IF I KNEW

If I knew it would be the last time That I’d see you fall asleep, I would tuck you in more tightly and pray the Lord, your soul to keep.

If I knew it would be the last time that I see you walk out the door, I would give you a hug and kiss and call you back for one more.

If I knew it would be the last time I’d hear your voice lifted up in praise, I would video tape each action and word, so I could play them back day after day.

If I knew it would be the last time, I could spare an extra minute to stop and say “I love you,” instead of assuming you would KNOW I do.

If I knew it would be the last time I would be there to share your day, Well I’m sure you’ll have so many more, so I can let just this one slip away.

For surely there’s always tomorrow to make up for an oversight, and we always get a second chance to make everything just right.

There will always be another day to say “I love you,” And certainly there’s another chance to say our “Anything I can do?”

But just in case I might be wrong, and today is all I get, I’d like to say how much I love you and I hope we never forget.

Tomorrow is not promised to anyone, young or old alike, And today may be the last chance you get to hold your loved one tight.

So if you’re waiting for tomorrow, why not do it today? For if tomorrow never comes, you’ll surely regret the day,

That you didn’t take that extra time for a smile, a hug, or a kiss and you were too busy to grant someone, what turned out to be their one last wish.

So hold your loved ones close today, and whisper in their ear, Tell them how much you love them and that you’ll always hold them dear

Take time to say “I’m sorry,” “Please forgive me,” “Thank you,” or “It’s okay.” And if tomorrow never comes, you’ll have no regrets about today.

Isn’t that a lovely verse?  How many times we allow stupid things to blow out of proportion and become all consuming in our lives.

Tell em you love them, while there’s still time – I read that and promptly put the message into action to the surprise of people who know me mostly as an undemonstrative (particularly gushing!) person

With the pope’s visit a thing of the past and his picture already relegated to the Opp Shop as a “has been” we need to reflect on the pain his visit created for all manner of people. (I felt it appropriate that the obviously new kitsch wall plaque should be propped up on the floor close to the crockery.  None of my three friends offered to buy it for me!)

Not one to hold a grudge normally, I have my human limitations.

Last Sunday week I attended a small rally which included the Gay and Lesbian Support Groups, along with the Civil Liberties, a new political party whose name escapes me just now at 5 am,  Humanists, Rationalists, (I represented Dying with Dignity Victoria) along with some of the support groups for sexual abused children by the clergy.

A mixed bag of individuals coming together to demonstrate against the influence of the Church over State Issues, including religion in schools. “Give me a child by the age of 7, and I will give you the man” catch cry of the Jesuits!

I along with others were welcomed to address the groups and I missed my opportunity because I lost focus on choice and dignity in dying and was remembering my experiences the last time I saw the Advocates for abused children.   They had offered to keep in touch but I declined that kindness, preferring to move my thought away from that memory as much as possible.

It is 8 years since I successfully took legal action against the “Good Shepherd” (I use the name advisedly) nuns for their abuse of me while in their orphanages.  Cruel and vicious representatives of the Catholic Church!  I again declined their offer to “keep in touch”.

Some one handed me a placard with the pope’s head on it together with a Cardinal Pell handout.   I took neither and felt myself cringing with just the thought of being so close to their image and unlike the TV I was not able to switch if off….

That’s painful memories that can’t be channelled readily at will.  Life dosen’t work like that.  The popes are personally responsible for the inability of the Catholic Church to protect the innocent from the pedophiles and there is evidence abound that they hid it to ensure the financial security of the Church remained.  I had been required to sign a secretcy clause but pressure on the church has negated that legal obligation!

I intensely dislike anything popes represent, and to have Kevin Rudd’s Government fawning over this one, made me feel physically ill!  The whole state of NSW was brought to a standstill for a religious function full of young people with mixed feelings about being in Australia for a holiday or a Religious Retreat.

One of the most important messages for the Rally was the options of Catholics being allowed to use condoms.   Not only are Catholics forced by their doctrine to give birth to possibly unwanted children, they are also required to stay alive long they’ve wanted to die.

During one speech by the organisation that defended my interests, I felt tears of stress welling up yet again with just the memories being revisited of fifty five years ago.

In talking  recently about fifty year old issues a relative expressed the opinion that people should “get over it”, but plainly it is not that simple.

People live in a time warp and unless, and even with,  professional advice is sought, I think we take our pain to the grave.   I defend myself to myself by thinking perhaps 10  to 14 years of age was just such a vulnerable time in a young girl’s life to have major “stuff” to contend with.

Ex Senator Lyn Allison gave us a rousing address about keeping State and Church separate……I did have a little smile at her confusion on seeing me come up to speak to the Advocates against child abuse when obviously she was more familiar to me representing Choice and Dignity in Dying.   I did wear my trusty blue windcheater advertising the need for legislative change.   In fact I had two of them on because as usual it was freezing cold on the steps of Victoria’s Parliament House.

I know the sun hits the spot at about 11 am in winter while the vast expanse of stone takes time to absorb any heat.   Although our Group met later it was still a cold day but the sun did shine on us.     Getting sick last year has taught me a lesson about survival up there!   I feel really sorry for the security guards who have to stand there throughout the day.  Varicose veins will be their lot in retirement!

