Damned if I Do

by Philip Nitschke

  As is increasingly the case in Australia, Brisbane was, and is, a one-newspaper town, with Rupert Murdoch at the wheel. Given Nancy lived on the Gold Coast, her story was always destined to be covered first and most extensively by the local media, which in southeast Queensland means the Gold Coast Bulletin and the more widely read state paper, The Courier Mail, also owned by Murdoch. While he has never, to my knowledge, expressed an opinion one way or the other about voluntary euthanasia, senior ­journalists working in his flagship publications certainly have. The Australian led the attack in the wake of Nancy’s death.

  Another memorable incident involved the Melbourne Age’s health reporter, Julia Medew—who prior to, and since, has produced some excellent front-page journalism about voluntary euthanasia.5 Under the Freedom of Information legislation, in 2011, Medew obtained data from the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine. The data showed that fifty-one people in Australia had died of Nembutal overdoses in the ten years to 2010. Of these deaths, thirty-two (63 per cent) were of people aged over fifty years. However, six were aged twenty to twenty-nine years, with a further eight aged thirty to thirty-nine years. Medew’s article opened with the broadside ‘Australians in their 20s and 30s are killing themselves with the drug that controversial euthanasia advocate, Dr Philip Nitschke, has promoted as the “peaceful pill”’, using the headline ‘Euthanasia Drug Snares Young Australians’.6

  Public reaction to the article was swift. I was accused of being irresponsible, reckless and downright dangerous. But this was unfair—at Exit we take every possible caution to prevent young people from getting information that would enable them to obtain Nembutal; we also know that young people don’t attend Exit workshops. As to whether young people might buy printed copies of our banned Peaceful Pill Handbook from Amazon in the US and import them illegally, or access the online version, both of which provide this information, we don’t know. However, another in-built safeguard is automatic. Acquiring Nembutal is a time-consuming and expensive process that does not lend itself to rash, spur-of-the-moment actions. But, with Medew’s Age article, the damage was quickly done and the anti-euthanasia movement around the world immediately began using it as evidence of their long-held position that I should be prosecuted.7

  It was not until five weeks after the article appeared that The Age ran a letter to the editor about the way the statistics had been reported. It came from the Head of the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine, Professor Joan Ozanne-Smith, who wrote:

  Subsequent analysis of the data shows at least nine of the 14 individuals aged under 40 who died from pento­barbitone toxicity worked in a veterinary or ­animal laboratory environment … thus these people may have had knowledge of the drug and/or process to it from their work experience or workplace.

  She continued:

  We do not think the data supports the view that ­younger people are generally accessing Nembutal/­pentobarbitone via euthanasia information.

  Unfortunately, this was too little too late. The Age refused to publish my letter to the editor, my only available right-of-reply.

  There have been plenty of other examples of stories being written about me where my version of events was never going to get a fair run. The prime example of this concerned the case of the 2008 death of West Australian psychiatric patient, Erin Berg.

  Erin was an occupational therapist in Perth, one of four sisters, the other three of whom were social workers. Erin was the only one of them with children, having had four by the age of thirty-nine. She also had post-natal depression, and had separated from her husband, Norman, before her fourth child, Elizabeth, was born. Following this birth she suffered from post-natal depression of such severity that she was certified and hospitalised as an involuntary patient.

  On 21 April 2008, after six weeks in the Mother and Baby Unit at King Edward Memorial Hospital for Women, Erin was discharged by the Mental Health Review Board on the condition that she be monitored by the Fremantle Mental Health Unit. Three weeks later, after securing permission for a ‘short holiday down south’, she visited her ex-husband, Norman, and handed baby Elizabeth over to him. Twelve hours later she flew out of Australia for Mexico. Norman would later acknowledge in an ABC radio documentary that Erin had told him she was off to Los Angeles, although she denied she was going to Tijuana. He even suggested to her that if she was planning on killing herself in Tijuana, to ‘make sure you’ve got a will’.8 And so it was that Erin Berg went to Tijuana with her husband’s full knowledge. There, she allegedly purchased and drank Nembutal in a sleazy hotel room, but failed to die. When the news reached Australia, her sisters, in an understandable panic, boarded the next flight to LA. On arriving in Tijuana, they found Erin comatose in the Hospital General de Tijuana. She died five days later.

