The purpose of this website. conceived July, born September, 2004, following an easy Birth,   is to encourage awareness, debate and legislative change in Victoria for people who have major health issues which rob them of any true quality of life. 

An abbreviated version of the documentary may be viewed by accessing   http://www.donotresuscitatedocumentary.com

My name is Mary, a 65 year old activist, in remission from ovarian cancer since July 1999. I am also a passionate advocate for medically assisted death, with safeguards, for those who choose to end their suffering. 

Please, Read my diary under "Viewpoints".    However, if you are easily offended, particularly with regards politics or religion, (sex will come later, in fact September 13, 2007 for those able to handle explicit middle aged sex talk) I suggest you give the page a miss, as I do tend to demonstrate the passion for which I am known.   I stray from the subject dealing with euthanasia and legislative change on a regular basis. I feel anger and frustrated with Governments who refuse to deal with an issue that 73% of Australian surveyed, have said they want.  Governments are there to represent the Australian people, regardless of color, ethnicity, religion or even those who don't have a religion.  I value a life to the extent that I believe whether it be an Arab, Jew, Christian, Hindu, Atheists, Agnostic has equal rights to the serenity that a "good" death can bring.

Issues covered in this website include The Swiss Method and a number of Australians travel to Switzland to benefit from it.

Legislation to legalise Living Wills, Advance Directives or Respecting Patient Choices is urgently needed to ensure the terminally and chronically ill among us have their wishes respected above all others when end of life choices are timely. Not the Religious, the Health Care Workers or the Relatives - but the Patient - first and foremost!

A 75 year old contributor sent me this brief article which I believe sums up one's individual choice which path they chose in life.

Those people who oppose euthanasia should put their bodies where their convictions are.  I have a fantasy that the objectors enter a chamber where they must endure the simulated pain of those who can't bear it any longer.  The moralists who come out of that chamber with their beliefs intact might possibly have a right to them.  All the others who capitulate will surely be glad of the opportunity to finally know that great chasm between morality and wisdom, between law and compassion.

I may be contacted by mail by writing to Choice, Post Office Box 204, Glen Huntly, 3163 Victoria.  However no Right to Life correspondence will be entered into so please save your time and money by not bothering.  It is agreed we hold the right to differ.
 

This site is to promote the right to choose and to make informed decisions. Please read political status of the issue at the bottom of this page.  Unfortunately it is a very very slow process having taken 30 years to achieve the current Resolution - nothing will happen in my life time - but then I am not relying on Government bureaucracy for my end of life choices - I don't have the time!.

A letter written to the Age Editor, Dying with dignity is a Common Goal,  July 14 2006, by Janine Truter, The Basin, tells so much more succinctly than I ever could what this site is promoting.   I wish to share her words with you.

Palliative care is essential and if Juliette Harris (Making life a burden" Opinion 13/7) can guarantee me a painless dying in which my dignity remains intact, I am behind her 100 per cent.

But if I am one of the 10 per cent of people for whom modern pain relief doesn't work, or if I don't want dying in a bed full of my own excrement because my bowels have packed it in six weeks before I die, or I choose, while competent, not to be a drooling vegetable for years, who the hell is she to order me to suffer for her ideals?

The Dying with Dignity movement is just that - a movement that argues that an individual should be free to die with dignity, and should not be forced to suffer horribly at the end of their lives to assuage the moral qualms of strangers.   Palliative care should include the option of a peaceful death, and it should be the choice of the individual doing the dying.   To die with dignity is a goal common to palliative care and the Dying with Dignity reform groups.

Janine Truter, The Basin

The author respects the rights and views of those who feel differently on this issue.

I hold no formal qualifications for Law, Literacy, Counseling or Medicine. My one qualification is that I do know what it is to feel absolute total despair and aloneness even when surrounded by caring and loving people. Some of my personal qualities have been described as courage, tenaciousness, passion, stubbornness (personally I prefer determination). On the issue of choice in dying I intend to live up to my reputation.  I started my political letter writing entreaties  before the documentary or the website.

With this site, I am solely representing my own point of view; I realise that I may make mistakes and offend some people’s sense of morality, but hope that in the end, I can make a positive difference to others, currently denied the right to act for themselves.

However I have provided a cross choice of opinions by reproducing with permission, a book named The last right?   Australians take sides on the right to die.  Edited by Simon Chapman & Stephen Leeder - published 1995.  It can be found under Additional/Related Readings/Books and most responses can be accessed directed by clicking on their name.   Mr. Gough Whitlam in typical fashion just answered a single Yes to both questions.  

Sixty three people responded to the questions:

Are you for or against the proposal that a person with a terminal or incurable severe illness should be able to have their request granted that their life should end?

Do you believe that doctors should be able (with legal impunity) to actively assist such people who request that their lives be ended through euthanasia?

For me, the book is compelling because of the range of people who've shared their views and for that I am grateful.  

Bill Hayden for one,  advises us sic Pope Paul V1 has stated, "the duty of the physician consists more of striving to relieve pain than in prolonging as long as possible with every available means a life that is no long fully human and that is naturally coming to its conclusion."

I am a Member of the Humanist Society, Dying with Dignity Victoria and Exit International.  I commend these organisations to you.