 

Trust me, “Friends at the End” those who promote choice and dignity in dying value the wonderful doctor we have Dr Syme.  A most compassionate man, he nevertheless, is also extremely cautious that he actions are entirely meant to relieve intolerable pain rather than kill the patient.   It is inevitable that sometimes in the relieving of pain, death results and his patients fully understand the likelihood when excessive pain becomes too much to bear. For some people death is preferable to ongoing pain as pro choice believers have been trying to tell politicians for decades.   It is about choice for the individual!

 

28 July 2008 from ERGO news list 

 

Book Review 

A GOOD DEATH 

Dr. Rodney Syme

 

ISBN 0-522-85503-2  May 2008   £22.50

 

PROVOKING PROSECUTION: PROVIDING NEMBUTAL

 

This book tells the story of how a quiet, law-abiding surgeon came to publicly break the law by providing Nembutal, a fast-acting lethal barbiturate, to suffering people who wished to die. He is the only  doctor living in a country where doctor-assisted suicide is illegal, to  have done so – frequently and openly and without being prosecuted. An  eminent urologist Dr Syme is held in high esteem by his medical  colleagues, and was chair of the Victorian Section of the Urological  Society of Australasia 1990-92.

 

His purpose in the book is to dispel the unofficial conspiracy of  silence within the medical profession, and ‘to illuminate the black hole  of misunderstanding and ignorance’ by telling stories from his personal experience of assisting people with intolerable suffering to die. He  wants doctor-assisted dying to be de-criminalised, and he wants people  to know what happens at the end of life, so that they are better able to  take control of their own dying.

 

The story begins in the 1970s with a terminally ill patient suffering  from uncontrollable pain. ‘I heard her screams of anguish’ he said – but  could do nothing to help. This triggered his compassion and involvement  in hastened death.

 

 To begin with, like many other doctors, Dr Syme kept within the law by prescribing large doses of medication – in theory to control pain and distress, but in reality to keep the patients unconscious until they died.

 

While it is legal for doctors to prescribe medication to prevent  suffering and – if necessary -  to keep one in a coma until death,  no-one can force a doctor to prescribe sufficient medication – and many  fear prosecution if they hasten death. In addition, the doctor may lack  knowledge, as Dr Syme himself did when he first started to relieve  intolerable suffering in this way.

 

He describes how in the early days he prescribed the wrong balance of  analgesics and sedatives, and his patient woke screaming and delirious,  causing distress to herself and to her family. As he says, you are lucky  if your doctor has the knowledge, as well as the courage and the  compassion, to put you into a coma for the last few days of your life.’  Luck plays a large part’.

 

However, he became disenchanted with this long, drawn-out dying process  and appalled by the anguish suffered by those who wait, often for many  days, watching the one they care about die. So despite the fact that he  could be put in prison for fourteen years, he prescribed barbiturates,  the drug of choice for a quick, peaceful, pain-free death. It was only  when Steve Guest – a prominent journalist and government media advisor,  suffering from terminal cancer of the oesophagus – asked him for help to  end his life that Dr Syme decided to alter the focus of this book, and  use it to actively provoke prosecution in order to try and change the law.

 

Three years after Guest’s death, despite publicising the fact that he  provided him with the barbiturates with which he ended his life, Dr Syme  has not been prosecuted, nor has the coroner returned a verdict on  Guest’s death.

 

He argues that in every case he has acted to palliate suffering, knowing that it was the patient’s intention to hasten their death. Parliament,  he says, does not have the courage to legalise what he has been doing  despite overwhelming public support for it. Perhaps, ‘it must be through  our courts of justice that a defining decision will be reached. If a  court accepts that physician assisted dying in appropriate circumstances  is primarily an act of palliation, then the parliament may become  irrelevant in finally helping those with terrible suffering to achieve a  good death.’

 

Australia is fortunate to have such a man. Where is Britain’s Dr. Syme?

 

 

THE RISING COST OF DYING

Zurich Financial Services Australia is marketing an Ezicover funeral plan as part of its range of online life insurance products. The plan covers funeral «jr»,d related expenses for sums of $5000, $10;QOO or $15,000; double that if death is the result of an accident. The average cost of a funeral these days is about $10,000.

Commentary: Only because we allow ourselves to be fooled into believing the demonstration of consumerism is also that of love!  Everyone I know speaks of keeping funeral costs to a minimum to enable more money to be spent on the living that are left behind, like children and grandchildren.   How anyone can justify $10,000 is beyond my comprehension.   Dropping over the side of a boat in deep water has a lot going for it!…..and the family left behind know that the grave site will never be lost!

.
EXIT STRATEGY, UPDATE

Further on funeral-related matters, a few weeks ago we mentioned the University of NSW advertisement in which the department of anatomy was seeking body donations. Marie Kwok from the department says it received an unprecedented number of calls from interested members of the public.

I rather imagine that they will become overwhelmed with dead bodies for use by science, but how much easier to reduce costs by reducing red tape.

