When are the terminally ill terminally ill David? We have been able to cure alleged terminal illness for over fifty years David in day clinics and with bismuth 213.

Instead, big pharma with their of bought and paid for pollies continue to advocate that thorium-based power or research into same remained prohibited? As they made squillions from chemo, a treatment derived from chemicals used in WW1 to kill thousands if not millions as they cowered in trenches. It's toxic and destroys healthy cells along with the cancerous ones.

This prohibition of thorium has given big pharma the time needed to bring on its inferior to bismuth 213 treatments, which include peptides and or nanoparticles that selectively attack cancer or even Parkinson's disease.

This prohibition has also served the interests of the 3 trillion a year fossil fuel industry and big nuclear alike!

As for assisted suicide, you have guns, David and like anyone here in this wide brown land has a choice of many other options including falling under the wheels of the tractor or in a single vehicle accident with a conveniently located tree, swerving to avoid the odd roo forced by the worst drought in living memory to graze on well travelled roadsides.

As someone suffering an alleged terminal illness, I take extreme issue with your callused indifference and ask why aren't you of all people out there fighting to have this prohibition on life-saving treatment lifted. I too have lost count of the number of lives I snuffed out! But with better reasons than mere convenience!?

Instead of using ungentlemanly language to attack Green Senators? Get right up their fundamental with a war for cheaper power and without exception, that power is none other than green hated Nuclear power. I'm informed at this moment we have only 2 grams of bismuth 213 in the entire world?

Without which we die in far greater numbers than the annual road toll! What are you there for!?
Alan B.

Yes!

Identifying religion with denying others the freedom to die, is harmful to religion.

Let any two sane people who freely and clearly agree for one to kill the other, do so without legal consequences. This, however, does not mean that there will be no adverse spiritual consequences - of course there will and I do not recommend such action!

The dying need to be treated as special...not put down like animals as did Senator Leyonhjelm in his previous life. Clever and all as is my Moggie, I can guarantee none of the animals he put down, he had ever come home to find them having painted the ceiling of their kennels like the Sistine Chapel ...the difference between humans and animals Senator! And may I hasten to assure Alan B, just how special is he ..an unrepeatable miracle !! And how I hope he will be among us for a long time yet ! In my previous life I was a registered nurse and condemn such favorite lies as repeatedly told by assisted suicide advocates like the Senator: "When treating the terminally ill, doctors routinely ramp up the morphine beyond what is necessary in the knowledge that this will likely kill the patient. In many of these cases, it is done despite being well aware that the patient has never given consent to such action." What a vile insult to doctors and nurses. Morphine calibrated as it is by today's doctors and nurses DOES NOT KILL..the FAILURE to relieve pain hastens death which is ultimately brought about by disease. Senator Hanson- Young's policies are anathema to me but Senator Leyonhjelm's smutty insult to her, said more about him than her. I am only the third post to his OLO contribution today which speaks volumes for the support he has... with all the usual red herrings e.g. the "Christian" Kevin Andrews...when you have to stoop to subtle sectarian bigotry to prosecute an argument, your argument must be pretty hollow ..as the book beside me Assisted Suicide: The Liberal, Humanist Case Against, testifies. It is written by Kevin Yuill, an atheist from the University of Sunderland UK. Don't try that on Senator.This is NOT an issue peculiar to Christians..Catholics in particular

*…In my previous life as a veterinarian I lost count of the number of domestic animals I euthanised…*

In my previous life as a killer, I lost count of the number of animals I euthanised.

Try working in an abattoir, on the slaughter floor. It makes women kill their husbands with ease, and hang their skins on the back verandah to dry, stew up his remains and feed the stew to the kids for dinner…(Aberdeen NSW, 1980’s).

God had a major decision to make earlier on. Give animals immortality, or introduce death and regeneration. He chose the latter.

Now we have death to deal with. Thanks God!

I've met plenty of people in life I wished death on: you know what? Most of them are dead now, so just be patient, death comes soon enough!

//Clever and all as is my Moggie, I can guarantee none of the animals he put down, he had ever come home to find them having painted the ceiling of their kennels like the Sistine Chapel//

Your keep your cat in a kennel? Weird. Also really, really bad for native wildlife. Those wretched beasts (the cats, not the cute little birdies and stuff) should be kept indoors at night. And during the day. Actually, what's best is just not to keep them at all.

Another important difference is that animals don't ask to be put down. As with many of the services performed by veterinarians, such as neutering and microchipping, we as pet owners decide what is in our pet's best interests on their behalf because they can't. My dog is quite clever in her own special way, but I don't think she'd fully grasp the concept of 'informed consent'. People are different; they can make their own decisions and communicate what they want to other people.

//Morphine calibrated as it is by today's doctors and nurses DOES NOT KILL//

It does with a sufficient dose. Mind you, so does everything else. The dose makes the poison.

//Senator Hanson- Young's policies are anathema to me but Senator Leyonhjelm's smutty insult to her, said more about him than her. I am only the third post to his OLO contribution today which speaks volumes for the support he has//

Don't make the mistake of thinking that just because people dislike Senator Whatshisface they don't support voluntary euthanasia. That would be an ad hominem fallacy. The case for euthanasia stands or falls on its own merits, not the fact that Dave is a bit of a turd.

And it's not like he's the only politician in favour of it. There are quite a few, on both sides of the fence, and they aren't all quite so barking mad as Dave.

