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Twenty two leading Western Australian palliative care specialists who between them "have been privileged to care for tens of thousands of patients and their families" have co-signed an open letter explaining their strong, united opposition to the proposal to legalise euthanasia or assisted suicide in Western Australia.

The proposal to legalise euthanasia and assisted suicide involves a massive change in the ethics of our society. “Do not kill” is a foundational ethical principle which has been observed by every civilisation for thousands of years. Euthanasia and assisted suicide are not medical treatments, and most emphatically not part of palliative care.

Unlike euthanasia, palliative care aims to provide total care (body, mind and spirit) for patients and support for their families.

With modern medications and procedures we can almost always control symptoms. In extreme cases, at the request of a dying patient and his or her family, we have occasionally used deep sedation to control symptoms that did not respond to the usual treatment.

The specialists explain how requests for euthanasia are driven by existential concerns such as loneliness and how holistic palliative care can respond to these concerns.

Rarely, a patient will say to us, “doctor, I just want to end it all”. Contrary to popular opinion, the reason for such requests is not pain, but despair and loneliness, also called “existential suffering”. Euthanasia is not a treatment for despair and existential suffering. Provision of holistic care by a skilled interdisciplinary team of health professionals enables patients and families to acknowledge and attend to distress within themselves and their relationships. The time before death offers unique opportunities for psychospiritual growth and allows for healing even without a cure.

The palliative care experts also point out that:

Western Australia has the lowest proportion of specialist palliative care doctors of any state in Australia. We have 15 full-time equivalents for the state, less than one third the number required to meet national benchmarks. According to the Honourable Jim Chown, whose motion was supported unanimously, WA needs at least another $100 million per year spent on palliative care for staffing and education, in addition to funding for infrastructure such as palliative care wards and beds.

The open letter concludes:

We do not believe euthanasia or assisted suicide are solutions to suffering. We reaffirm our commitment to our patients: we will continue to care for you to the best of our ability, guided by your choices, but we will not kill you. 

Read the whole letter here

A significant majority of New Zealanders shift from initial support of euthanasia to opposition once questions are asked about the how such a law might actually work in practice.

An opinion poll conducted in April-May 2019 by Curia Market Research found that although initially 57% of respondents said YES and 29% NO to the question "Should a doctor should be allowed to give deadly drugs to deliberately kill a patient?"  these results flipped when respondents were asked "Would you like New Zealand to have a law that would allow a terminally ill person to receive a lethal injection because they feel depressed or that life is meaningless?" - 56% said NO and only 35% said YES.

Similarly when asked "Would you like New Zealand to have a law that would allow a terminally ill person to receive a lethal injection because they feel they are a burden?" 63% said No and only 25% said YES.

Finally when asked "Do you think doctors should be allowed to give deadly drugs to deliberately kill their patients, even if they are NOT in pain?" only 27% said NO and 59% said YES.

In other words majority support for euthanasia can only be elicited when respondents are led to believe that euthanasia is necessary for terminally ill patients with unrelievable pain.

All the evidence shows that this is not a principle reason why people request euthanasia or assisted suicide and that euthansia and assisted suicide are not needed for pain relief.

See the full opinion poll results here .

New Zealanders are changing their minds on euthanasia in the days leading up to a vote on the End of Life Choices Bill which could occur as soon as 12 June 2019.

Left wing journalist and disability activist Chris Ford writes that a delay in the vote on the Bill had:

given opponents of the legislation more time to present good arguments to the public as to why the legislation needs to be defeated. This delay also presents me with a good opportunity to say I’ve changed my mind on it and am now firmly in the no camp.

Ford's flip on the issue accords with the results of an opinion poll conducted by Curia Market Research showing that support by New Zealanders for euthanasia dropped significantly and opposition increased as details about how the law would actually work were put to them.

In a submission to the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety the Australian Care Alliance has warned that the assisted suicide law in Victoria, and similar proposed laws in Western Australia, Queensland, South Australia and Tasmania, pose grave risks to the safety of elderly persons and persons with disabilities in the aged care system.

Out of the eleven categories of wrongful deaths that have or can occur under any scheme so far proposed which legalises assisted suicide and/or euthanasia the submission identifies three categories of direct relevance to the Royal Commission:

• The wrongful death of elderly persons who are subtly or overtly coerced by family members or carers into requesting assisted suicide or euthanasia;
•  The wrongful death of persons with dementia, who are killed by euthanasia or assisted suicide while unable to give consent.
• The wrongful death of persons with disabilities who are affirmed by family members, doctors or society as being “better off dead”.

Stephen Parnis, a former AMA Victorian president and vice-president of the federal AMA, has warned that under Victoria's assisted suicide law which will come into operation on 19 June 2019, many people managing terminal illnesses would seek out assisted suicide because they did not want to be a burden. “The fact is that we have some very vulnerable people in our society whose next of kin or nearest and dearest may regard them as an asset to be realised rather than someone who needs to be loved,” he told Joe Kelly from The Australian.

Dutch deaths by euthanasia for 2018 include nine couples euthanased together; two persons with advanced dementia based on an advanced request; 205 elderly people with two or more problems of old age; 67 people with mental illness, including 10 aged between 18 and 40 years; and three children aged between 12 and 17.