The author’s intent would appear to be the complete denunciation of euthanasia, given that he is the Director of HOPE: preventing euthanasia & assisted suicide.

However, the article doesn’t make this case. It simply makes it very clear that checks and balances need to be in place. That’s all.

What about those who are finding life unbearable, in a manner that cannot be remedied? Should they not have the right to euthanasia services?

Yes they should. And something that is carefully and properly managed SHOULD be implemented.

< … the Dutch Health Minister admitted in their parliament recently that her department is 'considering' setting up mobile euthanasia death squads. >

Death squads??

This sort of over-the-top emotive language doesn't help the author present a balanced view!

In principle, the notion of the Dutch Government improving euthanasia assistance… along with all manner of other assistance for the ill and elderly… has my support.

Paul Russell is right to sound a warning on this. It echoes rather disturbingly the original Nazi concept of "a life unworthy to be lived" that was used to establish what Dr Tessa Chelouche describes as the "biomedical paradigm [which] provided the theoretical basis for allowing those sworn to the Hippocratic principle of nonmaleficence to kill in the name of the state".

This conceptual shift culminated in a medicalized killing programme that still today generates moral revulsion in all decent human beings. The medical profession in Nazi Germany, like the Courts, were too easily seduced into accepting that the value of life is differential, and not equal, inherent and inalienable as was subsequently recognized in the Universal Declaration principles and codified in all subsequent UN human rights Covenants.

Those who framed the inalienable right to life protections in the international covenants on human rights were no ivory tower academics. Drafters like the brilliant jurist René Cassin lost close family members in the atrocities of World War II, many of them in 'legal' routine medicalized killing programmes that had 'shocked the conscience of mankind'

Blueprints for medicalized killing cannot be offered by governments or private clinics as a legitimate response to the suicidal distress of any person as it is in violation of the fundamental human rights principle of inalienability. Human beings cannot be deprived of the substance of their rights, not in any circumstances, not even at their own request.

While every person with a terminal illness has a right to refuse burdensome medical treatments intended to prolong life, no one has a right to demand of one's carers a medical intervention intended to kill. And no government has authority to provide such an ignominious 'service'.

As soon as you invoke the Nazi analogy, you've lost. If you don't have better arguments than that, quit now.

I thought it was a rather delicious humorous article when I started it. almost all the actual facts were either wrong or wildly exaggerated in the best tradition of writing comic strips. However reading the first comments it would appear that some people actually still take this attempt to deny proper legal euthanasia seriously.

All that needs to be said is that it is always entirely the patients own choice and all the safeguards go towards ensuring the validity of their own choices.

The most incredible comment comes towards the end.
" is it not a legitimate role of the doctor to avoid a direct answer on such a question " If my doctor refused to discuss this question I would change the doctor. Putting your head in the sand is usually a very unwise thing to do

The Dutch are far from stupid or gullible. I am sure than anyone who knew the history of how the Dutch suffered at the hands of the Nazis would not have made that fatuous comparison. The Dutch would find it extemely offensive.

The Swiss could already be ahead of the Dutch on all this.

Last time I checked, they had two voluntary euthanasia organisations
operating, Dignitas and Exit. One of them indeed does come to
peoples homes on request. I've had friends attend these services.
After much scrutiny beforehand, the actual service can involve close
friends and family and can be a very dignified and moving experience.

I see no reason why we Australians should not have a similar choice.
I have no intention of struggling and gasping until my last breathe
in some palliative care unit, whilst the providers of that service
are cashing in.

Is the author of this article perhaps a Catholic ?

The question we all need to ask is why, as a society, we come up with mobile euthanasia units as a solution to poor palliative care. As seen in this article, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/8949141/Third-of-hospitals-and-care-home-breaking-dignity-laws.html, it is no wonder that our elderly despair and consider assisted suicide. Shouldn't we be providing mobile palliative care units and alleviating suffering and depression?! Since when has death become the answer that medical practitioners offer to both physical and psychological medical problems?

