Australian politicians are the very last people who should be making decisions on people's lives and deaths. It should be a matter for the individual.

So David, you would support a 15-year-old who lays claim to her “human right to VAD” on the grounds that she is heart-broken after breaking up with her boyfriend and feels life is no longer worth living?

After all, you say: “We don’t need doctors involved. . . . there is no need to assess people (except for decision making capacity)”, and that it is fallacious to say that, “children don’t have decision-making capacity, they can’t make important decisions about their lives”.

To provide her with VAD would meet your requirements of “respecting her individual autonomy and not discriminating”. You would be recognising her “right to access VAD so that (her) quality of life is not reduced below what (she) considers to be an acceptable threshold”
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The survey you favourably quote says the only criteria needed for VAD are, “a person has decision making capacity, is well informed, and makes a voluntary decision”. Well, this girl should easily meet those criteria. Don’t forget, you wrote that “discriminating based on the degree or type of suffering, life expectancy, age” is ethically wrong
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Essentially you are advocating for giving assistance to anyone, anytime who wishes to kill themselves. Hmmm.

I disagree.

While there's life there is hope. Nearly 8 years ago I was told I had an inoperable brain tumour. Now the average life span for brain cancer is 14 months. With less than 2% making past 5 years, and none making past 7.

I had my second brain scan a couple of months ago and apart from some scar tissue was given an all clear.

Had I listened to the nincompoop author, I'd have taken an arm full of poison years ago.

Hardly a week goes by without some new miracle cure being discovered. And we've had miracle cancer cure, the alpha particle bismuth 213, for over half a century.
Alan B.

Good for you, Alan. However, our lives are OURS, not some crappy politician's or 'expert's'. Most of these trashy people don't believe in God, but they act like Gods themselves.

It's OK to have minors getting their bodies mutilated without any consent from even their parents. Big Brother says so! But, some poor old bugger suffering and fed up with life and the Brave New World, has to continue suffering.

These arrogant, dictatorial bastards are now saying that paracetamol will be restricted - fewer tablets to the packet - because too many people are overdosing. People who have been advised by their doctors to take up to six Panadol Osteo for their osteoarthritis will have to beg for it; all because a few people (no numbers quoted of course) overdosed on paracetamol, deliberately or accidentally, who knows?

Australia is now a bloody awful country for the sick and the old, thanks to that dreadful creature, Albanese, who seems intent on taking us back to the Dark Ages with everything he does.

VAD isn't for depression! Nobody should kill themselves simply because they're having a bad day. There are things we can reverse, death ain't one of them.
Alan B.

Alan

I like the idea of people making their own decisions and not having politicians, bureaucrats and social media doing it for them.

Of course death is irreversible; that's why some people seek it.