Page 3193 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 21 September 1994
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This may not be the intent of the Bill, but its content would permit such discriminatory decisions.
She goes on to say, in section C:
While the Bill may be assumed to have effect only when a person is gravely ill, there is, in fact, nothing in the measure which so states. Any person who may be (or may fear becoming) dependent due to age or disability would presumably be eligible for denial of such "medical treatment" as food, water, insulin, antibiotics, or even simple first aid.
Though I think we would agree that some of these things would seem unlikely in the extreme, let us look at some of the analysis of the Remmelink report. It was reported as saying:
. 2,300 people died as the result of doctors killing them upon request (active, voluntary euthanasia).
. 400 people died as a result of doctors providing them with the means to kill themselves (physician-assisted suicide).
. 1,040 people (an average of 3 per day) died from involuntary euthanasia, meaning that doctors actively killed these patients without the patient's knowledge or consent.
At small dot points below that this report says:
. 14 per cent of these patients were fully competent.
. 72 per cent had never given any indication that they would want their lives terminated.
. In 8 per cent of the cases, doctors performed involuntary euthanasia despite the fact that they believed alternative options were still possible.
Mr Moore: Whose analysis are you quoting?
MR STEVENSON: Rita Marker's. It is from Euthanasia Practice in Holland, page 2, provided by the International Anti-Euthanasia Task Force. When I heard Rita Marker speak in Canberra I found it to be one of the most compelling and reasonable analyses of any argument that I had ever come across. She goes on to say at another major dot point:
. In addition, 8,100 patients died as a result of doctors deliberately giving them overdoses of pain medication, not for the primary purpose of controlling pain, but to hasten the patient's death. In 61 per cent of these cases (4,941 patients), the intentional overdose was given without the patient's consent.
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