DYING with Dignity Victoria vice-president Rodney Syme says he wants authorities to charge him in a bid to challenge the law surrounding assisted dying in Australia.
The euthanasia campaigner made the comment during a passionate discussion regarding the issue on Q&A.
Dr Syme revealed he had not only given a man Nembutal – the drug of choice used in assisted dying – but that he had also told police.
“I have openly gone and stated to the police that I have given a man Nembutal,” he told the audience. “I have described the circumstances in which that happened. At the end of the day, the policeman said to me very kindly, ‘I don’t think there is enough evidence to prosecute’”.
“I’ve had a policeman come into my home after I have given mags to a woman – medication to a woman and she had, as I suggested she did, she had a discussion about the matter of her wanting to end her life with her family because she hadn’t done it.
“I think it is absolutely imperative that a person who wants to end their life engages with their family, gets them to understand why they need to consider making a decision like this, gets them involved in the process, the humane process of dying. In that instance, the woman who took the medication had told her son that I had given the medication.
As a result, a coroner’s inquest took place. The police came round to see me. As they walked down the door to interview me, they said “Don’t get alarmed, doctor, this is just for a coronial inquest, not for a prosecution”.”
Host Tony Jones then interrupted him to ask if he was actually trying to provoke police into prosecuting him to set up a test case and he replied, “Yes”.
“Yes, indeed. I would argue what I am doing in providing somebody with medication is providing them with very, very good palliation.
“If Ralph can help a person to die by providing them with injectable medications, morphine and Medazolam, which hastens their death, and he is doing it to relieve their suffering, then I argue that I can provide a person with medication which provides them with palliation, relieves the psychological and existential suffering which they have when they are facing a dreadful death – I believe that is a palliative act.”
Earlier, journalist and broadcaster Andrew Denton, who has spent the past eight months researching the issue and is proposing Australia adopts a law which allows voluntary assisted dying, revealed in his research that he was told doctors were “killing” their elderly patients.
The revelation was made in response to a question from audience member Luke Formosa who claimed reports from The Netherlands and Belgium showed euthanasia had “gone too far”.
He said the report claimed more than 1000 patients were “killed” as well as 550 newborn
babies with diseases or disabilities.
He also claimed psychologists had been helping patients with mental disorders make a rational decision to kill themselves.
Mr Denton refuted his claims saying he thought the figures regarding the newborn babies was wrong.
“The number of people that die under these laws in the Netherlands every year is less than 4 per cent of all people who die,” Mr Denton said. “That the rise in those numbers is because, like ours, this is an ageing population and a lot are reflected in cancer deaths. I completely dispute and question your assertion that 550 babies have been killed. Under Dutch law, there is a protocol which applies to very, very rare conditions of extreme spina benefits and a thing called ‘EB’, where your skin is literally flaking off and it has applied to maybe a dozen babies.
“The other point you made about doctors in the Netherlands and Belgium killing patients, this is one of the first things I heard when I started on this journey – I was very confronted by it, I was told doctors were killing elderly patients in these countries. It took me a long time to dig to the bottom of it and find out what it was.
“What it was…it was standard palliative care practice. What in fact happened with these so-called murders, because death is a very complicated thing and there are many grey areas, what they discovered because the Dutch, unlike our country, have an incredible X-ray over end-of-life practices, they know what’s happened, who has done it, how it’s happened.
“We don’t have that here. The patients who had been murdered, in fact, they were euthanised without their consent. Why? Because they were in the last 24 or 48 hours of their life, they were in a coma, most had had a previous conversation with their physician about euthanasia.
“If not the family was there and, more than that, they discovered when they really examined this that the physician had given the medication which had ended this person’s life not with the intention of ending their life but with the intention of relieving their pain. You just gave a textbook example of what I have been dealing with for eight months, which is con flags, distortion and, frankly, misrepresentation of facts to paint a picture which actually is not true.”
Originally published as Doctors ‘killing elderly patients’