Philip Nitschke - Doctor Death in more trouble

Philip Nitschke

Euthanasia is illegal in Australia and the maximum penalty in Victoria for assisting someone to suicide is five years jail but in other jurisdictions, it's life imprisonment.

The illegal drug Nembutal is being imported into Australia very easily.  Known as the Peaceful Pill, Nembutal is promoted by Dr Philip Nitschke's Exit International as the best and most peaceful way to end your life.

I am an advocate of euthanasia and support Dr Nitschke's efforts to help people with a terminal illness to end their suffering but after seeing him on ABC 7.30 show last night, I'm having second thoughts.

I could be wrong, but he came across as a man who couldn't be bothered having to check every euthanasia candidate's reason for wanting to die and his decision not to refer them on to a psychiatrist or other mental health professional is a real concern. 

He gave the impression that it's not really his business to find out why they want to do it, his job is just to help them do it.  It seems the doctor has moved away from the original intention - to help those suffering from a terminal illness - to those who can convince him they are suffering extreme mental stress.

A 45 year old man from Perth, Nigel Brayley, died in May this year after taking Nembutal.  Emails reveal that Mr Brayley didn't have a terminal illness, but said he was suffering mentally.

Nigel Brayley

Dr Nitschke said "If a 45 year old comes to a rational decision to end his life, researches it in the way he does, meticulously, and decides that now is the time I wish to end my life, they should be supported" he said. "We had a lot of communication with Nigel, he'd been in touch with us for a while, he'd joined the organization and when I went over to Perth, he came along to the workshop and I had a talk to him."

"If a person comes along and says he's made a rational decision to end his life in two weeks, I don't say 'have you made a rational decision? Do you think you better think about it? Why don't you go off and have a counsellor come and talk to you?' 

"We don't do that, if a person is so depressed they have lost capacity, then they can't articulate anything, the fact that he was so insightful in his decision to make this choice indicates to me that he was indeed a person who had not lost capacity."

"I'm not saying he wasn't depressed but was he so depressed that we should constrain him? Should we have certified him, should we have put him into a psychiatric institution, should we have restricted him in some way?"

Jeff Kennett

Beyond Blue Chairman Jeff Kennett said that Mr Brayley was not a euthanasia candidate.  "I was appalled, my concept of euthanasia does not extend to helping and giving advice to a 45 year old guy who clearly did not have a terminal illness" he said.  "I think Dr Nitschke expressed himself - that he didn't see it as his responsibility to do that - to be absolutely abhorrent."

But for Dr Nitschke, it gets worse.  A 25 year old man, Joe Waterman took his own life this year.  Like Mr Brayley, he didn't have a terminal illness and illegally imported Nembutal.  His mother Mary said her son had ordered the doctor's handbook and wrote about being depressed on his iPad.  "I was angry, quite angry that the book was so easy for him to access" she said.  Her son had lied on the application form and ticked the box which said he was over 50 years of age.

Police are currently investigating the deaths of two Melbourne housemates, Val Seeger 75, a retired health professional and Clair Parsons 66, a renowned medical anthropology academic, who died in a suicide pact in March.  Ms Parsons who was healthy, agreed to carry out her friend's wish to die after she was diagnosed with dementia. She knew she would risk criminal charges if she helped her friend and left a note.

Ms Parsons wrote

‘‘Under the current (and we believe outdated) law in this land, the police are obliged to charge me with aiding and abetting a suicide and I am not prepared to undergo the harassment and disgrace of a prosecution, this leaves me no choice but to join my friend at her time of death."  

Dr Nitschke is hated by the medical profession and attempts to strip him of his registration are ongoing but his euthanasia workshops are booked solid.  Public opinion about the right for an individual to end their life peacefully, continues to be a contentious issue.

Rolf Harris guilty on all counts

Oh how the mighty have fallen.  Rolf Harris believed that because the British people loved him so well, nobody would believe the silly little girls' testimonies, and anyway, it was too long ago to be relevant.

