said it was “inconsistent” and “ironic” that people could argue against capital punishment but support euthanasia.
Ethics expert Associate Professor Wendy Rogers, from Flinders
University, said that euthanasia and end-of-life issues would always
provoke emotional reactions.
“On the one hand there is the injunction to not kill people . . . that
is a strong moral and legal prohibition,” she said.
“On the other hand there are a lot of very strong views about autonomy
. . . all the big decisions we have control over except the time of
our death.”
Parliament will debate the Bill later this year.
Footnote: As my own body is cracking up at 66, I can’t imagine that this will be a concern to me in my 80s’…I will be gone!
German Police Stop Controversial Suicide Counselor
German police have issued a temporary restraining order against controversial euthanasia advocate Roger Kusch, prohibiting him from aiding any more people who want to end their own lives.
The former Hamburg justice minister has helped at least five people to take their lives since June. Only one of those five was very seriously ill.
Hamburg police chief Ralf Meyer said the injunction against Kusch had already been verbally issued during a search of his premises at the end of November. Meyer added that Kusch was challenging the restraining order in court.
November’s search was triggered by several investigations being conducted into his activities. The former politician and judge is suspected of violating Germany’s medical drugs law — by illegally dispensing and trading in medicines.
Kusch does not himself directly assist in the suicides as this would be illegal under German law. But he advertizes his services as a “suicide counselor,” providing advice and support for those wishing to die.
Service cost 8,000 euros
On his Web site Kusch lists 8,000 euros ($10,110) as his charge, with reductions possible in cases of financial hardship.
“I provide a service. It’s of value, and in our society such things do not come free,” Kusch told AFP news agency in early December.
“Some elderly people come to see me because just they are tired of life,” he said. “Many people now live longer thanks to progress in medicine.
But living on is sometimes seen as senseless.
And there are many people over 80 who don’t really see the point of going on,” he added.
In Germany, as in many other European countries, the number of suicides has been dropping — except for those of older people, especially men over 75, according to official statistics.
More than 40 percent of those who are reported as taking their own lives in Germany last year were aged over 60 — 3,993 out of 9,402 — even though this age group accounts for only 25 percent of the population.
And it is believed the real number could be much higher.
Kusch is calling for the legalization of assisted suicide.
FORMER Hucknall man Bill Starr has failed in a shock bid to take his own life – as a crowning gesture in his campaign for voluntary euthanasia.
Bill (77), pictured, tried to commit suicide by means of tablets at his home on Maltby Close, Aspley – to coincide with the first anniversary of the death of his wife, Maureen.
“But I could not keep the tablets down,” said Bill, who added that this was probably due to the effects of a hunger strike he began earlier this year.
Police arrived at his home before he could take his suicide attempt any further.
The former Newstead Colliery miner was born in Bulwell and used to live on Curtis Street, Hucknall. He has now been admitted to the Daybrook Ward of St Francis’s Hospital in Nottingham.
With typical gallows-humour, he said: “I have ended up being sectioned and I don’t agree with it!”
A fervent spiritualist, Bill firmly believes that death is not the end and he looks forward to being re-united with his wife.
Maureen (64), who suffered from Alzheimer’s disease, was a resident of Lowmoor Home at Kirkby-in-Ashfield.
Bill hit the headlines in January 2007 when we exclusively reported that he went to the home with the aim of killing Maureen to end her suffering.
Even so, he was not allowed thereafter to visit his wife without supervision by a staff member.
Bill’s long-standing attempts to get the law changed to allow voluntary euthanasia have been combined with complaints about care of the elderly mentally ill.
His protests have been targeted against Nottingham City Council and Notts County Council.
As part of his campaign, he symbolically burnt his council-tax bill outside the Dispatch Office at the beginning of this year.
________________________________________
One must also take antiemetic medication to prevent vomiting together with alcohol. Failure to take the right medication in the correct combinations, could result in vomiting as the body’s instinct is to reject. Taking an excess of pills can irritate the lining of the stomach so powder of elixir form is the preferred alternative. Dying is not always a quick process due to the metabolism as the individual’s bodies to cope with the introduced drugs. A well planned death can take 30 minutes, barring unforeseen medical complications, and professionals tell us that heavy breathing and snoring is an indication of the toxicity of the drugs. The loved one may even open their eyes while dying (like my mother did) even though they’re unconscious and dying. Also the weight of a rather large individual should also be a consideration.
I have had a misconception corrected for me during the course of my readings: A pacemaker fitted internally will not prevent death, because pacemakers service only to maintain a steady rhythm of the heart, not to keep it going. Once the heart is deprived of blood and oxygen, it will stop regardless of the continuing electrical impulses.
