Taking the assistance out of suicide?

My training at Sydney University medical school left me with important standards to uphold. One of the most important of these is what it means to empower a patient with the knowledge necessary to make the decisions which best suit them.

As a doctor, I have never considered it my role to kill. Under the Northern Territory's law, however, I did consider it my duty to make the choice of voluntary euthanasia aka suicide available to those patients who qualified.

I had no qualms about inserting the canula into a patient's arm. I had no concerns about mixing the lethal solution of drugs which, if the patient elected, would be administered into their veins with a peaceful death following a few minutes later.

The point of the Deliverance Machine that I built to enable this process to take place made the suicide of Bob Dent safe. To call those lawful deaths assisted suicides' is, at least to me, a misnomer.

I did not press the buttons on the laptop. The patient did that. The patient could equally have abstained from pressing any buttons.

The point of the Machine was that it was the patient who was taking responsibility for their life, and their death. Not me, as their doctor.

So when a terminally ill GP calls for legislative change for doctors to be able to assist their patients to die, I do sit on the fence.

As his doctor I would not want the responsibility of killing him. He can do that, and take the responsibility onto his own shoulders.

The claim that legislative change would allow sicker patients to live longer isn't my experience. The sickest lucid patients can take the small drink or press the button. And we should not assume those who have passed this point, unable to make any meaningful gesture, still want help to die.

I would also support what can be the only humane response in a civil society such as ours, that the laws of conspiracy and assistance be clarified.

All dying people should have choice in who is with them in their dying days. My own worst fear would be to die without my wife with me, holding my hand.

On this count I fully support Dr Pollock's call for legal clarity. What I would be more concerned about, though, is that a rational, well considered decision to terminate one's life one's suicide is not one for delegation.