But the jury did believe them and the 84 year old's past finally caught up with him.  He was found guilty of 12 counts of indecent assault.

He was so sure he would get off, he put on a show for the court. Prosecutor Sasha Wass said "Yesterday you delighted us with a demonstration of your many talents - the Prosecution does not suggest for a moment that you are anything but a brilliant, polished performer, but this case, as you know, is not a talent show. This case is taking place to decide whether beneath your friendly, lovable exterior, there is a darker side lurking."

Prosecutor Sasha Wass

Rolf Harris hails from Bassendean, a suburb of Perth.  In St Georges Terrace,  the main street of Perth which runs parellel to the Swan River, there is a plaque honouring Harris which is about to be ripped up.  

His boyhood school is removing his paintings and Edith Cowan University will decide whether or not to strip him of his honorary doctorate next month.  "Honorary doctorates are awarded and rescinded only by the University Council" a spokesman said. "The council meets next in August."

"The boy from Bassendean" is now a dirty word.  The council didn't bother to wait for the verdict to remove Harris' portrait from the Bassendean chambers. "We decided it should be taken down last May" Councillor Lewis said.  "However, a painting showing his parents' old weatherboard home backing onto the Swan River still hangs in the council foyer - I'm still in two minds but I'm thinking that art is art and criminal activities are criminal activities."

He went on "If you go back in history, movies made by an American movie producer, the one who isn't allowed back into the country otherwise he'll be arrested, they don't ban his movies to be shown in America because it's quite separate from what the man does."

Police mugshot

Rolf Harris is a paedophile who believed he would never get caught and it took a British court and several brave women to prove him wrong. He will be sentenced on Friday.

Disability Support Pension loses

Kevin Andrews

Social Services Minister Kevin Andrews has been tasked by the Abbott government to take a hatchet to the welfare system. Although it's early days, the review has recommended that only people with a permanent disability and zero capacity to work, will be eligible for the Disability Support Pension.  And what the recipient spends his/her money on, will be monitored by the government.

For those with a disability who are deemed fit to work now, or in the future, they will go on the working age payment "to better reflect different work capacities."

Mr Andrews said at this stage, the government did not yet have a definition of what "permanent" disability would be.

The proposal wants to cut the welfare system from 75 payments and supplements down to just four categories.

• a tiered working age payment
• family payment
• disability payment
• aged pension

Australia's welfare bill for 2012/13 was $110 billion and Tony Abbott's government is taking no prisoners. Yes we know there are people who rort the system and something needed to be done but it's the same old story of a few bad apples spoiling it for the genuine cases.  Vulnerable disabled people, unable to help themselves, will be really, really hurt if these measures go ahead.

How a country dishes out its welfare is an indication of how compassionate that country is, and these proposals speak volumes about Australia's new attitude to those finding it hard to cope with life.

Come on Kevin Andrews, you're a Catholic, show us what you're made of. 

Baby son who died in hot car premeditated, say police

Harris with his wife and baby boy Cooper

Justin Ross Harris from Tuscaloosa, Alabama, must be the cruelest man on the planet.  He left his little son strapped into his child seat on a scorching hot day, went to work, and pretended he forgot he was there. The temperature inside the SUV rose to 60C.

It must have been a slow death for the 22 month old, yet his father sought permission to attend his funeral to be held this Saturday. Cobb County Sheriff's Department said "We don't transport inmates to funeral services, that's it, that's our policy."

Harris is awaiting trial accused with felony murder and second degree child cruelty.

Justin Harris has one of those innocent-looking, friendly faces and has a lot of friends.  In fact, 11,000 people signed a petition to drop the charges because losing his son was punishment enough.

Harris with some of his many friends

Police allege he used his office computer to search how long it would take for an animal to die trapped in the back of a hot car.  If this is true, the child's death is obviously premeditated.

