Letters: Let's be clear on End of Life Choice criteria

Let's be clear the EOLC Act offers our right to seek medical assistance for a peaceful death that is reserved for those who are within six months of dying of terminal illness only.

Let's be clear on Enf of Life Choice criteria

G R Scown's muddled thinking (January 8) appears to be in some way related to the End of Life Choice (ELOC) Act, which we will be given the option of voting on in a referendum later this year in conjunction with the general election.

Sadly, he reaches into the farm paddock in an attempt to misinform, mislead, frighten and offend readers who may not understand the strict provisions of the ELOC Act. It has nothing to do with NZ's or any other country's welfare system, economy, fossil fuels or veterinary bills.

Really? Is he trying to be funny at the expense of those who right now are in our hospitals and aged care facilities (and their loved ones by their bedsides) suffering the prolonged and unbearable terminal suffering of cruel diseases like cancer.

The ELOC Act, passed by parliamentary majority last year, contains stringent conditions and safeguards to ensure Mr Scown's fantastical and cruel prognostications cannot happen to anyone but those medically judged to be within six months of dying from a terminal illness. That rules out his ludicrous list of older people unable to look after themselves, those with dementia or anyone with (his obsolete word) decrepidity.

Let's be clear, Mr Scown, the referendum will ask if we require our elected representatives to implement the EOLC Act, with its gift of our right to seek medical assistance for a peaceful death that is reserved for those who are within six months of dying of terminal illness only. It is a matter between them and their doctors, and they must be deemed mentally competent at all stages of the process.

Polls show some 70 per cent of us wish to be able to die with dignity rather than continue the distress to ourselves and our loved ones of unbearable terminal suffering. For Mr Scown to cheapen and ridicule this deeply serious issue shows how out of touch he is.
CAROL WEBB
Whanganui

History lessons

Graeme Hansen's imagination (January 9) enables him to picture the "rubbish" he fears will be taught to students as New Zealand history in the near future. Yet, in the same letter, he calmly accepts the great, unrevised Pakeha oral tradition of Moriori being the first inhabitants of Aotearoa.

This particular fiction was developed in the early 1900s, and it was faithfully taught in our schools for much of the 20th century. It has long been discredited as more fancy than fact.

In the present century, as an antidote to a myth on its last legs, I say bring on the new history.
WARREN SHAW
Marton

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