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ACT Right to Life AssociationMEDIA RELEASE |
Northern Territory euthanasia bill a disaster for patient care
President of the ACT Right to Life Association, Jeremy Stuparich, today said that the fact that Marshall Perron's Rights of the Terminally Ill Bill 1995 had been passed by the Northern Territory parliament was a disaster for patient care.
"Voluntary euthanasia as proposed by Marshall Perron, and in the ACT by Michael Moore MLA, is dangerous for patients because experience in the Netherlands indicates that the voluntariness of euthanasia can not be guaranteed. The Dutch Government's Remmelink Report indicates that over half those people who had their lives ended by medical practitioners had not requested death.
"Given that current palliative care techniques allow pain to be relieved in virtually all cases and given that patients may, quite ethically, ask for useless or burdensome treatment to be withdrawn under current law, there is no justification for euthanasia. Many arguments advanced for euthanasia are, in reality, arguments in favour of improving palliative care.
"The incredible thing about Marshall Perron's euthanasia bill being passed is that the Northern Territory does not have a palliative care specialist, nor a medical oncologist, has limited radiotherapy services, a financially restricted home-based palliative care program and no hospice.
"We should be striving to improve our palliative care and hospice-based care services to address the problems of terminally ill people. Euthanasia does not address the problems of the terminally ill - it merely ends their lives."
Issued: 25 May 1995
Contact: Jeremy Stuparich, president of the ACT Right to Life Association.
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