Michael Cook, I am one of your "little white haired" ladies lining up to attend Dr Nitschke workshop. Until you've walked in our shoes, you cannot understand the position that we come from. For this, you could be grateful but then, you are not yet dead yourself!

I too, hold opinions on this matter exactly the opositite to your own. I don't mean to insult or abuse another's opinion because they differ from mine, but what I do want is the choice, for myself.

Preferably, medically assisted dying would be a great choice!

Philip Nitschke is fulfilling a need in our society. The fact you do not require his services (yet) is a blessing, but don't crow too loudly.

A law will not prevent people from committing suicide or voluntary euthanasia as no doubt the statistics will reflect, I'm sure in the next year or two.

I operate a website specifically opposed to the Right to Life at any cost! I want legislative change and to this end I put my actions where my mouth is, hopefully without being too insenstive to those who disagree with my POV.

Mr Michael Cook, a major advantage our movement has is a Professor of Bioethics, Peter Singer, whose views as opposed to your own , is not coloured by religious views. Views, which impinge on the rest of society regardless of their rights to differ. Many of us are not Christians and therefore value life differently.

In closing

It has been said "He is alive, but only in the sense that he cannot be legally buried".

Mary Walsh
www.yourchoiceindying.com

I forgot to ask Mr Cook whether your mother is still alive and able to read your insulting comments relating to the lonely women who fear dependency.

One would hope no one needs to rely on you for tea and sympathy.

You appear to be as insensitive about women in general as you are about their dying needs.

By the tone of your article you appear to have little respect for women in general, and I am so very glad you are not my son, a feeling which I am sure, is mutual. You sound so cold and cynical, we would not get on.

Your attitude towards yourself and other people determines the quality of all your relationships.

1 to 5% of dying people are not assisted by Palliative Care - that is the official verdict. I, for one, do not want to be part of that statistic which is provided by various medical professionals whose whole life is dedicated to Palliative Care: 1% came from the Right to Life American lobbyist and the 5% an Australian Pallative Care Specialist. Who would volunteer to test the findings? Mr Cook?

Palliate, a word which means to mask and cover up by excuses and apologies. Be honest, for what purpose is the point of covering up death. It will come to all of us, no matter how desperately medical technology fights it. It is the nature of things that we die, the manner in which we do that can be more distressing than death itself.

To those who have shared their painful stories of about the reality of euthanasia and suicide. And the outcome of it being denied! thank you.

Mary Walsh
www.yourchoiceindying.com

Michael Cook is in the minority - over 75% of Australians agree with voluntary euthanasia to help painful suffering.

Since there are so many people here that agree with VE, you might also like to look at this Aussie pro-choice/VE blog & site ..... Mary posts to it almost daily. Steve Madden - I really think you'd enjoy reading the blog. And I think you both live in the same state in Australia.

http://www.yourchoiceindying.com

Look forward to reading some comments in Mary's guestbook from you Steve to things that Mary says in her blog.... I've enjoyed reading your thoughts on VE in this forum. Hope you'll continue your comments on her site.

I've had to wait to make a final point about Michael Cook's view points.

Steve Maddon is the classic example of what it takes to understand the difference between holding a view point as an observer and that of a participant.

A couple of years ago we VESV group of volunteers stood on the steps of Parliament House promoting VE. A man approached me, to say that until the previous week he always thought the God would take care of everything for his family. That faith would sustain him!. Now, he told me, he was not so sure, because in the space of a week, his wife was being operated on for breast cancer and he himself had been diagnosed with prostate cancer. Within one week, he whole world had changed in a manner he could never have foreseen.

He went on to say, he thought it was courageous of us to "Stand and Be Counted" for what we believed it and for the first time in his life he understood where we were coming from.

Perhaps Mr Cook needs, to spend real quality time, assisting those unfortunate enough to share the environment of a hospice or palliative care unit, to feed the feeble, to inject the skin and bone looking for a vein, long since crumbled because of excessive trauma from previous treatments. To attend to their bed sores caused by pressure from being left lying in one place, just that little bit too long, on the same skin and bone that once used to be a thriving body. And of necessity, clean their vomit and diarrhea. I once soiled my bed 8 times in one night and it was not unusual to vomit into my untouched meal literally.

This is the reality that encourages the promotion of Voluntary Euthanasia.

A reader of my website chuckled at my defining "rotting bodies from within" but that is what is occuring when our bodily system is breaking down. Our bodies are disintergrating from within and it is time to die, but medical technology does not allow it.

Mary Walsh
www.yourchoiceindying.com

Mr Cook---
"But with good palliative care, the days of justifying lethal injections with lurid descriptions of excruciating torment are largely over. Dying can still be an uncomfortable business marked by weakness, dependency and lack of control, but these do not suffice for euthanasia." Says who?
You have some definitive test that measures suffering that you use to be able to say to the dying that they aren't suffering? have you experienced dying personally. No I don't mean watched from outside but had the experience yourself?
How dare you purport to know what others are experiencing and then have the gall to tell them how to live their lives! OK I can see that if someone is under say 30 they still owe a debt to society (they won't have paid enough taxes to cover the expense of getting them to this point in their life)and there maybe some tenuous economic reason to get involved. But after that? No hands off and go live your own life and allow the rest of us to live ours for as long as we deem reasonable.
Mind you there are those that are of the mind that think euthanasia is the 'thin end of the wedge'. Yeah right they think that it will be used to snuff them out against their will. In your case that might be true, I don't know. Perhaps the 'wedge' people don't trust their friends and relatives---perhaps they have reason to be scared?