Police allege that Harris took his son for breakfast before driving to work.  He returned to his car at lunchtime, put an object into the car, left the child alone again, and returned to work.  After work he drove the child, now dead, to a shopping centre to fabricate a story that would get him off the hook.

Witness Edward Cockerham saw Harris pull Cooper from the car and thought he was acting. "I know he had lost his baby but he was acting up more than he should have been.  When he pulled in and people started asking what happened, he said the baby had just started choking.  But the baby didn't look like it had been choking, it looked like it had been sweating, like it had been in a swimming pool, his hair was all wet."


On Wednesday, Cobb County Medical Examiner's Office announced the boy died from intense heat exhaustion and confirmed the manner of his death was a homicide.

Australian Imams finally get the message

Ameer Ali

Wonders will never cease.  It's taken over twenty years but finally Muslim preachers have come out and admitted that radical groups are trashing the reputation of the entire Muslim community.

It must have been the last straw when the Daily Telegraph broke the story about Uthman Badar, the spokesman for the group Hizb ut-Tahrir, who was due to give a lecture at the Sydney Opera House entitled "Honour killings are morally justified."

Naturally, the general public was horrified and the lecture was quickly cancelled.  The same group also preaches that it's morally okay to marry pre-teen girls and that the US and Australia are terrorist nations for invading Iraq and Afghanistan.  Australians already know that's how Muslims feel, we've been told over and over, it's just more reasons to demonize Muslims.

The often divided Imams of Sydney and Melbourne have been loathe to criticize Hizt ut-Tahrir members but after all this time, the Australian National Imams Council has had a change of heart.

Doctor of Economics at Murdoch University and prominent Islamic leader Ameer Ali, former President of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, said all Muslim groups, leaders and mosque preachers should be resoundingly denouncing the views of Hizb ut-Tahrir.

"But I don't hear it yet" he said.  "I don't hear people coming out in sermons denouncing them.  They need to do this and be at the forefront of demolishing these ideas."  He went on "Indeed, most Muslims are horrified by what they are saying so why aren't the Council of Imams stopping them?  That's surprising to me."

And it surprises me too Mr Ali.  Could it be fear?

NASA says climate change is cyclical

It's the end of the day, Thursday 26th June 2014, and I haven't seen or heard any mention of an important announcement by the people who should know everything about climate change - NASA. The article appeared in AmericaSpace.

A study conducted by several universities and NASA have concluded that Antarctica's climate was once warm enough to sustain vegetation and even trees - in fact it was up to 20 degrees warmer than present day.

Core samples taken from beneath the Ross Ice Shelf reveal that 15-20 million years ago, before humans walked the earth, the temperature in the Antarctic was up to 45 degrees Fahrenheit.

I wonder if Al Gore has seen the article yet.

 http://www.americaspace.com/?p=21726

Did Putin stop US intervention in Syria?

The Russian President wrote an opinion piece in the New York Times last year in which he pleads with the American people and their political leaders to stay out of the Syrian conflict.

Republican Senator John McCain tweeted "Putin's NYT op-ed is an insult to the intelligence of every American."

What do you think?

MOSCOW — Recent events surrounding Syria have prompted me to speak directly to the American people and their political leaders. It is important to do so at a time of insufficient communication between our societies.

Relations between us have passed through different stages. We stood against each other during the cold war. But we were also allies once, and defeated the Nazis together. The universal international organization — the United Nations — was then established to prevent such devastation from ever happening again.

The United Nations’ founders understood that decisions affecting war and peace should happen only by consensus, and with America’s consent the veto by Security Council permanent members was enshrined in the United Nations Charter. The profound wisdom of this has underpinned the stability of international relations for decades.

No one wants the United Nations to suffer the fate of the League of Nations, which collapsed because it lacked real leverage. This is possible if influential countries bypass the United Nations and take military action without Security Council authorization.

