A law that grants the right to die triggers a massive controversy
IN the Northern Territory, terminally ill patients can now officially ask doctors to help them die. The doctor must bebacked by a second doctor as well as a psychiatrist who should confirm that the person is not suffering from treatable depression. The patient is then required to wait seven days before signing the necessary papers and another 48 hours before life is terminated by a lethal drug.
The world's first euthanasia law, which recently came into effect in the vast wilderness of the Territory, has been heralded as a victory for doctors, but faces moral as well as legal obstacles from one-fourth of the inhabitants of the region, the aborigines. For them, there is no such experience as death, merely a continuation of life in another world. Says Reverend Djiniyinni Gondarra, who is opposing the law in the Territory's Supreme Court: "Death is not talked about in aboriginal customs and you cannot take someone else's life. When a person is passing from one life to another, the tribe gets together and sings and comforts the person—the singing encourages the life beyond."바카라 웹사이트
Reverend Gondarra believes that cultural insensitivity is one reason for passing a law which is frightening the aborigines away from local health services. "The government is ignorant of our needs and the legislation has not taken account of those people who will suffer even more than the ones whose lives will be taken by euthanasia." The law is being opposed on the grounds that the Territory is not a state and is, therefore, bound by the federal government. But the Commonwealth will reserve its right to be heard only if the matter reaches the highest court in the country, the High Court.
The Northern Territory is known more for its vast cattle stations, some of which are bigger than entire countries, than its radical legislations. This is Crocodile Dundee country where death from the bite of a thick-skinned amphibian is better understood than death by euthanasia. Largely untouched for decades, the Territory contains two of Australia's most popular tourist sights, Kakadu National Park and the world's largest monolith, Ayeres Rock. But this arid desert land has now become a frontier in a legal sense as well. And the right to die law has unsettled its people and further alienated its oldest inhabitants.
The law is also being threatened in the federal parliament, which plans to introduce a private member's bill during its next sitting in August in the hope of overriding the present legislation by a conscience vote. In a statement to the local media, Deputy Prime Minister Tim Fischersaid he was totally opposed to doctor-assisted suicides. "We do not need the culture of death here in Australia. I think it will be very divisive, particularly amongst medical practitioners where some doctors will be known as the doctors of life, and sadly, other doctors will be known as the doctors of death."
Max Bell, 65, is the first in line to use the new legislation. Afflicted with terminal stomach cancer, and with only a few months to live, Bell has travelled thousands of miles from New South Wales to be able to die at the hour of his own choice. "If you have cancer, you can't enjoy a nice view, you can't enjoy a nice steak. You're a walking dead man....(With the new law) I can lie back in a bed and they can put me off like they do in an operation," he told the Melbourne Age. But Bell's doctor, Philip Nitschke, a pro-euthanasia activist, says his patient has been unable to get the necessary clearance although the law went into effect from July. "He has been treated quite disgracefully by the nation. He has waited and waited...he put in a plea for two doctors—one to say he is not depressed and another to say he is dying—but he has got nothing." Bell is contemplating driving back home, a six-day journey.
According to the Voluntary Euthanasia Society of Victoria, 15 terminally ill patients are preparing to move to Darwin (capital of the Northern Territory) to avail of the procedure and two others have already arrived there in the hope of a final release. Kay Koetsier, executive officer of the organisation, says about 25 per cent of the doctors asked to perform euthanasia every year have acceded to the request—illegally. She adds that the same situation is true for the United States, England and the Netherlands, because only a minority of doctors will ever help patients to die.
After all, it is likely that however logical a rationale is offered for euthanasia, it may not erase the common suspicion that it transgresses some supreme logic.바카라 웹사이트