Regarding the ignorant and ill-informed comments made by Moira Floresta in response to the comments made by Esther Richards (February 2); there is nothing worse than those, who have not experienced a diagnosis of terminal illness, spouting their views and putting others down in the process. As someone who has received a terminal diagnosis, as an advocate for assisted dying, and as someone who has spent two years as an active advocate, actually listening to the stories from the front line from honest palliative care nurses, who dare not speak up for fear of reprisals in their workplace, my message to Moira Floresta is "Walk a mile in the shoes of Esther and myself and then come back and tell us how it's all going ..."
Assisted dying should be an adjunct to palliative care — palliative care starts (supposedly) after a terminal diagnosis and is designed — according to a palliative care nurse specialist with post-graduate qualifications in palliative care — who I interviewed recently — to provide comfort, support and to best alleviate symptoms and side-effects. However, that cannot always be achieved with many forms of cancer and other diseases. That's when the individual should have the voluntary option of avoiding a prolonged, painful and horrific end of life — the type many of us have witnessed through our experience of nursing our own loved ones.Tanya Battel, Brisbane
Polar opposites
Correspondent Moira Floresta rightly points out that euthanasia and palliative care are not complementary (as some claim) but rather "polar opposites".
I would add that euthanasia advocates who claim that it is used only when palliative care is ineffective are not even sincere. If this was a serious element of eligibility, the End of Life Choice Act would say so: it doesn't.
