Australia’s peak body for voluntary assisted dying health professionals has responded to a Queensland suicide case using euthanasia drugs meant for someone else as ‘terrible’, but reject the need for tighter controls.
National Director of Politics for the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL), Wendy Francis, said, “The recent death by suicide in Queensland, using euthanasia drugs, reinforces the truth about VAD – it’s suicide by another name and it can never be made safe”.
Any pretence that VAD is anything other than government approved suicide is being abandoned in the ACT as they discuss allowing children to choose to end their own lives. ACT Leukemia patient, Kath Dyason articulated it well when she spoke to an ABC reporter recently about the availability of VAD, saying, “Well, I guess what it comes down to is suicide, one way or another”.
Following on from the tragic death in Queensland, the ACL calls on all State and Territory governments to reassess whether they truly believe State sanctioned suicide is good for our nation, and in particular our young people and Indigenous Australians, for whom suicide is the leading cause of death.