If public toilets do not have to be provided by Council under legislation in Victoria,  why are we so finicky about a dead body for a day or two on the dining table!  There would definitely be a greater need for the first option by the general public and it did lead to the plague in days gone by.  See what one learns when we get involved in local politics!  I am objecting to our local council reducing a toilet block of 5 cubicles and 1 urinal to a lone unisex Exeloo, which I feel is insufficient to service an ageing and ailing community needs!

I suggest readers purchase the book Funeral Rights by Robert Larkins (What the Australian death care industry doesn’t want you to know)

ISBN 978 0 670 07108 published by Penguin.

ALZHEIMER’S

The word strikes fear in anyone who still has a functioning brain. This is a disease that destroys brain cells, body functions, all memory, and ultimately kills in a horrible, helpless way.

- 1 of 8 Americans over 65 have Alzheimer’s
- 65,829 Americans died of Alzheimer’s in 2004
- Deaths from Alzheimer’s increased 32% from 2000-2004
- 70% of Alzheimer’s patients are cared for at home.
- 5,000,000 Americans have Alzheimer’s right now.
- By age 85, about 40% will have Alzheimer’s

Science:

It is still a major puzzle. Most scientists go along with the hypothesis that beta-amyloid or A-beta, an abnormal protein that appears in clumps in between brain cells, is the major culprit. Tau, another protein that forms inside the nerve cells, causes damage to the system of nutrients that feeds the cells. Gradually, the cells are short circuited and quit working, and die over decades. Everyone produces A-beta, but people with the disease either make too much of it or cannot get rid of it.

Another new theory is that toxic proteins called ADDLs strip neurons of their insulin receptors, which in turn reduces the ability of the brain to create memories. Therefore, Alzheimer’s is considered by some scientists as a third form of diabetes.

There is an inheritable quality in that if one parent has it, it triples the risk for their next generation.

Smokers are 50% more likely to develop Alzheimer’s than non-smokers.

Higher levels of education seem to delay the onset of the illness, but the memory of the well- educated declines faster once it hits.

A new approach may give advance warning and give a speedy diagnosis. A technique developed in Sweden has shown that Compound P or PIB is a highly accurate marker of plaque buildup, in that it binds to plaque and is discernible in a PET scan. The compound is still in testing phase and not available for general use at present.

Research on causes and cures are so far unyielding, but eventually the scientists will figure it out, but probably no one reading this article will benefit The cure is a long way off.

Signs of Alzheimer’s:

Some forgetfulness is normal. A joking rule of thumb is actually close to the truth. It is okay to forget where you put your car keys, as long as you remember what the keys are for. But worsening forgetfulness is a cause for concern. The term “mild cognitive impairment” is sometimes applied to small but measurable memory problems, but its meaning and prognostic value are unclear.

The Alzheimer’s Association says that these are the 10 warning signs of Alzheimer’s:

1. Memory loss
2. Difficulty performing familiar tasks (e.g., can’t remember how to
place a phone call)
3. Problems with language (e.g., can’t find the right word)
4. Disorientation to time and place (e.g., getting lost)
5. Poor or decreased judgment
6. Problems with abstract thinking (e.g., forgetting what numbers
are for)
7. Misplacing things (e.g., putting an iron in the freezer)
8. Changes in mood or behavior (e.g., rapid mood swings)
9. Changes in personality (may become extremely fearful of family
members, etc.)
10. Loss of initiative (becoming extremely passive, excess sleeping,
etc.)

Memory loss is the hallmark of Alzheimer’s, but the disease destroys far more – personality, insight, reason, speech, even the ability to walk. Ultimately, the person becomes helpless and completely dependent on others for many years. The disease requires constant adjustments by caregiving relatives just to keep life on an even keel. Formerly calm, easygoing people may turn super anxious or prone to fits of rage. Patients wander and get lost, sleep all day and are up all night, demand to drive when they no longer can, turn on an empty oven, refuse to bathe, accuse others of stealing their property. The list is endless.

It is pointless to argue, correct, explain or teach someone with Alzheimer’s. Instead, you try to sooth, agree, and distract, but that is easier said than done, especially as exhaustion mounts and the disease only gets worse.

Caregiver Stress:

Clearly this is an almost impossible situation for the caregivers who usually suffer some combination of symptoms including denial, anger, social withdrawal, anxiety, depression, exhaustion, irritability, and health problems. The Alzheimer’s Research Review estimates the stress of caring for a patient with Alzheimer’s will shorten the caregiver’s life by 4-8 years.

It is all bad news. There is nothing positive or heartwarming about an Alzheimer’s diagnosis. There is no cure that will be available in our lifetime. The course of the illness is inevitable and degrading to the human condition. There are no treatments that offer significant long-term help or alleviation of the emptying of the mind of all knowledge, feeling, or understanding.

Choices/Options
The question for readers of this article is what to do about it, if anything. One course of action, or inaction, is to let it happen. This may be a legitimate choice for many reasons. It may be too late to do anything else; you may be willing for your life to take its natural course; you may believe you have ample time for another choice; your family is unrealistically optimistic, or is in denial. Also, religious beliefs may come into play.

