Australian News
Victorians will be able to instruct their doctors to not give them life-prolonging treatment for possible future illnesses, under a state government push to allow people to die with dignity. As a condition of hospital funding, patients will now be encouraged to create ”advance care plans” setting out the kind…
If it were not for some occasional snores, Sue De Ravin could be dead. The thin woman is lying motionless in a chair with her arms crossed over her chest. Her mouth is resting wide open. Inside, all but a couple of teeth are missing. Read article …
I believe there is an unrecognised phenomenon in Australia that should be of concern. I refer to the growing incidence of rational suicide by the elderly and the terminally and hopelessly ill. This letter is being sent to all state and Territory coroners to increase awareness of this important issue.…
The ACT Greens have energised the euthanasia debate, with Minister for Ageing Shane Rattenbury describing Canberra’s inability to make laws on euthanasia an affront to democracy. ”ACT residents want to be able to make choices about their own life and death,” he told the Assembly, quoting a Newspoll finding in…
Many Australians die hooked up to tubes and machines, the sort of medical intervention that doctors don’t want for themselves. How would doctors choose to die? I tread quietly past the rows of gravely ill patients in the intensive care unit, avoiding the expectant glances of families. Gently closing the…
A Perth man with terminal cancer says he would like to be able to end his own life by choosing voluntary euthanasia. Laurie Strike, 84, was first diagnosed with melanoma in 2010 and has since undergone a number of surgeries and treatments. Read article …
In light of a call by doctors for an open discussion on end of life care, APN journalist Kate Webber shares her own heart-wrenching story. I’M SITTING by my mother’s bed as she slowly, inexorably dies, each day, each breath, each moment moving closer to a time when she’ll utter…
Listen to the Cordover family speak movingly about Rob’s death, then Dr Rodney Syme, DWDV Vice-President; Cordover family #187; … Dr Rodney Syme’s » …
It’s a topic we’re really not comfortable discussing, but it’s just not going away. With a constitutional court challenge in BC and legislation pending in Quebec, the question of whether Canadians who are sick and dying should be able to receive medical assistance to end their suffering is one of…
The Hon. Bob Such’s Ending Life With Dignity Bill 2013, before the South Australian Parliament, contains a strong compliment of safeguards, as Neil Francis explains in this video. The refusal of life-saving treatment, to which Australians are entitled but with the same direct and foreseeable consequence as doctor-assisted dying requests,…
As Gough Whitlam’s attorney general, he was Australia’s first law officer. Today he and his wife keep his and hers jars of the banned drug Nembutal for the day they decide they want to die Read The Guardian article » …
Opponents of assisted dying law reform often invoke fictional slippery slopes as objections to law reform. In this video, Neil Francis gives three examples of supposed slippery slopes argued by opponents, explains why they are fiction, and shares the perspectives of several recognised experts from the USA state of Oregon…