  Before they left Australia, the Mother and Baby Unit at King Edward informed Erin’s sisters that they had found a record of her having borrowed Killing Me Softly from the local library. The accusations flew, with The Australian journalist Victoria Laurie acting as the sisters’ mouthpiece.9 Laurie rang and interviewed me at length, laying out the sister’s allegations. My answers were given little attention in the Weekend Australian piece that ­followed. I can now finally address that.

  Accusation:

  ‘While Nitschke stated his book was “not a how-to-die manual”, the Doyle sisters would later argue that Erin had viewed it precisely in those terms.’

  My response:

  Of the 88 000 odd words that make up Killing Me Softly, a single sentence makes mention of Mexico as a source for Nembutal. ‘Its availability in countries like Mexico and Indonesia has been investigated by Exit …’

  Accusation:

  ‘How could Philip Nitschke have made such ­statements about a so-called “reliable” death?’

  My response:

  With no autopsy, no one knows what Erin did. Did she take a gulp from a bottle of Nembutal and vomit it up (given her sister reported her hotel room smelling of vomit)?10 Did she die of alcohol poisoning? We will never know, no autopsy was ever done. Suspicion and hysteria are no substitute for scientific analysis.

  Accusation:

  ‘Another rude shock would confront the women in Mexico. They discovered that Tijuana, a border town between Mexico and the US, is a drug-trafficking capital where violence erupts daily … No such dangers were explained in Nitschke’s books or on his website, even though he had visited Tijuana several times …’

  My response:

  As Victoria Laurie’s article reached fever pitch, so I became accused of all manner of sins. In a book that does not discuss Tijuana, I should somehow have warned readers of the dangers to tourists in Tijuana?

  Accusation:

  ‘Nitschke’s book didn’t mention that Mexican law prohibits doctors from ceasing treatment, even in the event of no brain function …’

  My response:

  Why would I discuss the laws concerning medical treatment in Mexico?

  Accusation:

  ‘[Erin’s sister’s] partner, Noela, was so furious at their dilemma she fired off an email to Nitschke’s Darwin-based organisation, Exit International. “I am truly ­horrified at the information you make so freely available on your internet and also in Nitschke-published books, especially Killing Me Softly,” she wrote. “You have a massive responsibility to ensure your message gets to the right people and is not reinterpreted by people who are sad, isolated or mentally ill.’’’

  My response:

  This last accusation is perhaps the point that irks me most. Erin Berg did make contact with Exit on the 13th December 2007. How do I know? Because Exit’s invaluable database tells me so. It tells me also that Erin tried to lie her way into Exit membership, only to be turned down by our nurse. Of course, there are plenty of women in their late thirties who have ­cervical cancer. But Erin was not one of them. In the course of trying to talk her way into Exit, Erin ­discl
osed that she had had five breakdowns over the past ten years and that one breakdown had lasted for a continuous two years. As a result Erin was advised to contact WA ­psychiatric services and to let her family know of her pain and suffering. She was told in no uncertain terms that Exit was not for her, she could not attend a workshop and there was no way we could help her.

  I’m not sure what more I could or should have done, but to Victoria Laurie and the Weekend Australian, that didn’t matter. Nothing was going to get in the way of her story.

  My relationship with journalists (and their editors and producers) spans the gamut of human emotion. There are those I really like and some I see socially. There are others who simply don’t engage with me or with voluntary ­euthanasia (sometimes, it seems, one is synonymous with the other). And there are those whose gigs I know I’ll probably never get, and I’ll never know why. Q&A, hosted by Tony Jones on ABC television, and Alan Jones and Roy Hadley on Sydney’s 2GB are a few that spring to mind.