A second course of action is to hasten your own death by self-delivery means that are available. Since you are already a member of Final Exit Network, you presumably know something about this.

The major challenge to this second course of action is that of timing. Perhaps you need to take very seriously that the first definitive diagnosis of Alzheimer’s is your immediate alarm bell to begin planning to hasten your own end. If you wait too long, you will not be competent enough to make the decision, and the inevitable degradation of your quality of life will most certainly occur.

It is your choice and yours alone.

Material for this article was excerpted from Scientific American Mind, March 2008; New York Times, December 26, 2007; Alzheimer’s Research Review, Winter 2008; Alzheimer’s Association 2007.
-Jerry Dincin

LETTER OF THE MONTH (Choice Magazine July 2008)

Cardboard coffin conundrum

I’m writing to express my disgust over the price of funerals in general but specifically the price of cardboard coffins. As my father died recently, I made inquiries into cardboard coffins. The funeral home in Sydney said that a cardboard coffin cost about SI 150 with a woodgrain finish •$1250 for a white one. The coffins were supplied by LifeArt in Sydney. The cheapest wood coffin cost about $980.

I don’t understand how a cardboard coffin can be so expensive —- and more than a wooden one. I phoned OnEarth Caskets in Adelaide, which sells them for $300-5400, but very few funeral directors use them.

Has CHOICE investigated the funeral industry? Could you publicise the cardboard coffin option? Most funeral directors don’t seem to be interested in offering it.

Louise Taylor, via email

CHOICE says CHOICE last investigated the funeral industry in Qctober2005 and we featured the LlfeArt cardboard coffins. The company told us then that prices were determined by the funeral director. It’s possible to get a pine or ptarticle-board coffin from about $500, but again, availability and pricing is determined by funeral directors.

CHOICE thinks consumers should be free to buy a coffin of their choosing for a funeral — as long as it meets the relevant health and safety standards. If you’re arranging a prepaid funeral, or looking into different options for an elderly or terminally ill friend or relative, shop around for a funeral parlour that allows greater choice.

Some companies, including those that offer ‘natural’ or ‘woodland’ burials, bury bodies wrapped in a shroud, rather than a coffin. The shrouded body is transported in a reusable coffin.

Email ausconsumer@choice.com.au or mail to; Letters, CHOICE, 57 Carrington Road, Marrickville 2204

To thank you for taking the time to write to us, CHOICE awards a prize »f a CHOICE book to the ‘Letter of the month’. This month’s winner receives What to do when someone dies, or any other book of his choice  from the list on choice.com.au/books.   We’re sorry we don’t have the resources to answer all your letters and emails personally, and in the magazine we may edit them or print only an extract.

End Choice Article

Alternatively I can suggest to readers that they obtain a copy of the book authored by Robert Larkins, a Barrister in his day job, Funeral Rights (What the Australian “death-care” industry doesn’t want you to know).  Published by the Penguin Group 2007 –  ISBN 978 0 670 07108 1.    At 240 pages it is a solid read, but easily so with good spacing, and even some coloured photos which bring the funeral industry into your lounge room.  Price: can’t remember (Alzheimer kicking in these days) but purchased on line.     

Funeral Rights is also chillingly informative.

Taken from Today’s 10/7/08 Sydney Telegraph

Euthanasia ruling draws Vatican rebuke

Article from: Agence France-Presse

From correspondents in Rome

July 10, 2008 06:46am

AN Italian court ruled today that a road accident victim could be removed from life support after 16 years in a coma, drawing a swift rebuke from the Vatican, which said the ruling gave “de facto” justification for euthanasia.

The Milan appeal court that reached the decision said it was “inevitable” given “the extraordinary duration of (Eluano Englaro’s) permanent vegetative state … and her view of life”.

The Milan court ruled that her coma was proven to be irreversible and that the young woman “would have preferred to die than being kept alive on artificial support”.

Monsignor Rino Fisichella, head of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy for Life, reacted by telling the ANSA news agency that the ruling justified “an act of euthanasia de facto” and should be challenged in a higher court.

Englaro, born in 1972, has been in a vegetative state for 16 years following a road accident.

She has been receiving food and water artificially since January 1992 in a hospital in northern Lecco, and her father Beppino Englaro had been seeking an end to the life support since 1999.

Debate on the emotive issue of euthanasia has been complicated in Italy by the influence of the Catholic Church, which notably refused to allow a religious funeral for poet and writer Piergiorgio Welby in 2006.

Welby, who suffered from muscular dystrophy, died in December 2006 after being taken off an artificial respirator.

His highly publicised cause – which had been taken up by Italy’s small but vocal libertarian Radical Party – highlighted ambiguities in Italian law, which currently forbids euthanasia but upholds a patient’s right to refuse care.

A similar case to Englaro’s was that of Terry Schiavo in the United States, who died in March 2005 at age 41 after her feeding tube was removed by court order.

At the time, the Vatican accused the court of “arbitrarily” bringing forward the moment of her death. Schiavo had been in a coma for 15 years.

