X-Message-Number: 7042
Date: Mon, 14 Oct 1996 11:20:54 +1000 (EAST)
From:  (Kitty te Riele)
Subject: Australia update

The paper version of the SMH (but not the Web page) this morning (14/10/96)
had an item on Dr Nitzschke travelling to the UK to argue for legalising
voluntary euthanasia there.  A British woman with motor neurone disease
would like to use his computer-kit for euthanasia.

Below is part of a feature on Dr Nitzschke, Sydney Morning Herald, 12
October 1996.


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 PROFILE: PHILIP NITZSCHKE

 October 12, 1996

 DEATH BECOMES HIM

[....... deleted .........]


[Dr Nitzschke] broke his ankle in a truck accident and it was while
recovering in Darwin Hospital that he decided to study medicine: "I was so
appalled by my treatment, the complete loss of control. I wanted to
understand the culture better." He never really warmed to the mostly
wealthy medical students at Sydney University. He lived in a squat,
graduating aged 42.
 Through his after-hours practice, AusDoc, Nitschke has taken on
unfashionable medicine. Many of his patients are homeless people, known in
Darwin as "long-grassers". For years he has fought the NT Government's
refusal to introduce a methadone program, and it has fought back, labelling
him a publicity-seeker and a radical.
 But right now, Nitschke is receiving plaudits from conservative
politicians for his stand on voluntary euthanasia, and he is surprising
himself by quite enjoying it. "I'm getting right into it now; I'm wearing a
tie every day," he says with a self-mocking tone. "It's amazing that you
suddenly find yourself thinking the same as Jeff Kennett. How can this
happen?"
 It happened on Sunday, September 22, the day he helped 66-year-old Bob
Dent to die in his Darwin home, via lethal drugs administered by a laptop
computer. Dutch doctors have been helping terminally ill patients to end
their lives for 20 years under a complex series of regulations, and
Australian doctors admit that it goes on furtively, but Dent's death was
the first under legislation anywhere in the world.
 His plea for an end to five years of suffering with prostate cancer was
hard to argue against, even for opponents of voluntary euthanasia, but his
death has somehow challenged the nation's ethical philosophy. Terminally
ill people now had the right to ask doctors to help end their lives. The
quality of a person's life could take precedence over life's sanctity.
Something profound had happened.
 Nitschke dissociates himself from the Australian Medical Association,
which declares that voluntary euthanasia is unethical. He sees the body,
which represents just under half of Australia's doctors, as elite and
powerful, anxious to maintain control.
 All the same, he was scarred by the experience of helping a person to die.
He felt like an executioner and wept when Dent's life finally ended. At the
press conference to announce that the first person had used the law, he was
no longer the strident campaigner, but softly spoken and humbled.
[......... deleted ......]
 Nitschke believes Dent may have been the first and last to use the
legislation. A private member's bill to overturn the law in Federal
Parliament is up for debate this month, and there is a High Court challenge
in November.
 NITSCHKE now doubts his own involvement with euthanasia: "I always thought
euthanasia was a rather trivial issue that I got caught up in and then I
got annoyed about [AMA opposition], and when I got annoyed it made me feel
less like giving in. It is a freedom-of-the-individual issue, which I see
as important, but in terms of the sum total of human suffering, it's a
small issue. The number of people is small; it's not going to make much
difference."
 If he doubts his own involvement, he is also disillusioned with the
voluntary euthanasia movement, a loosely linked group of State-based
associations. He says he will not be renewing his membership.
 He found them jittery and critical when he was facing constant rejections
from doctors "too gutless" to help. (The law requires the signatures of
three doctors, including a specialist and a psychiatrist.) Some advised him
not to help patients under the law until the High Court brought down its
decision.
[.. deleted ....]
He admires the "wisdom and cunning" of the architect of the NT's law, the
former chief minister Marshall Perron, but says euthanasia supporters are a
strange breed.
 "Their obsession with the one issue is to the point of an inability to be
compassionate with, say, intravenous drug users. It's very disappointing to
me that a group of people who are so very compassionate about one group in
society, terminally ill people who want to make use of voluntary euthanasia
legislation, are so uncharitable with any other vulnerable group." His
relationship with the president of the NT Voluntary Euthanasia Society,
Lynda Cracknell, is strained, but she will say little publicly: "We're here
for the long haul and we can't afford to be dumping on each other ...
Philip's strengths are also his weaknesses. Certainly sometimes he has made
comments unwisely."
[....... deleted ........]


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Kitty te Riele


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