  My interview with CNN’s Connie Chung in the San Diego studio, while she was at HQ in New York, was memorable for several reasons. With an audience in the ­millions, a grab on prime-time CNN is important in anyone’s language. But it was a particularly nasty exchange, one that could hardly be called an interview. Connie simply hammered me, interrupting at every point, suggesting that I had exploited a vulnerable and lonely Lisette Nigot when I agreed to help her die.

  Her San Diego producer must have taken pity on this hapless Australian who had arrived in the US amid such ­controversy (the press were aware that the prototype carbon ­monoxide generator I had designed and had planned to display in San Diego had been confiscated by Customs as I was leaving Australia). On my way out the studio door, the producer called me aside and said, ‘You might be interested in this.’ ‘This’ was the recording of the NYC producer’s feed. The feed is the invisible audio line that goes into the presenter’s ear, and feeds questions and angles as an interview progresses. If you look carefully, you can see the discreetly positioned, curly translucent wire as its snakes out of a presenter’s collar.

  So, accompanying Connie’s interview, was the goading from the production sidelines. ‘You’ve got him, Connie, go for the kill, you’ve got him!’ screamed the anonymous voice. And kill, Connie did. It seems that a sensible conversation about one’s right to determine when and how one dies is beyond some media people’s ability. I’m sure I’m not alone in finding such an approach insulting, even if the dramatics make for interesting, if fleeting, television.

  While Connie’s approach to our interview that night was neither fair nor professional, she is hardly alone. In Australia, commentators such as Neil Mitchell (on Melbourne radio ­station 3AW), and Murdoch-stable stalwarts Andrew Bolt and David Penberthy often take the same path. While Bolt is well-known for his rantings—and his habit of adopting a contrary opinion, seemingly merely for the sake of generating controversy and a pay packet—Penberthy and his offsider Tory Shepherd are a little more insidious.

  Over the past decade, Penberthy has been unable to engage in the voluntary euthanasia issue without side-swiping me over whatever takes his fancy. Is it my ‘gravestone toothy smile’? Is it my ‘trademark hangdog expression’? When my photograph is used to illustrate his savage opinion pieces with the caption, ‘Would you be seen dead in this shirt?’ one has to wonder at a journalist who can’t help but attack my physical appearance. One is never given a chance to answer. Inevitably these attacks are from people I have no respect for, but they do damage. My standard response: You can call me names and criticise my appearance—none of that matters. What is important are the ideas—try at least to get the ideas right. The debate over voluntary euthanasia can be vicious. There is a lot at stake and there are some big egos at play, especially in the case of journalists who seem to think that I have gained too a high profile, too easily and for too long. And on occasions, it has been members of the alternative online press who have come to my rescue, a good example of which was the September 2012 article by Andrew Crook ‘Fight over Clem Jones bequest splits right-to-die movement’.

  While working with the media can be a balancing act, there are many occasions where journalists are supportive of me and the voluntary euthanasia issue. Indeed, in some interviews I have questions put to me in such a positive way that all I need do is agree. While such moments might not amount to hard-hitting journalism, I am grateful for the breaks they provide. Prominent among such media figures are television personality Kerri-Anne Kennerley; the ‘human headline’, Derryn Hinch (formerly of 3AW Melbourne); the delightful Reverend Bill Crews (2GB Sydney); Howard Sattler (6PR Perth); John Laws; and former Country Liberal Party minister Daryl Manzie on Territory FM radio in Darwin.

  In the social-media sphere, similar instances of ­goodwill abound. The reactions on my Facebook page and to my tweets are as heartening as they are immediate. It is nice to know there are others of like mind, that my message is on target, and that I am not alone. But the blogging and twitter­spheres have also brought out the mad and the downright dangerous, particularly amongst the fundamentalist Christians.