Two years later, on a request for guidance by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops on cases such as Schiavo’s, the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith ruled that patients in irreversible comas should be given food and water.

“A patient in a ‘permanent vegetative state’ is a person with fundamental human dignity and must, therefore, receive ordinary and proportionate care which includes, in principle, the administration of water and food even by artificial means,” the Vatican’s doctrinal enforcer said.

Vatican Radio called today’s ruling “serious”, recalling that for years courts had refused to consider Beppino Englaro’s bid.

Catholic bioethics experts had said magistrates could not “disregard the inviolability of life and the duty of every civil society to help its weakest citizens,” Vatican Radio recalled.

Brian Holden’s Article written July 10, 2008 on the famous On Line Opinions Blogsite

It has been a long and frustrating row to hoe for Philip Nitschke. His is a working life of constant confrontation with the establishment (a Google search brings up 42 pages of links relating to him) and of scratching around for money to keep viable his crusade for the right to die with dignity. Maybe Nitschke was born to remain restless until he had a cause to fight for. His history indicates this.

After gaining a PhD in laser physics, he left that field to work with the Gurindi people, and from there he went on to be ranger with the NT Parks and Wildlife Commission. Nitschke then studied medicine – graduating at age 42.

He got a job as a doctor at the Royal Darwin Hospital. Nitschke was working in the public health system which puts a lot of effort into promoting an exaggerated image of dedication and competence. It was only a matter of time before there was a falling out.

It came when a nuclear submarine moored in Darwin Harbour to the delight of the local business people who were hoping Darwin would become a US naval base. This was a time for buying beers for sailors and not for any radical jumping up and down.

At the hospital, Nitschke was the designated Radiation Safety Officer – and yet there was no nuclear disaster plan in place when there was supposed to be. He blew the whistle, and the system’s retribution which followed almost crushed him. He got out of the public system and set up an out-of-hours drug rehabilitation service.

Following the introduction of the Northern Territory Rights of the Terminally Ill Act, he became passionately involved with those who wanted to use the act to end their lives.

Family and friends could gather in the house of the person wishing to die. That person would then send a command through a computer for a fatal drug to be injected by a machine designed by Nitschke. The first to die by this method described what Nitschke was doing as an act of love.

While some well known people have worked hard for the cause while still working in their profession, it has been Nitschke who has made it his life’s work. Currently he runs workshops on how to suicide without botching the process and ending up still alive but brain damaged.

This is not loving your neighbour

After only four patients had been able to use the NT Rights of the Terminally Ill Act, a private member’s bill introduced by a member of the federal parliament, Kevin Andrews, overturned the world’s first assisted death law. Andrews exploited the technicality that the Northern Territory was not a state.

Although prone to fearing imaginary threats, Australians typically do not recognise a real threat until it becomes the elephant in the bathroom. Andrews’ electorate allowed him to get away with this strike against democracy via a backdoor, and he retained his seat at the next election.

 

While suicide is no longer a crime, unscrewing the cap off a bottle of Nembutal for a person with unbearable arthritis could, in theory, land you in jail for 25 years. Under the Suicide Related Materials Act, it is now even a crime to discuss end-of-life options by phone, email, Internet or fax.

To be fair to the servants of the Lord, if the Australian Medical Association was not against euthanasia, we would probably now have it. Although many doctors support euthanasia, the AMA sees its duty as advising its members to avoid situations which could be legally complicated and psychologically stressful.

My mother told me when she was in her 40s that she wanted to die with dignity. At aged 80 she told me that she wished she could die in her sleep as much of her body was not working properly. She died at 85 in a nursing home with leg ulcers up to 80 square centremeters in area. As her once athletic 180cm frame now weighed only 36kg, she probably starved to death.

The most loving and selfless person I have ever known was made to suffer for five unnecessary years because of the philosophies and fears of others.

In his Sermon from the Mount, Jesus told those before him that every man must love his neighbour. He would not have expected us to structure a world where in one component 30,000 children die every day due to causes which as little as $2 or $3 a day spent on each could prevent, while in another component countless millions of dollars are spent each year on keeping alive people who do not want to live.

In the meantime while awaiting the legislation he wants, Nitschke has discovered the hard way that singular targets are a gift for the opposition of any crusade which moves along an unpredictable path and along which it is humanly impossible not to make mistakes. He is watched closely for “evidence” which can be used on anti-euthanasia websites to paint him as the Devil Incarnate.

As their screwball gift-of-life talk failed to sway the bulk of the public, the tactic of the religion driven anti-euthanasia movement is now to scare everybody with warnings that if euthanasia is legalised, then many old folk will be pressured to agree to get out of the way.

Contrary to the claims by authoritatively-appearing religious websites, there is little concrete evidence that this has happened in Holland. Jesus should have more clearly stated his disapproval of lying – as his followers don’t seem to see much wrong with it.

A closer look at the case of Philip Nitschke v the religious

Your moral integrity can be maintained up to your personal threshold. Beyond your personal threshold, you begin to justify to yourself your increasingly immoral, self-serving and cowardly behaviour. Most of us could not name any person they know who has an unshakeable integrity, as few find themselves in testing situations where an unshakeable integrity, if it exists, can be revealed.