I agree with Yabby. After considering this issue, preparing myself to see my heart specialist, after a bad night , and sending the data from my page maker computer chip over the phone to him early this morning.

Also what I learnt from my visits to the Netherlands, is that the Dutch government is much more democratic than we are, the length of time and effort they take to discuss issues like this.

A load of unmitigated emotive drivel, obviously penned by a religious bigot with no compunction about distorting the facts, whilst holding up to ridicule a genuine effort by an enlightened secular government to tackle the most pressing problem presently facing the developed countries. Would that our politicians were similarly enlightened, and similarly free from fear of a right wing voter backlash.
Add to that the disgusting lampooning of the sufferings engendered by Nazism - sufferings disproportionaly felt by the Dutch people themselves - and you have an article without any mitigating merit whatsoever.
Shame on you

What the Dutch are doing sounds like a great idea, once you get through the twisted, vile logic and rhetoric of the author.

Russell’s article is intended to frighten. It is but another example of the Christian right attempting to foist their narrow views onto the Australian population. By adding dubious and emotional phrasing after quote mining, this piece of nonsense is demonstrably void of substance.

It is quite sad that the more extremist parts of religion involve itself with these conspiratorial-like scenarios where an ‘evil’ humanity is out to do harm to others. Their own faith-induced paranoid fears about death and dying drive this irrational behaviour.

It is a bit much to assume that 80% of an informed population who want a system of voluntary euthanasia introduced, are not capable of coming to that conclusion by thinking about the matter. Even surveys of religious folk are not far behind that figure.

There is a slippery-slope at work here; it is the fact that specific religious carrot and stick indoctrination of children can lead some down the path of a lifelong journey of ever expanding self-righteous irrationality
.
Legal voluntary euthanasia will become law sooner or later. It will happen because level headed and compassionate people who have not lost the power of empathy will make it so. Those who have surrendered their minds to superstition will not prevail.

David

This was indeed a very emotive article, and a load of rubbish!

I am not an advocate of INvoluntary Euthanasia, but am a passionate advocate of voluntary Euthanasia.
At the end of the day, I have no problem with any palliative person refusing euthanasia , if they want to suffer on until the very 'natural' end. Many people won't need to ask for it anyway.

I just don't want any palliative person who does request euthanasia, being refused it by those who think they know better.

I am involved in providing palliative care in the community, and I am sorry to tell you all that it doesn't always work, unfortunately.

Australia has some of the best Palliative care methods in the world, and yet there are still some dying patients who we can't really help, especially those with terrible vomiting, nausea and loose bowels, that doesn't respond to medications.

All the countries that have legalized Euthanasia have strict guidelines in place, and I am sure Australia will learn by their mistakes when the time comes to let compassion overtake the old-fashioned religious superstitions of the past, and legalize Euthanasia.

Walk a mile in my shoes, and see if you change your' mind about legalizing Euthanasia...

What really gripes most people on this topic of legal voluntary euthanasia is the disingenuous tactics used by those in opposition to it. The article in question is a fine example.

Believing that a god gives life and only a god can take life is fine, but not everyone accepts that. Distorting the political process on this premise using fallacious argument is an absolute disgrace. It is more of a disgrace that religious organisations promoting that they have the ‘moral’ truth involve themselves with lying.

It boils down to a simple choice. If you do not wish to avail yourself of legal voluntary euthanasia, then don’t.

These persistent attempts of frightening the population into compliance with narrow fundamentalist views are working with some politicians and members of the public, but they are becoming lesser and lesser in numbers.

David

*when the time comes to let compassion overtake the old-fashioned religious superstitions of the past*

Well Suze, sadly I think you will find that you are up against the
enormous lobbying powers of a massively wealthy Catholic Church
here. Every time in the past when I have investigated these lobby
groups, be it about family planning, abortion or euthanasia, the
Catholic Church turns up.

Why can't they just come clean and tell us that its part of their
dogma and they want to enforce it on the rest of us.

Of course palliative care is also a major income stream for the
Catholic Church, the way that I understand it.

