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Letter to Brad Hazzard, Minister for Health – Please have positive input into the NSW assisted dying draft legislation.

14/02/2017 / Ian Wood

My email to our new NSW Minister for Health, sent 13.2.2017

Brad Hazzard
Minister for Health

Dear Mr Hazzard

Congratulations on your appointment as Health Minister for NSW. It is encouraging that in the Daily Telegraph 6.2.2017 you are reported as recognising that more needs to be done for health matters in regional NSW.

You also stated that: “……often people depart this life in hospital…….”. This is certainly true, as NSW Prof Ken Hillman has noted: “Up to 70% of people now die in acute hospitals, surrounded by well meaning strangers, inflicting all that medicine has to offer; often resulting in a painful, distressing and degrading end to their life.”

Research indicates that in fact 70 to 80% of terminal patients would prefer to die at home. To enable this, adequately trained people are needed, plus the funding directed towards this service. I imagine it could well be ‘cost effective’ compared with dying in an Intensive Care Unit or similar? Ref: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-25/hundreds-access-program-of-end-of-life-care-at-home/6883162

Another issue relating to the terminally ill also attracts a similar level of 70 to 80% public support in NSW. That of assisted dying choice for the terminally or hopelessly ill who are facing futile suffering.

A cross party group of NSW MPs is currently working on a draft Bill to enable this choice, and I respectfully urge you to please have positive input into this much needed legislation, with the aim of ensuring that the final draft is such that you as Minister for Health could publicly support and vote to pass it. It does need to have a balance enabling access for the patients who wish to use it, and safeguards to protect from possible abuse.

There is now extensive data from other jurisdictions that proves this balance is possible.
– A wide ranging, in depth, Victorian Parliament Inquiry into End of Life Choices made Continue reading

Response to NSW Premier Mike Baird to ABC Q&A

11/09/2015 / Ian Wood

Mike Baird
Premier of NSW
SYDNEY

Dear Mr Baird

Thank you for publicly admitting on ABC Q&A, 6.9.2015, that you had very strong views on [against] legalising CHOICE in assisted dying, but after talking with a man in a terrible position, his pleas will ‘haunt’ you.

John Grayson, the 34 year old with terminal brain cancer, vividly described his prognosis – “I am going to end up with right hand side paralysis, blindness, being mute. I will end up in severe, chronic pain. I will have cognitive impaired ability and I will eventually die. What I want to know is why I’m forced to go through that torture.” (Ref 1)

GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: Look, we have a fundamental right not to be subjected to torture and if that torture is cancer, if it’s a terminal illness, we are entitled to take ourselves out of it. It is an awesome decision to make, but [it’s] we are entitled to make it without the intervention of the state, without having those who assist us, often our loved family with whom we have a final meal or whatever, arrested and charged with assisting suicide. Surely that’s right.

MIKE BAIRD: “my concern would be, you know, making a judgment on life”. Fact: You are not making a judgment on life. When an illness is terminal, the patient would be making a judgement on choosing to endure the torture, or die a quick, pain-free death It is not a choice between life and death, but a choice between two different ways of dying. Continue reading

Dec 30, 2014. I learn of the deaths of three very different people.

31/12/2014 / Ian Wood

The first was Peter Short, who succumbed to oesophageal cancer. Peter had been a passionate advocate for the legalisation of assisted dying, I talked about Peter in my first blog on this website.
The Final Post on his Blog, petershort.com.au posted by his wife Elizabeth reads, Hi, my beautiful husband Pete died this morning at 12:20 AM. He died peacefully and I was privileged enough to be sitting on his bed holding his hand at that time. Pete’s decision to opt for Palliative care brought him to a place of calmness and serenity and for all of us, safety and security. It allowed Pete to relax, stop fighting and go calmly to his happy place. Thank you all so much for your constant love and support, it has meant the world to us.
As a family we will continue to strive to achieve Pete’s dream of seeing Senator Richard Di Natale’s Dying With Dignity Bill become Law.
Elizabeth and Mitchell x

The second death was that of Debbie Purdy in the UK. Debbie had suffered excruciatingly for many years from progressive MS. Again, she was also a passionate advocate for the legalisation of assisted dying, and it was her efforts that led to the UK Director of Public Prosecutions issuing guidelines under which family accompanying a loved one to an assisted death in Switzerland would not be charged with the crime of assisting a suicide. Debbie died after she deliberately stopped eating.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2890340/Right-die-campaigner-MS-sufferer-Debbie-Purdy-dies-aged-51.html

The third death was that of a childhood friend of mine from the ravages of Parkinson’s. An email from his wife included, “He passed away last night after 3 tortuous weeks. It is such a relief to see him in peace at last.”

In her Christmas card to us two weeks earlier she had said that his situation was deteriorating, “nearing the end” and that it was “tragic”. Also that it is “Hard to imagine that anyone who sees him would not actively support euthanasia.”

Three more reasons why I will keep striving for compassionate choice in assisted dying!

Letter to Brad Hazzard, Minister for Health – Please have positive input into the NSW assisted dying draft legislation.

Response to NSW Premier Mike Baird to ABC Q&A

Dec 30, 2014. I learn of the deaths of three very different people.

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