Arrest rekindles debate over assisted suicide

A recent Massey University survey showed more than 70 per cent of people supported doctor-assisted suicide for someone with a painful, incurable disease.

However, those against legalising euthanasia warn it could end up targeting the most vulnerable.

When Wanganui woman Lesley Martin, who was charged last week with the attempted murder of her dying mother, Joy, in 1999, spoke last month, she was still waiting to hear whether police would take any action.

The former intensive-care nurse kept her silence during a 10-month police investigation into her mother's death.

With the publication last year of her book about her mother's death, To Die Like A Dog, Martin said she knew she had laid herself open to charges, but it was a risk she was "willing to take", so strongly did she feel about the need for law change.

Her arrest on March 6 came on the same day that legislation forcing a conscience vote on voluntary euthanasia was introduced to Parliament.

Martin entered no plea when she appeared in the Wanganui District Court the same day and was remanded on bail and directed not to talk to the media.

Last month, she said "many people" were grappling with the dilemma .

"The courts don't know what to do with these people; they're clearly not murderers - the police are just doing their job.

"Obviously the only ones with any power to change the situation are those in Parliament."

Palliative care specialists can control pain in only nine out of 10 cancer cases, the former nurse said.

"In 1998 ... there were 7582 deaths from cancer. That tells me that among just deaths from cancer, 758 people died in uncontrolled pain."

She said the experience of the US state of Oregon, where doctor-assisted euthanasia was legalised in 1997, showed people wanted only "reassurance that help is there if they need it".

Although 900 people applied, only 91 had actually taken the lethal dose.

However, opponents say the legislation is open to abuse.

Last week, politicians were lining up for and against the introduction of New Zealand First MP Peter Brown's Death With Dignity member's bill, which has been drawn after languishing in the ballot box for two years.

Prime Minister Helen Clark voiced conditional support, while National Party leader Bill English said the law should uphold the maxim that if you take a life, you will be held responsible.

The last time Parliament debated the issue was in 1995, when former NZ First MP Michael Laws and terminally ill MP Cam Campion failed to get their voluntary euthanasia bill passed.

Jack Jones, spokesman for the Voluntary Euthanasia Society of Auckland, said support for law reform was growing as the population aged and more people fell victim to awful diseases which did not necessarily bring about quick death.

He said the "cruelty" of the New Zealand situation was that people were condemned to die in isolation.

"At the moment, if someone asks you to unscrew the lid of a medicine bottle because their hands are too crippled, you can be charged with aiding and abetting suicide ... "

Some disability rights groups argue legalisation will lead to euthanasia being practised on the poorest, weakest and "most inconvenient" members of society.

The head of the Salvation Army, Commissioner Shaw Clifton, said euthanasia was "a horrific prospect - Hitler did it".

"If we are to kill off the dying with their consent, would it not be even more compassionate to kill off those whose condition means they cannot consent?"

Catholic ethicist Rev Michael McCabe, director of the Nathaniel Centre for Bio-Ethics in Wellington, said to "yield to the logic of assisted suicide is to rob the individual and community of wonderful possibilities for growth through the exercise of caring and to give up on the deeper dimensions of personhood".

Wellington's Mary Potter Hospice medical director Rod MacLeod said: "People who choose to take their lives are almost invariably lonely and isolated."

"I have looked after thousands of people who are dying and many, when they first meet me, say 'Doc, you've got something you can give me'.

"What they are saying is, 'I don't want to live like this'.

"That's quite a different thing from saying, 'I want to die'.

Euthanasia bill

New Zealand First MP Peter Brown's new bill could see a first debate in Parliament late this month. * MPs will be free to vote according to their conscience.

* Voluntary euthanasia can come into law only if backed by a national referendum.* The bill would require two doctors to diagnose the patient, give alternatives and ensure the request for death was voluntary.

* Patients would be referred to a psychiatrist and a counsellor and their request could not be activated if they were depressed, or suffering a mental disorder.

* Next of kin would have to be informed.

- NZPA