Opinion Editorials
April 6, 2018
Here’s Why I Invented A ‘Death Machine’ That Lets People Take Their Own Lives
Talk about “dying with dignity” has grown to a calamitous pitch in recent years. “Right to die” groups vie for supremacy, trying to show who can make the dying experience the least degrading. Who can replace the utter macabre-ness of the necessity of death with something more palatable. In this reclamation of death ― a […]
July 28, 2017
Our Aged have Earned the Right to Leave Us if They Wish
The Australian, Philip Nitschke
As the Euthanasia issue heats up again in Victoria, many in the community are wondering aloud what the fuss is all for. For some, Victoria’s proposed law will represent an historical breakthrough. Since the Northern Territory’s Rights of the Terminally Ill Act was quashed by Federal Parliament 20 years ago, Australia has led the world […]
June 25, 2017
Euthanasia by Text? Michelle Carter Case Impacts More than Free Speech
Philip Nitschke, Sydney Morning Herald
In 2014, Michelle Carter, then 17, used text messages to “encourage” her 18-year-old boyfriend Conrad Roy III to kill himself. Roy was found dead from carbon monoxide poisoning in his truck.While the dust is still settling from this month’s decision by a Massachusetts judge to convict the young “suicide texter” of involuntary manslaughter, the reaction […]
November 8, 2016
Nitschke Op Ed: Personal liberty at heart of right to decide how & when one dies
Philip Nitschke, The Dominion Post
OPINION: The recent antics of the New Zealand police in terms of the fake checkpoints and the subsequent searching of homes of elderly members of Exit International would be laughable were they not so serious. The seemingly slapstick way police have gone about their intelligence-gathering has lowered the benchmark in how policing should be performed […]
September 24, 2016
Should Age be Relevant to the Right to Die?
Fiona Stewart, Sydney Morning Herald
Twenty years ago this week Darwin man Bob Dent became the first person in the world to receive a legal, lethal voluntary injection under the Northern Territory’s Rights of the Terminally Ill Act. The act was a carefully drafted piece of legislation that allowed a terminally ill person, of sound mind, to ask a doctor […]
November 8, 2015
Andrew Denton Falls for Doctors’ Spin in Euthanasia Debate
Fiona Stewart, Sydney Morning Herald
For at least the past two decades, Melbourne urologist Dr Rodney Syme has been advocating medically-controlled voluntary euthanasia, or assisted suicide as it is now called. An alumni of the Melbourne establishment, Syme has insisted that a “good doctor” should distribute Nembutal to patients who he considers worthy. The decision would be the doctor’s alone. […]