 

In spite of so much happening which should not happen, whistleblowers are very rare. And, once a whistle is blown, every whistleblower is astonished at the extent of the betrayal by those in the workplace that he or she trusted for support. Some would say that your morality threshold is the point where your survival instinct kicks in.

The survival instinct kicks in early in the religious. Their fear of damnation controls their behaviour. That behaviour is little different to those who ingratiate themselves to a dictator. All autocrats use carrot and stick to control their subjects. Nobody is more powerful than God – and God has Heaven as the carrot and Hell as the stick.

An aspect of the Nazi period which should be studied more than any other is the behaviour of people who are in situations where carrot and stick were applied in the extreme.

The survival instinct kicked in very early in those who gleefully dobbed hidden Jews into the SS. The bishops’ morality thresholds were higher, but not by much, as their condemnation of what was occurring was negligible. Humanists (including some renegade priests) were early casualties in the most organised application of evil in history. (By the way – in the Nazi oath of loyalty was a reference to God.)

Although the Bible is central to the life of a lovely friend of mine, my many years of workplace experiences led me to conclude that most of the seriously religious are basically amoral in that they have no ability to distinguish right from wrong. If you have no ability to distinguish right from wrong, then you can be manipulated into doing anything by a persuasive enough person or doctrine.

Whatever sense of right and wrong you may have was not taught to you. It is due to a mix of the example set by the behaviour of close family members (which writes that part of DNA which can be written by experience) and the natural propensity you are born with to be good or not so good (that part of DNA which cannot be rewritten).

And yet, John Howard (remember that he was the man who played the race card to win an election by lying about children being thrown overboard) used $165 million of our money to fund a school chaplaincy program to teach our children a thing or two about decency.

 

About the Author

Brian Holden has been retired since 1988. He advises that if you can keep physically and mentally active, retirement can be the best time of your life.

Other articles by this Author

    * » Men, women and guns – June 19, 2008

    * » Killing curiosity – May 15, 2008

    * » It is time Anzac Day was replaced – April 24, 2008

    * » Life is for living – March 13, 2008

    * » Lessons from Hansonism – February 12, 2008

1 July 2008 from the Melbourne Herald Sun

 

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,23950405-662,00.html

 

Newsreader calls for mercy killing review

 

By Michelle Cazzulino

July 01, 2008 01:47am

NEWSREADER Tracey Spicer yesterday called for the reopening of the euthanasia debate in Australia, following revelations she considered killing her critically-ill mother.

Ms Spicer decision to go public with her experience in yesterday’s The Daily Telegraph prompted hundreds of emails from readers whose opinions on the subject were deeply divided.

However, a poll on this newspaper’s website found that 88 per cent were in favour of voluntary euthanasia.

Speaking yesterday, Ms Spicer said although she had been gratified by the response to her story, she had not been trying to persuade Australians either way about whether the practice should be legalised.

“I just wanted to highlight the complexity of the issue,” she said.

“I’m delighted it is getting the prominence it deserves and that it’s opened up a wider public debate – the community is where it belongs before it goes to Parliament.

‘I really think we need to talk about these issues and get them out in the open because in a lot of ways it’s the crime that dare not speak its name and I think it happens more often than we realise.”

In a self-penned essay, Ms Spicer relived the night in 1999 when she considered ending her mother’s suffering by smothering with a pillow.

Marcia Spicer was in the final stages of pancreatic cancer and had previously expressed a wish to be allowed “to die with dignity”.

But because she had been too unwell to make the decision herself, Ms Spicer said she couldn’t bring herself to go ahead with the plan.

“As I looked down at the woman who gave me life, I knew I could not take hers,” she recalled.

Mrs Spicer died just hours later.

Yesterday, her daughter said others had also found themselves in similar situations.

“I have had the most extraordinary response – hundreds of people have emailed me to say their family has gone through, or is going through a similar circumstance,” Ms Spicer said.

“I’ve been deeply and profoundly moved by people sharing their stories with me and feeling comfortable about doing so because someone else has spoken about it.” 

 

Emma Tom, exactly my sentiments as the poor nurse changed me and my entire bed eight times in one night after abdominal surgery.  I was too sick to have a choice that night, but things are looking up now. Again Emma is spot on, one’s dying is no one else’s business but the participant!

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23922969-23375,00.html

Last thing the law should be doing is blocking my exit

THE WRY SIDE: Emma Tom | June 26, 2008

DEAR sections 18 and 31c of the NSW Crimes Act,
The other night my toddler let off one of those midnight poo bombs that sprayed detritus as far as the nose could smell. There was poo in her pyjamas, poo dripping from Elmo and poo smeared cave-girl style over the bedroom wall.

Scraping up someone else’s shit is never fun, particularly in the evil hours of the pre-dawn when consciousness alone is deeply disturbing. And as I cleaned and comforted and cleaned some more, one thought kept running through my crap-covered head. It was: Never, ever do I want my daughter to have to do this for me.