But of course our Catholic politicians would want their promised
ticket to heaven, so I'd be surprised if they go against their
church unless the public expresses massive outrage.

We can only hope and keep protesting. With enough people power,
even Australian Catholic politicians will have to take notice.

Yabby

...You appear to be falling into the trap of “conspiracy theories”. (Vis-a-vis. AJ)

A 'death squad' that gives you the choice. What a sketch the Monty Python team could have made out of that!

As usual the Dutch are ahead of the curve and what we need is balanced consideration of euthanasia in the modern context. Hyperbolic comparisons with Nazi Germany are not helpful. Before the modern era it'd have been common practice to smother a loved one with a pillow, either to end suffering or an unaffordable drain on the families' means--there'd also have been instances of inexcusable murder, but one likes to think compassion or desperate straights were the primary motives.
Modern technology has not only extended life beyond salubrious usefulness, it's fostered the delusion that life must be clung to for as long as possible, even when all quality of life and all "hope" are gone. What is this "hope" I emphasise that holds on "when there is nothing in you/Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"?
Kipling intended the sentiment for the business of life, and not holding on tenaciously against the comfort of death when there's nothing left to hope for.
Of course we have to be on the watch for inevitable abuses, but because mistakes or crimes are possible, it doesn't alter the fact that a compassionate and thrifty death is far better than an agonising and costly one, especially when such is the wish of the subject. And I don't see anything objectionable about death on wheels; just as legitimate as home birthing.
Indeed, after a certain age I think it's illegitimate to seek to preserve life. If someone is fortunate enough to be long-lived and physically and mentally strong enough to sustain it, good for them, but advanced old age should be the favour of fortune and not the grotesquery of science, especially when so many young people die needlessly and could be saved for a fraction of the cost.
The emphasis is all wrong, it should be on the quality of life and not longevity. We're a decadent and depressive race, saddled with the incongruous compensation of a laboriously eked-out dotage.
I vote for voluntary euthanasia and palliative care for those on whom there is no justification for expensive or futile medical procedures.

Yes Yabby, you are correct that the Catholic Church is heavily into providing Palliative Care services and hospices in the community, to their credit.

However, even if Voluntary Euthanasia does become legal, I still don't see it being so popular that it would take away any significant 'business' from Palliative Care organisations.

Agreeing to actually lay there and watch someone give you that last injection is actually quite confronting, unless you are in extreme pain or discomfort with your disease.

Luckily, these days, most palliative patient's symptoms are able to be alleviated for the most part. That's why I don't understand the extreme anti-euthanasia stance by mainly religious objectors.

As many are aware, the medical world already quietly does its own form of 'euthanasia', albeit at a much later time than most dying patients request it.

These doctors are compassionate people who skirt around the edges of the law to do something for desperate people that the spineless Government won't legalise, due to a selfish minority of objectors who wouldn't know 'Christian compassion' if it jumped up and bit them on the bottom...

'due to a selfish minority of objectors who wouldn't know 'Christian compassion' if it jumped up and bit them on the bottom...'

Oh Susi they might know secular or Muslim or Hindu compassion. Would you like to define the difference. Next you will be telling me it is those involved in the money making abortion industry that are the compassionate ones who butcher children. Of course no pictures of the suffering children are allowed unlike the focus on suffering oldies.

And not one mention of buddha?....how typical of a 5 million year old transitional:)

Runner:).....thanks for all the in-sights......but as a man/woman stands.....not one of any human existence can hold a card as the evidence spills out over the deck, like a gutted fish.

Darwin was quoted with-in his beliefs......."its out with old, and in with new"......just as nature in-tended.

Dutch death squads, "Oh Susi they might know secular or Muslim or Hindu compassion.

Whats the connection again?

Sorry I have the flue...ah...chooo!

CACTUS

Yet another paid executive of the Catholic church who would force his unthinking, unimaginative,feeble beliefs upon the rest of us. The author of this article is not interested in tolerance or compassion; he does not respect non-religious views; he wants theocratic subjugation.