October 26, 2014

‘Is there anybody out there?’ asks Darwin man Martin Burgess

Daily Mail Australia by Lillian Radulova

A 71-year-old terminally ill Darwin man has died in what has been described as a ‘clear cut case of suicide’ after appealing for euthanasia drugs over social media.

Martin Burgess had been suffering from rectal cancer, which soon spread through the rest of his body, for three years before he took to Youtube to describe his agony.

While Northern Territory police are investigating the death, according to the ABC, Exit International Founder Dr Philip Nitschke who helped Mr Burgess upload his plea for help on Youtube, told Daily Mail Australia that it was clear his internet call-out was anonymously answered.

Left with a permanent colostomy bag, constant muscle tension and nausea, Mr Burgess described his pain as ‘severe’ and feeling like he ‘had been kicked in the same spot for six weeks’.

‘Not being able to exert myself in any way has led to boredom and a feeling of uselessness,’ he said in a video uploaded to Youtube on August 21.

‘Waking up in the morning, even now, means the start of another day of pain, despair, nausea, loneliness, uselessness and sitting on the veranda wishing I was dead. Sadness is a constant companion, self-esteem is non-existent.’

In a second video, uploaded on August 30, the former federal candidate for euthanasia read out his phone number and address while pleading with viewers to send him a euthanasia drug.

‘I have approached Dignitas [an assisted dying organisation] in Switzerland and while I was medically accepted, the required paperwork was unavailable. And frankly I’d rather die here in Darwin in my own home than in a lingering death in palliative care.’

‘If there is anybody out there who could provide, supply or sell me enough of the euthanasia drug…, so I could have this choice, I would be very grateful.’

Mr Burgess was found dead in his home on Thursday by a friend who also found a note, according to Dr Nitschke.

‘It was a short note that thanked the Exit organisation and Youtube and mentioned that he had the support he wanted at the end,’ Dr Nitschke said.

‘He also made a point in the note about the suffering he was going through and that he couldn’t continue any longer – how taking his own life was a sensible option.’

Dr Nitschke also mentioned that the cancer sufferer had been in happy spirits a week before his death ‘because he had been successful with his appeal on the internet.’

‘What that did to him is he felt that he had some option, and he was pleased to know he had this choice. Before that he felt he would only grow worse and worse and more vulnerable before being forced out of his own environment and into a hospice,’ Dr Nitschke said.

Although Mr Burgess did not share his plan of suicide with him in his final days, Dr Nitschke described his death as a ‘clear cut case of suicide’ and compared it to the death of Perth man Laurie Strike.

At 84 years of age and suffering from an inoperable melanoma, Mr Strike’s Youtube plea for euthanasia drugs was successfully answered by someone from California who mailed the drugs to his home. He died ‘peacefully’ in April this year, according to Dr Nitschke.

The Exit International founder said there have been at least four other such cases that he knows of across Australia, involving people who were far too sick to seek other methods of finding the drugs.

However while suicide is not a crime anywhere in Australia, Dr Nitschke warns that anyone who helps a person with the act, ‘even if they are doing it out of compassion and love’ will find themselves in a ‘legal nightmare’.

Despite a short period of time in 1995 when euthanasia was legal in the Northern Territory, assisting someone with the act will now land someone a sentence of life imprisonment.

The same goes for anyone helping someone commit suicide in Queensland and West Australia while New South Wales, South Australia and Tasmania have a maximum penalty of 12 years in jail. Victoria’s maximum sentence for the crime is only five years.

Dr Nitschke said that both he and Mr Burgess were campaigning to change these laws and the Exit organisation has been increasingly, both in Australia and overseas, ‘making sure that people have access to drugs themselves’ so that their loved ones can avoid trouble with the law.