Just last year here in NSW a voluntary euthanasia bill was defeated in the Legislative Council 20 to 19 - as slim a margin as possible. It's really only a matter of time before we get voluntary euthanasia. I suspect it probably won't be the end of the world. And hey, if people are that bothered about it they can always not get euthanased. It is voluntary, after all.

//This is NOT an issue peculiar to Christians..Catholics in particular//

No, of course not. It works the other way as well; it's not just godless heathens and followers of 'alternative' faiths that are in favour. I know a few Catholics that are.

Anyone ignorant enough to compare humans with animals will always come to the wrong conclusions.

runner: Hear, hear and well said!
Alan B.

//Anyone ignorant enough to compare humans with animals will always come to the wrong conclusions.//

We are animals, runner. We're primates, and all primates are animals.

We are animals, runner. We're primates, and all primates are animals.
Toni Lavis,
Lemmings too.

//Lemmings too.//

Nope, they're rodents not primates.

It goes Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species. Or at least it did when I learnt taxonomy. So for humans, it's:

Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Primates
etc.

Whereas lemmings go:

Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Rodentia
etc.

Whatever Toni... but what we are really talking about can be summed up in five words. You just don't kill people ! What Victoria has is extra judicial state sanctioned killing...that is after June 2019 ..and if the Andrews' government's takeaway box of poisons legislation hasn't been repealed. Just give me ONE reason why Australia wouldn't go down the same path as those countries who have legalised patient killing have...where after being drugged via your coffee against your will, you can be held down by your family while the doctor injects you with a lethal drug dose. Check this out with the local equivalent of our Medical Board if..at your own peril ...you refuse to believe this. Victoria's doctor prescribed assisted suicide hasn't even been implemented and there are cries it doesn't go far enough!

If doctors are increasing morphine doses to kill people that's exactly why legalising euthanasia would pose a risk to people - i.e. doctors can't be trusted to do the right thing. Nor can relatives of older people who might want to inherit. See Paul Keating's comments along these lines. It's got nothing to do with religion, it's just common sense.

.

Dear WilliamS,

.

You wrote :

« … legalising euthanasia would pose a risk to people … it's just common-sense »

That’s true, WilliamS. Life itself poses a risk to people. That’s common-sense too.

According to one of my cancer specialist friends in the medical profession, the current common-sense management of euthanasia is better than all hell breaking loose if the lawyers got hold of it.

Maybe, but, in my view, euthanasia is a question for the person to decide, not the medical profession.

In the 15-44 age bracket (people in the prime of life) the leading cause of death in Australia for the period 2014-2016 was suicide.

From age 45 and over, coronary heart disease was the principal cause of death, lung cancer, dementia and Alzheimer vying for second place :

http://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/life-expectancy-death/deaths-in-australia/contents/leading-causes-of-death

So, in all probability, that’s what awaits us, my friend.

I can understand that some people would prefer to have a peaceful and painless death in a warm, cosy environment – not just those people suffering from a terminal illness, but also all those who decide to take their own lives.

It will not happen overnight but we must prepare for a radical change in our attitude towards life and death. Democracy and justice are solidly anchored in an ocean of inertia by the massive iron chains of archaic religious dogma in a position of opposition to the most fundamental of human rights. Our democracy and justice have been insensitive far too long to the pain and suffering of people wishing to lawfully exercise their natural right to life and death.

Given the current state of the law, they are left with no other choice but to have recourse, alone with their solitude and in a terrible state of despair, to the most barbaric, inhuman and expeditious methods in order to carry out their macabre enterprise.

Naturally, there is a need for safeguards to protect the vulnerable from the malevolent influence of ill-intentioned persons in their entourage. Just as the ill and suffering must have full, unrestricted access to the best available professional palliative care.

.

//You just don't kill people !//

Well you got that right at least: no, I don't kill people. Most people don't kill people. But some people do kill people. Some of these people commit the crime of murder, and we lock those people up. But some of them are soldiers, and if they're particularly good soldiers and kill lots of people we give them special honours and afford them more respect than other soldiers - even though the people they killed may been blameless of any wrongdoing of being conscripted into the wrong army.

And it's remarkable, once you drill down a little bit, how many vehement anti-euthanasia campaigners are in favour of capital punishment.

So much for just not killing people, eh?

//where after being drugged via your coffee against your will, you can be held down by your family while the doctor injects you with a lethal drug dose.//

But that's not voluntary euthanasia, is it? That's murder, plain and simple.

Murder is wrong. Just like rape is wrong: if somebody spikes your drink, holds you down and forces you to have sex with them, they're a sick f%$k and criminal. But if people have sex consensually, it's fine (it's better than fine if they're having sex with me). And what's the crucial difference that makes the rape abhorrent and the consensual sex quite nice? The fact that there is consent.

As with rape and sex, I think that there is a very important moral distinction between murder and voluntary euthanasia that hinges on the issue of consent.

Murder is wrong and always will be. But I'm rather less convinced that voluntary euthanasia in necessarily immoral. And arguing against the immorality of murder doesn't help sway me from that position because it doesn't really address the question, does it? It's like arguing against sex on the basis that rape is bad. Everyone agrees wholeheartedly with the premise that rape is bad... they're just not quite sure how the conclusion logically follows from that premise.

//Victoria's doctor prescribed assisted suicide hasn't even been implemented and there are cries it doesn't go far enough!//

Right, and are any of those critics arguing that it should be extended to allow involuntary euthanasia (murder)? Because I couldn't find any. Perhaps you have a link you'd like to share?