The potential strike by the United States against Syria, despite strong opposition from many countries and major political and religious leaders, including the pope, will result in more innocent victims and escalation, potentially spreading the conflict far beyond Syria’s borders. A strike would increase violence and unleash a new wave of terrorism. It could undermine multilateral efforts to resolve the Iranian nuclear problem and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and further destabilize the Middle East and North Africa. It could throw the entire system of international law and order out of balance.

Syria is not witnessing a battle for democracy, but an armed conflict between government and opposition in a multireligious country. There are few champions of democracy in Syria. But there are more than enough Qaeda fighters and extremists of all stripes battling the government. The United States State Department has designated Al Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, fighting with the opposition, as terrorist organizations. This internal conflict, fueled by foreign weapons supplied to the opposition, is one of the bloodiest in the world.

Mercenaries from Arab countries fighting there, and hundreds of militants from Western countries and even Russia, are an issue of our deep concern. Might they not return to our countries with experience acquired in Syria? After all, after fighting in Libya, extremists moved on to Mali. This threatens us all.

From the outset, Russia has advocated peaceful dialogue enabling Syrians to develop a compromise plan for their own future. We are not protecting the Syrian government, but international law. We need to use the United Nations Security Council and believe that preserving law and order in today’s complex and turbulent world is one of the few ways to keep international relations from sliding into chaos. The law is still the law, and we must follow it whether we like it or not. Under current international law, force is permitted only in self-defense or by the decision of the Security Council. Anything else is unacceptable under the United Nations Charter and would constitute an act of aggression.

No one doubts that poison gas was used in Syria. But there is every reason to believe it was used not by the Syrian Army, but by opposition forces, to provoke intervention by their powerful foreign patrons, who would be siding with the fundamentalists. Reports that militants are preparing another attack — this time against Israel — cannot be ignored.

It is alarming that military intervention in internal conflicts in foreign countries has become commonplace for the United States. Is it in America’s long-term interest? I doubt it. Millions around the world increasingly see America not as a model of democracy but as relying solely on brute force, cobbling coalitions together under the slogan “you’re either with us or against us.”

But force has proved ineffective and pointless. Afghanistan is reeling, and no one can say what will happen after international forces withdraw. Libya is divided into tribes and clans. In Iraq the civil war continues, with dozens killed each day. In the United States, many draw an analogy between Iraq and Syria, and ask why their government would want to repeat recent mistakes.

No matter how targeted the strikes or how sophisticated the weapons, civilian casualties are inevitable, including the elderly and children, whom the strikes are meant to protect.

The world reacts by asking: if you cannot count on international law, then you must find other ways to ensure your security. Thus a growing number of countries seek to acquire weapons of mass destruction. This is logical: if you have the bomb, no one will touch you. We are left with talk of the need to strengthen nonproliferation, when in reality this is being eroded.

We must stop using the language of force and return to the path of civilized diplomatic and political settlement.

A new opportunity to avoid military action has emerged in the past few days. The United States, Russia and all members of the international community must take advantage of the Syrian government’s willingness to place its chemical arsenal under international control for subsequent destruction. Judging by the statements of President Obama, the United States sees this as an alternative to military action.

I welcome the president’s interest in continuing the dialogue with Russia on Syria. We must work together to keep this hope alive, as we agreed to at the Group of 8 meeting in Lough Erne in Northern Ireland in June, and steer the discussion back toward negotiations.

If we can avoid force against Syria, this will improve the atmosphere in international affairs and strengthen mutual trust. It will be our shared success and open the door to cooperation on other critical issues.

My working and personal relationship with President Obama is marked by growing trust. I appreciate this. I carefully studied his address to the nation on Tuesday. And I would rather disagree with a case he made on American exceptionalism, stating that the United States’ policy is “what makes America different. It’s what makes us exceptional.” It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation. There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. Their policies differ, too. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal.

Vladimir V. Putin