I feel sorry for Bill who is now being treated as a mentally ill person because at 77 he has no reason to continue living. Again those around Bill believe they know what is better for him than he does himself. Here in Australia, a mentally ill person has little recourse for hands on help unless and until they hurt someone else. Currently due to lack of resources and facilities families, are left to struggle in their own homes with people who freak out with or without drugs or both. It is very depressing for the families to cope with those nearest and dearest to them while going through long period of mental illness and an inability to relate to those around them.
Nembutal, a drug unavailable in Australia, 6.5 grams will kill within two hours, but double that almost immediately. I’ve tasted it in Mexico and it is revolting. For the reason I had a documentary film maker with me I ended up pouring the contents down the toilet. It was just as well too, as Customs picked me up for wearing a straw hat and carrying a bag of sealed lollies commorating the day of the dead on their wrappings.
In Oregon capsules are reduced to powder or in the use of liquid Nembutal (9 grams) the drink is loaded with sweetners, but observers have have noticed that the patients are so desperate to die that they ignore the nasty taste.
Injecting a patient with a lethal drug is not popular with most doctors; It smacks too much of killing, which is contrary to everything they’ve been taught in medicine.
There is a growing moral view that patients should take charge of their own ends now that more sophisticated means of suicide are available. But on reflection this is a lot harder with Physician Assisted Dying than the average person could comprehend. Lethal drugs are not readily available in Australia and in fact manufacturers have gone out of their way to prevent the sick from overdosing on their products.
Cars have airbags, public transport has excellent braking facilities, electrical products dropped into baths cut off immediately. Knives are very messy and I personally think that the mind would find it impossible to self stab through the heart, or to cut one’s own throat….I think we watch too much television and think that dying is portrayed as “so very easy to accomplish”…Guns, unlike America are not readily available in Australia and I would need lessons!!
Late in life I started taking swimming lessons and then stopped suddenly when I realised that with a vast track of water surrounding Australia that is still a last option available that can never be taken away from the really serious pro death advocate – the problem is that one has to be well enough to make the trip to the sea!
See, dying ain’t easy!! but we’ll all do it, in spite of government burearacy. Churches, prosecutors and politicians remain implacably opposed to law reform on any form of hastened death. But almost always they will look the other way if it is an assisted suicide of a dying person in great distress.
Should you ever considered that you would assist a person suffering intolerable pain to die an easier death, know the risks you undertake with the legal system in Australia, but for god’s sake make sure there is no money involved in the form of an inheritance. Be prepared to be seen as a gold digging bastard, should the death of your loved one be linked to you in any way!
Learn from the lesson meted out to Shirley Justins who will spend 22 months of weekend detention for the manslaughter of her partner of 18 years, Graeme Wylie. The lack of forethought by Caren Jenning costs her, her life prematurely when she used her Nembutal rather than await the sentencing, while helping her friend’s husband to die while suffering dementia.
At workshops, Exit International now warns people to plan ahead. “Don’t Do a Graeme Wylie” is set to become the new catch cry for the voluntary euthanasia movement. It is very good advice!.
This email confirms transmition to the Hon Senators Conroy and Minchin on net censorship.Your email stated:
Name: Mary Walsh
Suburb: Carnegie
state: Vic
PostCode: 3163
Email:
Message: Please do not introduce mandatory internet filtering. The Labor Party promised us an ‘opt-in’ system to protect children. I support that.
You’ve changed your mind. You now propose a mandatory – or censoring – system. You will take away my freedom of choice. You will arbitrarily interfere with my privacy, home and correspondence. You have no right to do that under Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which also says I have the right to protection against such interference or attacks.
I am a strong advocate for choice and dignity in dying.I advocate for voluntary euthanasia and I operate a website proclaiming this fact and my reasoning and opinions why I believe it should be implemented.
I am a Humanist, and therefore an Atheist, and do not share the conservative views of either your political leader, Mr Rudd or his predecessor, Mr Howard.
I don’t interfere in your private lives or your anticipated dying process but I reserve the right to be able to deal with mine in any way I see fit.
Both my children monitor their children’s use of the internet and have the machine situated in the main family room of the house.
I am very concerned that our freedoms are impinged upon for the wrongs of a few.It is bad enough that with your government’s blessing Beazley allowed Howard stopped the sick, frail and elderly talking about suicide methods on the phone, by email or the internet.LEAVE US ALONE PLEASE TO DIE WITH DIGNITY! We should not be deterred from writing about voluntary euthanasia as the Governments broadens its net on censorship to spy on us for all sorts of other reasons than readily acknowledged.
You can easily protect children in other ways:
-provide software free to parents who choose to install it; and/or
-allow a tax deduction when they buy and install software.
You don’t have to interfere with my freedom of choice: just help those who want and need filtering software, and who freely choose to install it.
As a citizen of Australia, I request that you do not install internet filtering other than under an opt-in system, where my rights and freedoms are maintained.
