X-Message-Number: 7064
Date: Wed, 23 Oct 1996 21:27:23 -0700
From: David Brandt-Erichsen <>
Subject: "Death Machine"

Oct 15/96 

EUTHANASIA KIT AVAILABLE SOON ON INTERNET

MELBOURNE, Australia (Reuter) - Computer software and an instruction kit for
a death machine used in the world's first legal assisted suicide will soon
be available on the Internet, the Australian doctor who developed it said
Tuesday.

Dr. Philip Nitschke, who last month connected cancer sufferer Bob Dent to
the machine in Australia's outback Northern Territory, said Internet users
would be able to copy the software and instructions from a home page now
being developed.

"We see no reason in restricting it in any way," Nitschke told Reuters in
Melbourne, where he is due to demonstrate the machine at an euthanasia
conference this week.

The death machine used in the Northern Territory, which has the world's only
voluntary euthanasia law, enables people to give themslves lethal injections
with the tap of computer keys.

On Sept. 22, Nitschke hooked Dent up to the machine with an intravenous
tube. Dent, a 66-year-old former carpenter and one-time Christian
missionary, started the flow of lethal drugs by entering three simple
computer commands.

"Once the intravenous line is put into the patient ... then it's simple a
matter of the patient pressing the response to the questions on the screen,"
Nitschke said. The computer program asks three times if the patient wishes
to go ahead.

Dubbed Australia's "Dr. Death" by opponents of assisted suicide, Nitschke
said the idea of an euthanasia home page was a response to strong interest
in Dent's death and the new law, atlhough he said he was having some
logistical problems getting the page up and running.

An estimated 50 million people use the worldwide Internet computer network.

"It's to let people know and give them some idea of the way this is being
done in a responsible fashion in the Northern Territory,'' he said, adding
he had already sent how-to-do-it kits overseas and around Australia using
electronic mail.

Nitschke described his machine as a "slicker" version of the suicide device
designed by U.S. euthanasia advocate Dr. Jack Kevorkian, who has publicly
acknowledged attending more than 40 deaths since he began his
assisted-suicide crusade in 1990.

A doctor cannot lawfully hook a patient up to the machine anywhere outside
the Northern Territory, whether overseas or in Australia's six states and
other territory, Nitschke said.

But he dismissed suggestions he could face criminal charges if a machine
built from material supplied on the Internet was used in mercy killings
outside the remote outback jurisdiction.

"I feel very safe as far as giving the details of the equipment and as far
as providing the software and the like," he said. The software is a
"trivial" part of the device, he added.

The software and equipment needed to build the machine are very simple and
can be bought for around $160, though the lethal drugs are extremely
difficult to obtain, he said.

He said he was now developing another death machine which used carbon
monoxide and an oxygen mask, enabling people to end their lives without
needing someone to insert intravenous tubes.

"When people get too old and frail it can be very difficult to get access to
veins and gas is a much easier way to go, and carbon monoxide is a painless
and acceptable way ...," he said.


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