I bring this unsavoury subject up, dear Crimes Act, because recent court cases have once again raised the sticky issue of euthanasia and whether others can be enlisted to help orchestrate our exits. Given the ghastly consequences of confusion, it seems critical to make our views on the subject crystal clear.

Let me start by saying that I realise your intentions are honourable. You don’t want people topping us simply because they’ve taken a shine to our wallets or our wills. You don’t want a society that automatically snuffs its members the moment they get ear hair or that
mothbally, old-dude smell.

But surely there are circumstances under which you can cut us some slack.

The harsh truth is that I’d rather cark it than live in crippling pain and dependence. I’m just not the type, Crimes Act. I’m not very stoic, I’ve got a stupidly low pain threshold and I’m kinda addicted to being able to look after myself. I don’t plan to give up at the first sign of a sniffle but I do know there’ll come a time when I’ll graciously concede the game to Ms Reaper.

I’d also rather expire than become an overwhelming burden on the people I adore. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not talking about needing help touching up my purple perm or changing the tyres of my zippy senior scooter. I’m referring to personality loss, absolute immobility and midnight poo bombs.

Quality, public-funded pensioner care will be as rare as petrol by the time gen X-ers such as myself enter the Drooling Zone.

This will mean partners, offspring and relatives – probably female partners, offspring and relatives – will be left changing the nappies
and sponging the bed sores. Well, dear Crimes Act, I hereby relinquish my right to life: a) if it no longer contains trace elements of
quality; or b) if clinging on means the lives of my loved ones no longer contain the same. Obviously not all citizens should be
subjected to this rule. Those folk who wish to linger long into their bingo years should never be told their time is up and subjected to
involuntary wrinkly-cide. But where, oh where, is the advantage in restraining those of us who wish to make a considered and dignified
early departure?

What I suggest is something along the lines of an organ donor consent card that enables us to indicate our end-of-life preferences: where we stand on the subject of euthanasia on principle and under what circumstances we may be prepared to pass the decision-making on to others.

Your raison d’etre, Crimes Act, is to distrust. To search for lies and deception and malevolent intent. But I trust my loved ones to make these choices for me if I can no longer make them myself. If I can’t speak, I know they’ll understand the look in my eyes. If myeyelids won’t open, I know they’ll know me well enough to just know. And if they screw up one way or another, I forgive them because I know they will have agonised and done their damnedest.

I don’t want to be kept alive on principle, dear Crimes Act. If I find myself in a living death, I want to be given an exciting drug and
permitted to drift pleasantly off with your blessing. And if someone happens to help, I want your murder, manslaughter and aiding suicide sections to leave them the hell alone.

Because, with all due respect, this would be a death that wasn’t any of your business.

I regret to this day, from that awful day July 13, 1983, not helping my mother to die as she’d always asked me to, before she became unconscious for the last time.   I live with that regret almost daily.  I did not have the courage to put the love for my mother above that of my other family members.

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,23943104-661,00.html
Tracey Spicer’s deadly dilemma

Michelle Cazzulino

June 30, 2008 12:00am

NEWSREADER Tracey Spicer says she held a pillow a above her critically ill mother’s face, as she prepared to end her suffering by suffocation.

With the euthanasia debate continuing to dominate headlines, Ms Spicer has revealed she could not go through with a plan to kill her mother, Marcia, who died of pancreatic cancer in 1999.

But the Sky News presenter, 40, said the decision not to observe her mother’s wishes had been agonising.

“I picked up a pillow from the floor and walked over to the bed. I knew it was the right thing to do,” she said.

“But as I looked down at the woman who gave me life, I knew that I could not take hers. Collapsing to the floor, I sobbed like a baby.

“For the next few hours, I held mum’s limp hand and said, over and over, ‘It’s OK for you to go’. Mrs Spicer died just hours later.

Yesterday, her daughter described euthanasia as a complex, vexed issue and said her experience had not altered her views on it.

“I support euthanasia when a person articulates it and says, ‘I am suffering, please put me out of my misery’, but mum was never lucid enough.

“She’d said it many a time when she was well. But since she had been diagnosed with cancer, she’d never articulated to me clearly that she wanted that,” she said.

————-

http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,23941800-3102,00.html

Tracey Spicer talks of her mother’s cancer struggle
Article from: The Courier-Mail

Michelle Cazzulino

June 30, 2008 12:00am

MARCIA Spicer was an intelligent woman with a ”wicked” sense of humour and clear ideas about how she wanted to live out her final days.
When an X-ray in 1999 revealed that her lungs and pancreas were riddled with cancer, she announced she needed a cigarette.

“No point giving up now!” she told the oncologist.

She had always been a supporter of “the right to die with dignity” but then the cancer raced through her body, leaving her howling incoherently and writhing in agony.

For her helpless family, the need to end her suffering became paramount.

Her daughter, newsreader Tracey Spicer, yesterday recalled their desperation.

“Dad, my sister Suzanne and I pleaded with the oncologist to increase Mum’s morphine to release her from this living hell,” Ms Spicer said.

“It became an obsession. Nurses were asked if they would assist in a murder.”

