Voluntary euthanasia advocate Philip Nitschke has hosted his first public seminar since being deregistered by the medical board.
Dr Nitschke said he had been inundated with requests for information about assisted suicides since being deregulated last month.
Dr Nitschke will be appealing the medical board’s decision and on Thursday hosted a public workshop on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast about assisted suicide.
Speaking on 90.3 ABC Sunshine Coast, Dr Nitschke said the appeal revolved around what constituted medicine.
“If they’re going to suggest, as the [Medical Board of Australia] has, that talking to large groups of people somehow or the other constitutes a medical practice, we’ll be disputing that clearly,” he said.
“Obviously they cannot … simply define every aspects of a person’s life as if they happen to be a doctor, as a medical activity – they need to draw their line somewhere.
“I’m strongly going to be arguing that the sorts of activity that we’re going to be carrying out and did carry out, which led to the problems in the first place in Western Australia, were not medical practice.
“The things that we’ll doing on the Sunshine Coast won’t be either.”
The MBA used its emergency powers to suspend Dr Nitschke’s medical licence after he emailed a man to support his decision to take his own life.
Dr Nitschke said negative publicity had not deterred public interest in euthanasia.
“There’s been a rush of requests for information from people all over the nation,” he said.
He said people attending the workshops were usually elderly people.
The Australian Medical Association (AMA) said it did not support Dr Nitschke’s views, but he was entitled to hold public meetings on the issue.
“At this stage we firmly believe that medical practitioners should not be involved in interventions that have a primary intention of ending a person’s life – in other words causing them to commit suicide – we feel that’s inappropriate,” Queensland president Dr Shaun Rudd said.
“We look on it that that’s [Dr Nitschke’s] business and he can do what he wishes to do, but we’re not in agreement with voluntary euthanasia at this time.”
People seeking support and information about suicide can contact Lifeline on 13 11 14.