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.
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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.
Dying man’s final moments inside suicide clinic to be shown on ABC
11th December 2008, 8:00 WST
The final moments of a man who bids his wife goodbye before committing suicide in a Swiss euthanasia clinic will be shown on Australian TV after the ABC said yesterday it had bought the rights to the controversial show
The Suicide Tourist, which was due to go to air in Britain overnight, shows retired American university professor and motor neurone disease sufferer Craig Ewert taking his last breath.
The documentary follows the last days of Mr Ewert, 59, who paid the Dignitas clinic more than $6700 for the assisted suicide
His death involved swallowing sedatives and switching off his lifesupport machine. The terminally ill man was forced to use a mouthoperated system to switch off the machine because he had lost the use of his limbs. He died 45 minutes later with his wife of 37 years by his side
The film shows the couple’s final exchange, with Mrs Ewert asking: “Can I give you a kiss?” Mr Ewert replies: “Of course” before they declare their love for each other. Mrs Ewert then bids her husband a final goodbye, saying: “Have a safe journey. I will see you some time.”
ABC TV said yesterday it planned to screen the documentary next year
Mrs Ewert told the Independent newspaper in Britain her husband allowed a Canadian film director to record his final moments to “remove the veil” that made people reluctant to think or talk about death
“Allowing the cameras to film his last moments in Zurich was about facing the end of life honestly,” she told the Independent. “This wasn’t a film about him personally. He was keen to have it shown because when death is hidden and private, people don’t face their fears about it.” Right-to-die campaigner Philip Nitschke, who will give euthanasia workshops in Perth this week, welcomed the decision to show the film, which he said showed the “civilised” experience of committing suicide at Dignitas, known as the only place in the world where a person seeking an assisted suicide can be helped to die He said the assisted suicides carried out in the clinic were extremely tasteful
Right to Life WA president Peter O’Meara said a film promoting euthanasia should not be shown because it devalued and demeaned life
“If you are talking about educating, what are we going to educate the public to do?” he said. “If you are talking about taking one’s life or helping somebody else to do (it) — it’s a very sad indication if that is shown on TV.”
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Footnote:
I’ve been waiting for The Suicide Tourist to come to Australia for at least a year!
When the Right to Life Advocates start fighting to prevent young men and women being sent off to fight illegal and unjust wars in the Middle East where torture and killings are seen as the “norm”…I will believe in their authentic right to tell me what they can do with their lives – but never with mine!
There is absolutely nothing demeaning or devaluing about trying to achieve a peaceful death in the face of terminal illness, Mr O’Meara…..You may inflict harrowing physical and mental torture on your own body by offering suffering up to god, but keep me out of it!!!! The fact you see euthanasia as demeaning shows your ignorance of the subject.
VICTORIAN police have reopened their investigation into the 2005 death of Steve Guest, potentially reigniting the smouldering euthanasia debate.
Voluntary euthanasia advocate Dr Rodney Syme has been asked to attend a police interview on Friday, and expects to be questioned about his role in Mr Guest’s death.
Dr Syme, 73, told The Age that he is prepared to go through a “test case” for physician-assisted suicide, though he does not relish the idea.
He admits having “given advice” to two other Victorians who are currently terminally ill.
Mr Guest died aged 58 at his Point Lonsdale home in July 2005, after suffering from cancer of the oesophagus. Weeks earlier he used a radio interview to plead for legalised euthanasia.
Dr Syme wrote in his book A Good Death, published earlier this year, that he received a call from Mr Guest hours after the interview.
“He had rung to say that he had incurable cancer … in my opinion he needed urgent care,” Dr Syme wrote. “I agreed to drive to his home.”
Dr Syme wrote that he found Mr Guest with only weeks to live, and physically and emotionally in “intolerable, and it seemed unrelievable, suffering”.
“He wanted control over the end of his life … I therefore answered all his questions and provided him with advice and medication that would allow him to end his life, should he choose, with security and dignity.”
Mr Guest died a few weeks later from an overdose of barbiturates. His brother John said in a later interview: “He took his drug, he called out to us. We held his hands. He went to sleep, and as far as we could tell, he was dead within 15 minutes.”
John Guest said yesterday the advice Dr Syme gave his brother “was immensely valuable to him and gave him a new lease on life … he wept with gratitude”.
Dr Syme admits being “deliberately provocative” in his admissions about his role in Mr Guest’s death to highlight what he believes are shortcomings in the law and hypocrisy in its application, and to pave the way for a possible test case for doctor-assisted suicide.
