DWDQ NEWSLETTERS

Volume 26 No 1 January 2012

For Your Consideration

The patient, only 35, had been in a persistent vegetative state for 15 years. Recently, he had developed septic bedsores and pneumonia. His kidneys were failing, and despite the feeding tube, he was losing weight. Now he was in cardiac arrest. He was dying....more...

Volume 25 No 4 October 2011

For Your Consideration

E-Health: Opt-in or Opt-out?
All Australians will have the option to sign up for the personally controlled electronic health record system from July next year. ''The government firmly believes staged implementation, including 'opt in', is the right way to build confidence in e-health records for the ultimate benefit of patients....more...

Volume 25 No 3 July 2011

For Your Consideration

Death with Dignity Isn’t Suicide

Ethan Renwood, Associate Professor of Psychology at a University in the state of Washington, has recently been diagnosed with incurable colon cancer. After obtaining medication under the Washington Dying with Dignity Act, he writes in his blog on Psychology Today: “I have not decided if or when I will use it, but it gives me great relief to know that I have some control over my dying process....more...

Volume 25 No 2 April 2011

For Your Consideration

Your Living Will Online?

In the U.S. Oregon is making it easier for the seriously ill to voluntarily make their wishes known about end-of-life care by creating an electronic database that first responders can quickly check during a medical emergency. At least two other states—West Virginia and New York—are developing similar systems, which are an outgrowth of signed paper forms known as Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment, or POLST.....more...

Volume 25 No 1 January 2011

For Your Consideration

John Edge, aged 74

VALE JOHN EDGE
John Edge, aged 74, chose self-deliverance on 8 December, 2010.
I knew John throughout the last twelve years of his life. We both entered service for the then Voluntary Euthanasia Society of Queensland after witnessing the over-turning of the Northern Territory’s Rights of the Terminally Ill Act. John became convener of the Gold Coast Support Group and I became president of the Brisbane Branch....more...

Volume 24 No 4 October 2010

For Your Consideration

Late News: More Censorship

Inside this issue, one of the items under "General News" (pp2-3) reports on the banning of a pro-choice TV ad in Australia, and comments that Exit International is also planning a billboard campaign. News this morning (when our newsletter is about to go to press): "Right-to-die Billboards as well as TV ads banned in Australia", by Danny Rose, Medical Writer for the Sydney Morning Herald (16/09/10). The first pro-voluntary euthanasia billboards had been planned for October, on the Hume Highway in outer Sydney....more...

Volume 24 No 3 July 2010

For Your Consideration

A Call to Oppose Internet Censorship.

Australia is proposing to introduce a compulsory firewall that filters content based on a blacklist of banned sites. The Censorship Minister Stephen Conroy has stated that all Refused Classification content will be banned:
computer games unsuitable for children, information about euthanasia, discussion forums on anorexia, as well as child porn. A site may be refused classification if it links to a site that is refused, which could result in half the internet being blocked. A previous leak to Wikileaks showed that a current list included the website of a dentist....more...

Volume 24 No 2 April 2010

For Your Consideration

Do you have a living will?
According to recent research (see p. 5, this issue) even though most people want to die at home and do not wish to suffer aggressive medical treatment at the end of life, they wind up dying in hospital, and many in the situation they dreaded most "tethered to machines", unable to avoid respirators, resuscitation, additional chemotherapy and the web of tubes, needles, pumps and other machines that often accompany death in the hospital....more...

Volume 24 No 1 January 2010

For Your Consideration

Let's Get Together: Palliative Care, Advanced Care Planning and Assisted Dying

As assisted dying is permitted under law in an ever growing number of jurisdictions, the key question of how we will connect assisted dying and end of life care will have to be addressed. When assisted dying is to be made available, like other end of life services, to all members of the population, rather than only those who can purchase or organise it for themselves as at present, we will need to engage in a safe and open public, professional, policy and practice debate, far in advance of what we have so far had, that looks at end of life care and assisted dying in relation to each other and which allows us to plan properly for our individual and collective futures....more...

Volume 23 No 3 July 2009

For Your Consideration

Progress in Tassie

Maybe Tasmania could become the first state to legalise voluntary euthanasia with the introduction of The Dying with Dignity Bill 2009 in the Tasmanian Parliament.
The Labor Government and the Liberals have agreed to grant a conscience vote on the Private Member's Bill which was introduced by Greens leader Nick McKim in early June. The Bill would make it legal for terminally ill people to choose to die with medical assistance. Mr McKim believed there was a "very good chance" the Bill would pass into law...more...

 NEWSLETTER ENQUIRIES: THE EDITOR