What rights have government to tell you when you can and cannot die? None!
This is the assertion of the members of Exit International, a voluntary euthanasia support group led by Dr. Philip Nitschke. This group of terminally ill people, aged 55 to 94 who are suffering from motor neurone disease (as affects Dr Stephen Hawking) or emphysema, have chosen the drug Nembutal, a powerful sedative, as their ‘peaceful pill.’ More interestingly, this group have managed to synthesize Nembutal in ‘backyard’ laboratories, as well as smuggle a bit into Australia.
Federal Attorney General Philip Ruddock is going after this group of uppity sick people like they were Scott Parkin. In his usual endearing style, Cadaver Man has made moves to ban publications from Exit International if not the group itself.
Clearly, a 94 year old guy who knows how to kill himself is as great a threat to Australian national security as Al Qaeda.
Get your hand off it, Ruddock. Governments in democratic societies are put there by the people to act in the interest of the people. Government is a convenience, someone to handle the things the people don’t have time for in our very real lives. Go fix some potholes or make the trains run on time.
Government must stop being a moral arbiter, telling us when to live, die, procreate- or be deliberately barren.
-weez
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thanks for letting everyone know of the update in the VE issue.
Can I recommend one thing – join EXIT International and doing things in real-time …. start picketing, help them in real=life.
Get all your friends involved in doing anything and everything they can.
Comment by thanks 05.08.07 @ 1:43 pmThanks for highlighting the 4-corners excellent take on dying with dignity. Let’s keep up the pressure, ’cause if Labor with the Fed. Election this year, they will also take some convincing. Why not leave it to the States?
We oldies need to establish this issue for the good of you guys who are coming after!!Compres?
Lesley
Would someone ask Ruddock if he’d rather end his days as a dribbling old vegetable in nappies, or as an emaciated terminal patient in constant pain waiting to die, or be able to opt out at the time of his choosing when his quality of life has gone.
He should be helping not persecuting the old.
thanks & LESLIE, you’re quite welcome.
john wrote:
Would someone ask Ruddock if he’d rather end his days as a dribbling old vegetable in nappies
He’s all there but the nappies… but come to think of it, the old lying sack of shit is wearing rather looser fitting daks of late…
Comment by weez 05.08.07 @ 10:10 pmRuddock may act like a cadaverous pile of loosely connected, green-ish body parts weez, but he’s a marathon runner when it comes to forcing censorship.
Comment by suki 05.09.07 @ 12:18 amGiven all of the Ruddock observations……..
(his father Max had a severe stroke and took a long time to die. Ruddock witnessed all of that.
Let’s not attack Ruddock……
Let’s see if we can help those who are scared out of their wits,feeling worthless,and just plain old. Join Exit, ask aunty, granny, mum and dad how they feel about this topic? Do some research on it. Must say we’ll have to be in it for the long haul. Lesley
Lesley, how Ruddock’s father passed away, while sad, is not any sort of excuse for the sheer evil foisted on Australians (and prospsective Australians) by Ruddock the junior.
Need I remind you that Ruddock wears an Amnesty International pin while jailing innocent children? This guy deserves an awful lot more abuse than I could possibly put in one comment to a blog entry.
Comment by weez 05.09.07 @ 7:05 amLesley,
While your compassion for Ruddock is touching, it is, in this case, misguided.
When the then, Chief Minister of the NT, Marshall Perron observed a family member’s painful, long-drawn out death, he worked to be seminal in putting together Australia’s first Euthania bill, The Rights of the Terminally Ill Act 1995– not shut down debate.
I was in the NT at the time, working in the communicable diseases field. Many people young and older where hoping to make use of the legislation to die with dignity.
Comment by suki 05.09.07 @ 7:51 amRuddock was OK in the early years. It’s the Howard years that have corrupted Ruddock, and other members of the Cabinet. Our rat cunning and evil PM has much to answer for.
Comment by M P Casey 05.09.07 @ 10:22 pmLeave a comment