  In Australia, the emergence in recent years of Christian activist and Democratic Labor Party hopeful Paul Russell and his ‘HOPE’ anti-euthanasia group has not only led to a proliferation of skewed blog headlines, but also to an attack on my medical registration. A debate with Russell at the Liberal Club at the University of Adelaide in mid 2012 ­produced the blog headline ‘Euthanasia Campaigner Philip Nitschke Meets His Match in Debate’. No one who attended thought that, but his blog on the event was immediately repeated and re-repeated throughout the global network of church and fundamentalist anti-euthanasia websites.

  While he might be a polite, smiling and even warm-hearted opponent, Russell’s ruthless determination to have me deregistered as a doctor is unabating. That he is a former employee in the Office of Family and Life in the Catholic Church in Adelaide, as well as holding the DLP’s number one Senate spot in the 2010 federal election, gives him ready access to several mainstream journalists, only too keen to push their own ideological bandwagons. And so it was that I learned about the launching of a second enquiry by the Australian Medical Board (AHPRA) into my fitness to practise medicine, not in a letter from the investigating authority, but rather from the senior political journalist of The Australian and Catholic hardliner, Dennis Shanahan. Dennis rang to inform me that his ‘reliable sources’ had told him of the decision by the Medical Board to act on a complaint by Paul Russell. His article, ‘Nitschke Accused of Gas Import Scam’ would appear as an exclusive in the national press the following day. It was another week before I finally received formal notification from AHPRA. Yes, a second investigation in regard to my being a ‘fit and proper’ person to hold ­medical registration had been launched. The reason? My involvement with Max Dog Brewing nitrogen cylinders. That Shanahan knew of AHPRA’s investigation before I did is ­farcical. Of course, journalists will jump at the whiff of blood and go for any headline. Interestingly, the same news story produced a second, much friendlier headline, ‘Nitschke May Lose His Medical Licence Over Beer’ in the NT News the following day.11

  Internationally, the anti-euthanasia internet campaign is led by a number of zealots. Canadian pro-life activist Alex Schadenberg is one. His parents are known in Canada as ­pro-life pioneers and his blog shows a fixation on my ­activities and those of Exit. Schadenberg, his American anti-euthanasia counterpart Wesley J. Smith, and their UK equivalent, expat New Zealander Peter Saunders use the new media relentlessly, spreading the lies and half truths that have grown up over the years. If I believed half of what they wrote, I’d be scared of me too. However, truth is commonly the first casualty in debates where religious fundamentalists are involved. Just ask the ­feminists in the pro-choice/­abortion debate.

  When I look back on my interaction with the media, it is Max Bell and Murray McLaughlin’s ABC Four Corners episode ‘Road to Nowhere’ t
hat I come back to time and time again. When surgeon Jon Wardill saw Max’s suffering on the ABC, he broke ranks with the medical establishment. This was activist journalism at its best, whether McLaughlin intended it to be or not.

  Allen Ginsberg once famously noted ‘whoever controls the media … controls the culture’, and so it is. I can forgive the media much when it makes good things happen; when minds are prised open and democracy begins to work. Media coverage is pivotal to social change and my supping at the devil’s table seems the necessary price to pay.

  FIFTEEN

  Censorship

  The only valid censorship of ideas is the right of people not to listen.

  Tom Smothers

  Withholding information from people who need it has always annoyed me. It was the reason for my anger when I wasn’t allowed to see or respond to the letter that was so critical of me when I took up my rangering job. Censorship offends one’s sense of fair play and strikes at the heart of free speech. Over the past decade I’ve watched with dismay as censorship continues to rear its ugly head.

  The censorship of euthanasia has taken many forms. Parliament has introduced laws and regulations to ­prevent elderly Australians from accessing the end-of-life ­information they want. This has seen the banning of the Peaceful Pill Handbook, the banning of a television commercial that Exit com­missioned, and the near banning of an advertising billboard. The Queensland Government even once sent an inspector to a workshop I was holding at the Brisbane City Library in order to ensure that a three-minute film made for Exit by Steve Hopes (Do It Yourself with Betty) about how to make an Exit bag would not be shown to the assembled audience of fifty or so octogenarians. The reason? The film had not been classified by the Office of Film and Literature Classification and may be ‘objectionable’.