Please reconsider your position so that the Australian way of life can be maintained and we don’t become another Russia or China!!
PS I am so very pleased to inform you that I am a past member of the Australia Labor Party for precisely the conservative views you share with the Liberal Party.
Footnote: I’ve left the diplomatic approach to others more in tune with that method of advocacy!!
Controversial Right to Die documentary receives only 12 complaints
A documentary featuring the final moments of a man who opted for assisted suicide received 12 complaints
Urmee Khan
The programme showing Craig Ewert, 59, a father-of-two from Harrogate, as he is helped to take his life at the Dignitas euthanasia clinic in Switzerland.
The Sky Real Lives programme, Right To Die?, was watched by 222,000 people, the channel’s highest ever audience.
The 90-minute documentary, which was shown at 9pm on Wednesday night, peaked with 240,000 at 10pm. The programme was then repeated later when it was watched by another 9.000 viewers.
Right to Die? showed the moment when Mr Ewert, a motor neurone disease sufferer, was given a fatal dose of barbiturates, at Swiss clinic Dignitas. It was the first time a person’s death via an assisted suicide has been shown on British television.
The heavily publicised programme, directed by Oscar-winner John Zaritsky, has been criticised as voyeuristic.
Gordon Brown told MPs in Prime Minister’s Questions that the broadcast would have to be judged by Ofcom.
“I think it is important that these issues are dealt with sensitively and without sensationalism and I hope broadcasters will remember that they have a wider duty to the general public,” said Brown. “Of course, it will be a matter from the TV watchdog when the broadcast is shown” he said.
However campaigners said the British public were more sympathetic.
Sarah Wooton, chief executive of Dignity in Dying, said: “The fact is that 80 per cent of people support a change in the law to allow terminally ill people a choice of dying. The programme was very sympathetic and sensitively done. I’m not surprised there have been such few complaints, people would have been sympathetic.”
Ofcom, the broadcasting regulator, has not announced whether it will launch an investigation.
An Ofcom spokesman said: “All UK broadcasters must adhere to the Broadcasting Code which sets standards for the content of TV programmes.
“The Code contains clear rules about the portrayal of self-harm and suicide in order to protect people from harm.”
Assisted suicide is legal in Switzerland with certain conditions, but it is illegal in Britain.
Viewers posted positive messages on the show’s online forum. Valerie Moseley wrote: ” It was an excellent documentary…In this country (UK) you would be jailed for letting an animal suffer like that. I myself have an illness that there is no cure for, my body is rejecting my liver. I could have a liver transplant, however my body would continue to attack the new liver as well. I commend the director for this documentary.”
Alex Bar wrote: “I agree fully that those in terrible pain either physical and/or mental continually due to ill health should have the right to die with dignity in their own home.”
At 79, Dunedin woman Paula Westoby wants doctors and medical emergency workers to be under no illusions about what to do if she has a stroke or heart attack.
Today Ms Westoby will become one of the oldest people in the country to be tattooed when she has the words ‘Do not resuscitate” tattooed on her chest.
Ms Westoby, the Dunedin coordinator of the euthanasia group Exit, said she wanted to die with dignity and when she decided.
She told NZPA she was excited and nervous about being tattooed but it was also part of the campaign to change the law to allow people to choose when they died.
About two years ago she met a woman, also about 80, who had had the words tattooed on her chest when she was only 21.
“I thought what a bloody good idea.
“If I have a heart attack in the streets I do not want to be revived.”
She wanted to see the law changed in New Zealand to give people that choice, but said it would not happen “in her lifetime.”
She said it was ridiculous that if someone helped take the cap off a pill bottle because she was incapable, that person could be charged if she took the pills and died.
“If I can’t turn it (the pill bottle cap) because I have got arthritis so badly and I have got a pill I know will kill me, I want to be able to do it.”
She said her euthanasia group got little support from the people of Dunedin.
They were “retarded” over the issue because the University of Otago and the medical profession were scared of the ethics of it and refused to support it.
Although Dunedin was a university town, the medical and legal fraternities were “putting it (euthanasia) down because they were frightened to say anything positively in favour,” she said.
She also said for many years doctors had been helping very sick and terminally ill people to die but none would admit to it.
Footnote: I would definitely recommend having a tattoo placed strategically on the chest so that in an emergency it doesn’t get lost among the clothing like a flimsy piece of paper can among hospital files. I have also recommended to governments that they allow the Medicare Card to be impregnated with the same instructions just to be on the safe side when dealing with Right to Life doctors unwittingly!! Everyone holds a Medicare Card and it would be so simple to have the question asked along with name, address and postcode! How much more important is organ donations and end of life choices in a health care environment, than what unconscious people want you to do with their dying remains. Too often we are kept alive when we should be ‘allowed’ to die without further medical intervention.