November 21, 2014

AMA is out of step with the community by opposing voluntary euthanasia

Terry Sweetman, The Courier Mail

POPE Francis was preaching to the immovable last week when he declared assisted suicide was a symptom of a “throw-away culture’’.

But opinion polls suggest that, like the Catholic ruling on contraception, injunctions against voluntary euthanasia might increasingly be more honoured in the breach than the observance.

The Pope doggedly called on doctors to take “courageous and against the grain” decisions to uphold church teachings on the dignity of life (or death in real speak).

With what I believe is no less authority or passion, I say his views on the motivations for voluntary euthanasia are utterly offensive and call on doctors to go with the grain of public opinion.

Professional medical bodies are as implacable as the churches and the political establishment when it comes to running against the grain of public opinion on voluntary euthanasia.

Public support for voluntary euthanasia as high as 85 per cent is ignored by lawmakers and our churches, despite backing from more 65 per cent of people who identify as Christians.

Professional medical bodies around the world are generally bastions of conservatism, which might not be an entirely bad thing.

We know, for example, that the opposition to assisted dying by Australian Medical Association and other professional bodies is greatly at odds with public opinion.

But you could reasonably wonder how much they are in touch with their own members who might be called on to open the door for people on the way out.

If the AMA knows, it isn’t telling us. It welcomes debate but seems less enthusiastic about counting heads.

The prospect of having to actually prescribe or administer death-dealing drugs means professional opinion is unlikely to exactly mirror public opinion. (The number of farsighted people who tell me they have stockpiles of exit drugs suggests medical unions could be partly dealing themselves out of the action.)

But, there is definite, if unquantifiable, support for death with dignity from the Doctors’ Reform Association and Doctors for Voluntary Euthanasia Choice.

Adelaide DVEU member Dr Rosemary Jones was recently quoted as saying: “If you scratched the numbers hard enough, the majority of the medical community would support legalising voluntary euthanasia”. Who knows?

Media reports during recent debate on euthanasia proposals in Tasmania and South Australia confirm that the AMA policy does not speak for all its members.

It is worth noting that even a Victorian study 26 years ago found 62 per cent of doctors surveyed agreed that it was “sometimes right for a doctor to take active steps to bring about the death of a patient who has requested the doctor to do this’’.

A not inconsiderable 29 per cent of those who responded said they had taken active steps to bring about the death of a patient when requested by the patient.

Another survey of 854 Victorian doctors in 2007 found 302 had been asked at least once to hasten someone’s death by giving them drugs. Of that number, about a third said they had agreed.

Way back, a paper by Professor Riaz Hassan concluded, “older male doctors, especially the general practitioners, and those who had no religious affiliation or were Protestants had taken active steps (to end life) more often than the others’’. File it away.

We will never know precisely how many doctors support the AMA’s stand, how many oppose it and how many just sit around a waiting room reading old medical journals.

It wouldn’t be the first time union leadership ignored the wishes of dues-paying members but it is worrying that monolithic bodies presume to speak for all those who are stakeholders in maintaining or changing crucial laws.

But the world is moving on, even if Australia remains chained to the past. The British Medical Association is similarly opposed to voluntary euthanasia, but its number two man, Dr Kailish Chand, believes a change in the law to allow assisted suicide is inevitable within a couple of years.

Here, people seeking to help others exercise their will continue to face the risk of prosecution or loss of medical licences.

Peter Nugent, representing campaigner Dr Phlip Nitschke as he tries to regain his medical licence, believes euthanasia is perceived as “a dangerous idea” because it seeks to undermine “the power and mystique of the medical profession and in turn empower the individual to make his or her own choices”.

It would be nice if more members of the medical profession put up their hands and turned that power and mystique into a force for the rights of individuals.

I lambaste politicians for their refusal to heed public opinion when it comes to euthanasia but doctors by their silence invite similar condemnation.

Millions of Australians need their help now, just as they might when it comes to choosing the time, the place and the manner of their deaths.