A famous Playwright whose name I can't spell (Eugenie Aleksey?) once wrote:

Ideologies Separate Us - Dreams and Anguish Unite Us

The work that Exit International undertakes is both thankless and hard, but in the face of ongoing needs of an ageing society absolutely essential to our wellbeing for having control over our end of life decisions.  Behind closed doors many people are suffering.  Legislative change is difficult to implement and many of those who need it most are just too ill to promote it, so will just use self help methods to relieve the unrelenting pain and suffering caused by chronic and terminal illnesses.

I am disturbed that differently abled groups have been infiltrated with people whose agenda is it to treat those who believe in choice and dignity in dying as murderers of the less endowed in our society.  In fact, the majority of those who work for voluntary euthanasia reform want only choice for themselves, others may choose another path at their own discretion.   Currently there is no Choice except that of a religious concept that life is worth living and suffering regardless of conditions.  I don't want this for myself!.

Related Readings written under the drop down "Additional" menu covers a number of topics including contributions by others for approaching Death in regards to Children.  Pro and Anti VE articles are also aired, also books, and films,   I am limited by my technological abilities but endeavor to provide a forum for information across a broad range of issues.

I fully support the work being undertaken by Dying with Dignity Victoria previously known as the Voluntary Euthanasia Society of Victoria and Exit International, without whose work, the medically disadvantaged would be even worse off. 

I thank sincerely, those of the medical profession who supports the concept that death is to be welcomed as a friend for some. Relieving suffering and distress, both physically and mentally for all participates taking the journey.

                                                                        ________________

CURRENTLY THE STATUS OF THE RESOLUTION IS BEFORE THE MINISTER FOR HEALTH FOR CONSIDERATION.  

The much touted Medical Treatment Act 1988 as a means of ensuring people's rights for dignity in dying has never been tested in a Court of Law against those Health Professionals who nurse grievously ill people based on their own religious agenda, rather than what the patient has specifically requested.   I have witnessed medication being refused by the patient, yet in the face of the wife's insistence, the nurse provided it and the man involved had no energy to argue his case.  Only palliative care eg pain relief & nourishment, in Law,  may not be refused .  Any life sustaining drug management may be refused - eg heart medication.  Technically the nurse was in breech of the Act, because the patient has refused it - not the wife!  While not physically forced to eat the tablets,  his wishes were ignored by both relative and staff at a time in his life he was weakened excessively by his ailments, including some five strokes.  Precisely the type of patient I would seek to have protected from the "zealots" in our midst.  Correspondence to the Minister for Health remained unanswered in this matter.

The wording of the resolution adopted by the Victorian State Conference of the Australian Labor Party, December 3rd, 2005 is as follows: 

" To make appropriate provision for people's wishes about the management of their future medical conditions to be respected, Labor will:

a) Give statutory recognition to enable competent Victorians to refuse
treatment, or request treatment, for a future condition by way of an
advance healthcare directive;

b) Limit statutory recognition of advance healthcare directives to apply
only to patients in the terminal phase of a terminal illness or who are in
a persistent vegetative state and who are incapable of making
decisions about medical treatment when the question of administering the treatment arises.

c) Create a register recording medical enduring power of attorney and
advance healthcare directives completed by Victorians;

d) Provide for regular reviews of advance healthcare directives and
validation every twelve months. This process must include advice to
individuals on advancements in medical technology.

e) Require all healthcare institutions to record any existing medical
enduring power of attorney and advance healthcare directives on admission of patients;

f) Require all healthcare institutions to advise patients, in
consultation with their GP, of their rights under the Medical Treatment Act
1988 and of the option of completing an advance healthcare directive,
informing patients that there is no compulsion to complete an advance healthcare directive: and

g) Labor will consult with key stakeholders and the community concerning
amendments to the Medical Treatment Act 1988 ."

STATE POLICY RECOMMENDATION  not ADOPTED AT THE VICTORIAN ALP STATE CONFERENCE MAY 6, 2006

Recommendation 1:

Amendment to the Medical Treatment Act concerning Advanced Health Care Directives.

The Medical Treatment Act (1988) only allows a person to refuse treatment for a current condition and does not allow a person to refuse treatment for future medical conditions arising out of an illness or an accident, including a stoke, or a persistent vegetative state.  To make appropriate provision for future medical conditions, Labor will:

1    give statutory recognition to enable Victorians to refuse treatment, or request treatment, for a future condition by way of an advance healthcare directive.

2    create a register recording medical enduring power attorney and advance directives completed by Victorians

3    require all healthcare institutions to record medical enduring power of attorney and advance healthcare directives on admission of patients.

4    publicise amendments to the Medical Treatment Act by a major awareness campaign directed to the public and to the medical profession and health care workers,

But watch this space...some time in late May 2007 the Victorian Branch of the Australian Labor Party may have some movement on this matter if for no other reason I have complained bitterly as a Member and consequently resigned as a Member after 32 years of loyal service because I cannot get a response from those I have provided valuable time and energy in supporting, so being a "swinging voter" may make the difference necessary.  I am very very unhappy with the "due process" of how this Resolution, years in the realization, has been handled (or swept under the carpet perhaps). 

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