LET ME DIE!

When will a political leader in this country have the guts and the gumption to take a public stand in favour of voluntary euthanasia?

Sure, we had a brief and brave experiment in the Northern Territory when the first government in the world legalised the right for people to die with dignity. But then the Right to Life zealots and the Catholic Church and John Howard’s federal conservatives brutally crushed the legislation.

Since then the Netherlands has brought in compassionate legislation along with at least one state in the US – although “mercy killer” pioneer Dr. Jack Kervorkian remains in jail serving out his virtual life sentence for assisting a suicide.

The issue is back in the news in this country for several reasons. The Victorian Supreme Court recently ruled that a comatose human “vegetable” kept alive through a fluid-fed tube in her side was the recipient of a medical procedure and not palliative care.

It was an important distinction because it meant that legally such medicinal treatment could be withdrawn. It meant she would soon die. It meant she would virtually starve to death. It also meant her family could finally let her go and nobody would face a murder or manslaughter charge.

A few days ago I spent the evening with three “ murderers”. The thing they had in common was their personal and ultimate decision to help a loved one exit this life in peace and without pain.

There was Fred Thompson who killed the love of his life, Katerina, by smothering her with a pillow. She had suffered from multiple sclerosis for more than thirty years. When she was totally incapacitated and then went blind she pleaded with her husband to help her exit this world. And he did.

There was Ralph Vincent an 84-year-old retired New Zealand journalist who went shopping with his wife to buy a plastic bag to help her end her life. They had been married 56 years. She was crippled and in agony from debilitating arthritis.

And then there was Lesley Martin, a New Zealand nurse, coincidentally from my hometown of New Plymouth, who honoured a pact with her cancer-stricken mother Joy and gave her a massive dose of morphine.

She wrote an honest book about it called “.. To die like a dog”. The achingly honest book triggered her legal troubles.

Lesley Martin has been charged with attempted murder. She goes to trial later this year and is braced for a conviction and possibly jail. They have charged her with attempted murder because, even though her mother is obviously dead, the authorities realise they could not prove if the cancer or the pain-killing morphine overdose actually killed her.

I met this brave trio at a Sydney conference organised by the man the tabloids call “ Dr. Death”: Philip Nitschke. The conference, organised by a group named Exit Australia, was titled “Killing Me Softly: Love, Death and Dying in Australia.

I spent more than an hour publicly interviewing those three people whom Dr. Nitschke had sardonically introduced as “murderers”.

I asked these people the tough questions. Like: What if a miracle cure had been found the day after your wife or mother died?

They answered frankly and you could feel the heartache in that conference room. The question “ what would I do in those circumstances?” was almost palpable.

It was an emotional experience as I shared a night with three decent and principled people who helped end the suffering of loved ones.

The cause of death on Katerina Thompson’s death certificate was “MS”. Fred Thompson could have left it at that. He didn’t.

He told his family what he had done and turned himself in at the local police station. His daughter, who wasn’t there for the last gruelling and exhausting decade of her mother’s life, doesn’t speak to him.

Dr. Nitschke, who first garnered headlines with the legalised euthanasia in the Northern Territory, has been in the news again with newspaper and TV reports describing his new “death machine”.

In the brief time voluntary euthanasia was legal in the Northern Territory Dr. Nitschke developed a computer laptop programme that could take you step-by-step to a failsafe exit from this world.

The danger now (with the law now expunged on Canberra’s orders) is that a person can be charged with assisting your suicide. The way Dr. Kervorkian was charged, convicted and jailed in the US.

Nitschke knows the highwire he daily walks on. He knows how many people want to see him fall and get locked up.

He has now invented what he calls a CO Generator – a carbon monoxide generator -- in which two chemicals are mixed to instantly produce 100 per cent carbon monoxide. A quick inhalation and it will kill you in minutes.

Nitschke is holding workshops around Australia to show you how you can build your own CO Generator and control your own destiny.

And why shouldn’t you?

“Alleged murderer” Lesley Martin’s book title got to me. “ …To die like a dog”. I have written before about watching the death throes of my own mother, stricken with rampant cancer, starving, incontinent, wracked with pain, virtually comatose, and being pumped full of morphine through a shunt in her stomach.

As I sat with her throughout (what turned out to be) her final night I had two dominant thoughts. The first was that if she were an emaciated pet dog lying on that bed and an RSPCA inspector had walked in I would have been charged with cruelty to animals.

The second thought was more serious. I thought if she is still here tomorrow night I will put a pillow over her face and smother her because this shell was existing. My mother was NOT living.

Many times I have quoted the title of a Broadway play which became a movie called “Whose Life is it Anyway?” People like Margaret Tighe won’t understand but that conference room in Sydney the other day was filled with people who are not Nazis, not Fascists, not zealots, not murderers. It was filled with people filled with love and compassion and sorrow.

I hope somebody cares that much for me if I reach a stage where there is not quality of life in my life. Only pain and suffering and terminal starvation. And courageously does something to end it.

June 8, 2003

.©Copyright Derryn Hinch 2002