On the final night of Mrs Spicer’s life, when not even the strongest drugs could dull her pain, Tracey decided to act.

“I held the pillow, not over her face but about a foot above, while I was thinking, ‘Can I do this or can I not?’

“I looked into her face and I thought, ‘I just can’t do it’.”

Her mother died of natural causes just hours later.

Although Ms Spicer is today in favour of voluntary euthanasia in cases where a patient is able to give consent, she has no regrets about not going through with it.

“The problem was, Mum was on so many drugs that she was in and out of consciousness.

“She wasn’t lucid for most of her illness, so while we knew that deep down in her heart she wouldn’t want to be existing like that, she’d never articulated it,” she said.

“The other thing was, I didn’t think it was my right to take her life when really, there were other family members who might’ve benefited from seeing her, even though she was suffering.”

The euthanasia debate reignited in Sydney two weeks ago after a jury convicted Shirley Justins, 59, of killing her partner, Alzheimer’s sufferer Graeme Wylie, with an overdose.

Her friend, Caren Jenning, 75, who illegally imported the drug, Nembutal, was convicted of being an accessory to manslaughter.

Prosecutors argued Mr Wylie’s mental state made it impossible to make an informed, independent decision to die.

The women will be sentenced this year.

———–

Where the conscience lies in a loved one’s pain

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,23944333-5000117,00.html

Tracey Spicer

June 30, 2008 12:00am

AT 3.17am on October 25, 1999, I considered suffocating my mother with a pillow.

I didn’t view it as murder. It would be an act of mercy.

Marcia Spicer was a feisty, intelligent woman with a warm smile and wicked sense of humour.

Growing up, my biggest fear was losing her; my beautiful, loving mother who had become my role model and best friend.

Then, she found a lump in her neck. And our family slowly fell apart.

I’ll never forget our first appointment with the incongruously-named oncologist Boris.

Holding up an X-ray, he pointed to dozens of black spots on mum’s pancreas and lungs. “You have cancer here, here, here and here. It’s terminal.”

Quick as a flash, mum shot back “Well, I think I’ll go outside and have a smoke. No point giving up now!”

Pancreatic cancer is a silent killer. Most people are diagnosed too late for treatment. In mum’s case, she was given seven months to live.

Not once during that time did I hear her complain, despite her immense pain and suffering.

“I will beat this bloody thing,” she was wont to say, a look of steely determination on her face.

Mum went out of her way to help everyone come to terms with her diagnosis.

For the first chemotherapy session, she created a headscarf for every family member to wear in solidarity.

We took turns giving her twice-daily injections of the blood thinning drug Heparin; her stomach a mosaic of purple-black bruises.

We slept in chairs by the hospital bed, hugging her tightly when she became overcome by delusion, confusion and nightmares brought on by the morphine.

And we talked – about life, death and the whole damn thing.

Then, the cancer spread to her bones. The morphine was not enough.

Lying in the palliative care ward of Redcliffe Hospital in Brisbane, her carefully constructed mask of stoicism slipped, revealing the bare agony of her condition.

Fleeting moments of consciousness were punctuated by howls of pain.

We decided to take action.

Mum and Dad had always been vocal supporters of the right to die with dignity.

Many a discussion in the family living room concluded with either one of them saying: “If I ever lose control of my faculties, please, put me down. I don’t want to live like that.”

Dad, my sister Suzanne and I pleaded with the oncologist to increase Mum’s morphine to release her from this living hell.

He nodded sympathetically but said there was nothing he could do.

It soon became an obsession. Palliative care nurses were tackled in the corridor and asked whether they would assist in a murder.

Driven by what I know was Mum’s fervent desire, I purchased a book entitled To Die Like a Dog.

It told the story of a New Zealand nurse Lesley Martin, whose mother was dying of bowel cancer.

In a bid to ease Joy Martin’s suffering, Lesley injected her with morphine then tried to suffocate her with a pillow.

Convicted of attempted murder, she subsequently wrote “This is the trial of everyone who’s ever made a promise that they would help someone die gently if necessary and the trial of every doctor who has helped and remained silent.”

I sat next to Mum’s bed and read the book from cover to cover. Glancing at my sister, peacefully asleep on the couch, I knew the time had come.

There was dark silence in the corridor. I picked up a pillow from the floor and walked over to the bed. Even at death’s door, Mum looked a picture of health; her calm visage disguising the decay within.

I knew it was the right thing to do.

But as I looked down at the woman who gave me life, I knew that I could not take hers.

Collapsing to the floor, I sobbed like a baby. For the next few hours, I held mum’s limp hand and said, over and over, “It’s OK for you to go.”

We returned home to sleep at 6am that day.

Hours later, Dad woke us with the news that Mum had passed away.

It seemed she had waited for the love of her life to be by her side.

Indeed, it is the ultimate paradox to want to kill the one you love the most.

But this is the dilemma faced every day by thousands of Australians caring for a terminally ill family member or friend.

In the heat of the debate about euthanasia, let’s take the time to think about these people and their stories, in life’s irretrievably frayed patchwork.