November 1, 2015

Silencing Philip Nitschke won’t stop need for death with dignity

Terry Sweetman, The Courier-Mail

Silencing euthanasia advocate Philip Nitschke won’t stop need for death with dignity

EVEN before attending a Dying With Dignity meeting, I understood the inevitability of the former and the uncertainty of the latter.

People might face death bravely, stoically or even cavalierly, but they never beat it.

And, I have seen little that suggests much in the way of dignity in the way many people die.

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Some do it more bravely and graciously than others, but it’s often pretty undignified and often unnecessarily so.

But what I did learn as a guest of DWD was that at least some members had made provision for

Good manners precluded asking over coffee exactly how they planned to do it, but it was reasonable to assume they might be relying on some of the “end of life strategies” proffered by Dr Philip Nitschke.

They might have included the suffocating “exit bag”, the CoGen device to generate carbon monoxide, various barbiturates and then a do-it-yourself kit to test the quality of covertly obtained Nembutal.

This was knowledge shared by Nitschke in books and under the label of Exit International.

DWD campaigns for “the right to legal assistance to achieve a peaceful, dignified death subject to appropriate safeguards and at the specific request of the person concerned’’ and is at pains to distance itself from Exit International and Nitschke.

DWD is the sort of quiet toiler, while Nitschke was the bloke banging at the door.

However, Nitschke provided the means for those who can’t wait until DWD manages to talk sense to government.

Many people were uncomfortable with Nitschke’s approach, although he reckoned his various strategies offered infinitely more dignity than, say, hanging, which he described as “an embarrassment and shame’’.

Even more were uncomfortable with Nitschke’s belief in “rational suicide” and the fact that he no longer believed voluntary euthanasia should be available only to the terminally ill.

He believed that people afraid of getting old and incapacitated should also have a choice.

Some were uncomfortable about young people allegedly taking their lives with a drug promoted by Exit.

Philip Nitschke has been allowed keep his medical registration in the Northern Territory but must stop giving people advice on ending their lives.

And none was more uncomfortable than the medical establishment, which fretted over his interaction with a suicidal man who was not terminally ill when he took his own life.

And then the Medical Board of Australia – the godfathers of the trade – went after him over a bunch of complaints including one of applying to the Therapeutic Goods Administration for terminally ill people to get special access to a potentially fatal sedative.

Another complaint was made about a talk he gave to doctors in Western Australia about assisted death. Lordie!

There was a lot of legal and quasi-legal dancing, but the end result was that the board allowed Nitschke to keep his medical registration in the Northern Territory, so long as he stops providing people with advice on how to end their lives.

It imposed a list of 25 conditions for Nitschke to stay in the medical trade but basically they boiled down to him not doing what he does best and not doing what best drives him.

So, for now, the public face of voluntary euthanasia is silenced and one avenue for the purchase of drugs or devices to sidestep the strictures of the law and the medical establishment is blocked.

I suspect that had Nitschke been a suburban practitioner, he would have eventually fallen foul of the establishment because of his flamboyance and defiance of orthodoxy.

Shirley Justins was sentenced to periodic detention after being found guilty of manslaughter of partner Graeme Wylie using Nembutal, but had the conviction later quashed.

The same qualities might well cause laypeople to shy off him and see his beliefs as too extreme and too liberal.

I can see many reasons why he might not have been the ideal advocate for voluntary euthanasia, let alone a crusader for “rational suicide’’.

But, in the face of a clear and lamentable lack of leadership from the medical establishment (or even public debate), and a craven absence of action from our politicians, Nitschke was about as good as it gets for those who claim the freedom to end their lives at a time and in a manner of their choosing.

DWD will labour on, gradually enlisting supporters and ambassadors, and it will eventually convince the politicians to yield to the public will.

But, in the meantime, many will be forced to suffer unnecessary pain and indignity in their last days or to resort to illegality to exercise their ultimate rights.

Nitschke himself expects that Australia will eventually legislate for a, “very, very conservative,” form of euthanasia, but he reckons that the growing number of people importing their own euthanasia drugs, “really don’t care if the law is changed or not’’.

The medical board should understand that while it might, for now, control our access to drugs and devices and silence euthanasia advocates and helpers, it has no moral mortgage over the right to end our lives.

If mainstream medicine won’t help us, we will sorely miss Nitschke and his Exit door.