In a police interview in 2006 he admitted advising Mr Guest.
Later — in the book and elsewhere — he admitted giving medication to Mr Guest.
However, Dr Syme believes he has nowhere said what that medication was.
“That’s the last card, the lay-down misere, that I can reserve for my own use (if) I wish to do so,” he said. “The point of the process is to demonstrate how stupid the law is. A test case would have some definitive value, but on the other hand, I don’t particularly want to go through that.”
A police spokesperson confirmed police “are speaking to a 73-year-old man in relation to the death of Stephen Guest in 2005″.
In September, a private member’s bill giving terminally ill people the right to die with the help of a doctor was rejected by the Victorian upper house, following months of passionate debate.
Footnote: I dare not visualise what could happen to the BeyondBlue switchboard should Dr Syme be charged with relieving Steve Guest’s pain by the legal processes available to him as a Doctor. I think the frail, aged and terminally ill, would make their voices heard in ways not yet experienced in Victoria. The movement for choice and dignity in dying has tried very hard to obey the stupid law that makes the individual comply with a “feel good process” arising out of religious dogma which many sufferers do not share! Palliative care is an individual’s choice and I will not suffer unnecessarily to oblidge other’s religious beliefs about an afterlife.
I believe there will be such a backlash against the Government should the police become involved in doctor patient relationships and I would be at the forefront. I lived four years in a jail in the Good Shepherd Convent at Abbotsford and Bendigo, and no jail currently could meet their cruelity. Be damned if the Catholic Church will win the right to decide my death as they ruined my life as a child. Bloody Hypocrites!! I’d rather be dead than be “catholic”!
Doctor Assisted Suicides Ruled As Legal By Montana Judge
07 Dec 2008
Judge Dorothy McCarter ruled that a Billings, Montana, man who has terminal cancer may legally undergo doctor-assisted suicide. The ruling may well be appealed as Montana state says the State, rather than the court, should decide on such issues – whether a terminally ill patient has the right to take his/her own life.
The ruling makes Montana the third US state to allow terminally ill patients the legal choice of aid-in-dying, after Oregon and Washington.
During the ruling the judge said “The Montana constitutional rights of individual privacy and human dignity, taken together, encompass the right of a competent terminally (ill) patient to die with dignity.”
The ruling added that a terminally-ill patient who finds his/her suffering to be ‘unbearable’ has the right to receive self-administered medication to hasten death. The ruling also stated that a doctor may prescribe such medication for the patient without fear of being taken to court for it.
Dorothy McCarter wrote that not only does a patient have the right to die with dignity, but also his/her doctor needs protection from liability under the state’s homicide laws.
Mike McGrath, Attorney General, said his team of lawyers will discuss this ruling and will possibly appeal. He said doctor-assisted suicide is a constitutional issue and should be ruled on by the Supreme Court.
Robert Baxter, 75, the terminally ill patient said “I am glad to know that the court respects my choice to die with dignity if my situation becomes intolerable.” Baxter, a truck driver, suffers from lymphocytic leukemia.
Compassion & Choices, a patient’s right group, helped argue the case. Legal Director, Kathryn Tucker, said that the court found that it is the patients who should be given the right to make these critical decisions for themselves and their families – not the state. The State Attorney General’s office said it was the responsibility of the state Legislature.
As well as Baxter, the case included another four plaintiffs – doctors who need a ruling on whether they would face criminal charges if they assisted a patient with aid-in-dying. None of the doctors provide health care for Baxter.
According to a press release by Compassion & Choices “The right to privacy, personal autonomy and dignity are deeply rooted in the political and cultural heritage of Montana. Establishing the right of terminally ill patients to seek aid in dying is well within the Montana tradition of living with dignity and personal responsibility. The case asserts that terminally ill, mentally competent Montanans have a protected right to choose aid in dying under the Montana State Constitution.”
The Montana Supreme Court reinforces living with dignity and personal responsibility saying, “We have chosen not to ‘march lock-step’ with the United States Supreme Court…we have held that Montana’s unique constitutional language affords citizens (of Montana) a greater right to privacy.” District Court Judge Jeffrey M. Sherlock wrote, “Montanans generally mind their own business and do not wish to restrict other people in their freedoms unless the exercise of those freedoms interferes with other members of society.” (Compassion & Choices).
