One of Australia’s tireless human rights campaigners, Dr Philip Nitschke, has recently written a book all about basic human rights and how to exercise them: The Peaceful Pill Handbook, which is a guide to suicide. Unfortunately the book was banned in Australia. Recently The Age reported that the book would be available over the internet.
“The outlawed euthanasia manual The Peaceful Pill Handbook will soon be available as a downloadable document from the internet via Google Books. The deal with Google Books was made in the US last week by the book’s author and euthanasia campaigner Dr Philip Nitschke, who said the download version, illegal under Australian law, would cost about US$30 ($A37).”
I can report now that The Peaceful Pill Handbook is now available from Amazon.com. It costs $US35, and while it is still illegal to import it into Australia, it will be nearly impossible for customs to pick it out (unlike the pallets of the book a local distributor would have to import).
Just another benefit of globalisation. It stops book banners.
Today in the Age one Juliette Hughes rallied against euthanasia because:
“Australians will end up killing people for financial reasons, and the dead will be the vulnerable, the disabled and the poor.”
And yet nowhere in the article does she argue why this may be the case. Most the article is a discussion of some of the recent history of euthanasia, and nowhere does that point to doctors suddenly killing people for financial reasons. There is no link, and the author makes no valid link, as to why providing a legal basis for the terminally ill to exit life at a time of their choosing, following established legislated procedures, will suddenly lead to doctors killing off patients.
The author make some vague claims about the Americanisation of Australian medical care and how this will somehow lead to a culture of death. This fails on two main grounds, first America for the most part has a first class medical system, spending far more than Australia on health care as a percentage of GDP. The American failure is the lack of health care coverage for a portion of their population, a despicable outcome derived in part by the lack of action by the cowardly US political elite. Second, Australia’s health care system is not being Americanised, the key components of the system have been remarkably stable of many years – a public hospital network, subsidised general practice, and private health insurance as a adjunct. If anything the political debate over recent years has been on extending this system, not shrinking it. I know it is easy and nicely political to claim the Americanisation of some aspect of Australian culture, but there is some obligation on the claimant to at least demonstrate why it is so, and dare I say it, demonstrate it with proof or facts.
Of course, Australian doctors do allow patients to die, this is natural part of a medical system with fixed resources. Resources have to be allocated and some patients will not warrant them. This may be as simple as turning off the (expensive) machines keeping alive someone who is brain dead. And yet this does not indicate some moral vacuum of murderous doctors. It is medical practitioners making morally informed judgments subject to all the training and compassion of their occupation. There is absolutely no reason to think that this will disappear because some individual are given the right to choose how they live and die. In fact a morally just medical system would allow patients the right to choose how they live and die. It it time now for euthanasia laws.
