Category: <span>Australian</span>

Aina’s tale: why I ended my life

There was nothing particularly special about the date, said Aina Ranke. It was just that Thursday, September 19, was the day the 57-year-old accountant and political activist chose to leave this life. But Ms Ranke’s exit went horribly wrong, leaving friends, her carer and doctors with a string of confronting…

My Own Choice

ABC’s Four Corners on 16 September 2013 was about a young man who has decided to end his life after 36 years of suffering a debilitating illness. But because euthanasia is illegal in Australia, he has to apply to another country to do it. Read the story and watch the…

Too many people dying in pain

The anger ordinary people feel about the modern way of dying came as a surprise to the researchers. No-one at the Council On The Ageing had quite expected it. When COTA surveyed 1600 people in NSW aged 50-plus recently on a range of health issues, one concern stood out: a…

Beverley’s choice

By her own account, Beverley Broadbent had lived a wonderful, fulfilling life. But she decided she’d had enough and it was time to go. Beverley Broadbent had observed many deaths before she planned her own. When she was just six years old, her mother died of heart failure at 36,…

Voluntary Assisted Dying

Tasmanians have been invited to have their say on the ability of people suffering terminal illness to die with dignity with the release of a consultation paper by Lara Giddings and Nick McKim. The paper puts forward a model for voluntary assisted dying and is designed to inform public debate,…