Kathryn Tucker’s 2007 Montana Law Review article provides more detail on the state’s unusually strong protections for individual liberty, privacy, dignity and autonomy. “Such a case (as Baxter) asserts that mentally competent, terminally ill Montanans have a right protected under the Montana State Constitution’s guarantees of privacy and dignity to chose to control their own deaths by obtaining medications from their physician for this purpose.” (Compassion & Choices)
– Read Kathryn Tucker’s Montana Law Review article (PDF)
– Click here to view the Baxter vs. Montana complaint (PDF)
Written by Christian Nordqvist
Copyright: Medical News Today
Footnote: What cheers me up no end is that Washington was last month and now Montana this month. At long last common sense for the individual is becoming evident.
Right to Life welcomes the decision of the Chief Censor, Bill Hastings of the Office of Film &Literature Classification to classify the Dr Nitschke’s suicide video Objectionable.
The decision was made on 24 November 2008. The decision followed a written complaint against the video by Right to Life New Zealand made on 26 June 2008 and by The Society for the Protection of Community Standards.
The video was titled “The Peaceful Pill: Single Shot.” The video described how to manufacture the drug Nembutal a Class C drug contrary to the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975. The Censor stated in his judgment; “that the film promotes and encourages criminal acts by making them seem a completely normal and positive part of everyday life.” The judgment went on to say; “Any use of the film as a basis on which to manufacture a drug said to induce a peaceful death is more likely to cause a violent injury or death by accident.”
This historic decision of the Chief Censor is a victory for a culture of life and is the first time in New Zealand that a complaint has been upheld against Dr Philip Nitschke for promoting suicide through film or literature.
Right to Life is disappointed that the Chief Censor has rejected a similar complaint against the suicide video, “Doing it with Betty.”
The decision states that the film is classified as “unrestricted” This video demonstrates how a person may commit suicide with a plastic bag.
The Censor in his decision stated that; “The innocuous nature of this film’s content is unlikely to make its unrestricted availability injurious to the public good.”
Right to Life challenges this decision and will seek permission to have the decision reviewed by the Classification Review Office. It is understood that Dr Nitschke proposes to produce a further 14 suicide promotional videos. It is the intention of Right to Life to challenge these videos at the appropriate time by presenting a written complaint with the Office of Film and Literature Classification seeking to have them banned as “objectionable.”
The videos promote suicide as an option for the seriously ill and elderly. The videos promote a culture of death, attack our inalienable right to life and undermines the common good. It should be noted that Dr Nitschke has previously stated, that the knowledge he provides should be readily available to “anyone who wants it including the depressed the elderly bereaved, and the troubled teen.” Dr Nitschke seeks to promote suicide as a human right and a right to choose. Right to Life is committed to opposing the culture of death promoted by Dr Nitschke which is a threat to our whole community.
Our Society is committed to promoting a culture of life that upholds the right to life of every person from conception to natural death.
Footnote: If the law of the land promoting dignity with choice in the various dying processes…..long winded, painful, undignified, stoned into unconsciousness….Philip would be out of business. It is precisely because the Right to Life lobbyist think the ideal way to die is with suffering along with Christ on the Cross! then we wouldn’t have their shit inflicted on us!
Thank you for the applause but just to clarify, it wasn’t the first medal to be awarded, it was the second! Last year it was awarded to the couple who actually got DWDV up and running some 35 years ago, when it started in a suburban house briefly and then moved to Prahran.
I see myself as the recipient only in that I accept it on behalf of all activists, who’ve not the strength or energy that I could put into it. There are thousands who’ve been before me who are just more polite, less persistent, less determined but have put their heart and soul into selling the idea of VE to the masses!
Ken Smith, the Liberal Member for Bass in Victoria who had been set to propose the PAD Bill in Parliament in the Lower House, prior to its defeat in the Upper House (Colleen Hartland, Greens)….was in the audience and I gave him a very big hug for his support of us.
Rodney described me as “feisty” but my daughter thought more along the lines of “pig headed” and “stubborn”…
I’d picked up Judy Bayliss (MS sufferer from the Do Not Resuscitate doco) and she was there also at the presentation. I feel so humbled by the level of her disability and her continuing fight for survival. I don’t believe I have her courage to continue in the face of such severe disability….. It shows we each meet our level of capacity for pain and suffering in our own way. She is inspirational, but I know I couldn’t live like that.
It was a very great honor and very much appreciated.