The latest ACT Branch Newsletter contains details of the next General Meeting and speaker together with comments on matters including palliative care, doctors groups and legislative reform
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WHEN Anyse Horman's mother died "a painful and undignified death" she promised herself she would do something to help others avoid similar heartache. Mrs Horman, of Graceville in Brisbane's south-west, said her mother, Gretta Agnew, died aged 88, of lung and bone cancer in 2006.

Mrs Horman joined the Brisbane branch of Dying With Dignity to help others, and herself, if needs be.

"My sister and I nursed her at home because she didn't want to die in hospital," she said. "But the last month of her life was just so awful. She was in pain all the time and found life humiliating after she became totally bedridden."

Mrs Horman said they had spoken about euthanasia. "She'd say to me, `Anyse you know what I want,' but there was nothing I could do at that stage. No one should see their mum or any loved one die like that."

Doctors stuck by their opposition to assisted suicide in the light of high-profile cases involving the Swiss Dignitas clinic.

Medics attending the British Medical Association's annual conference in Liverpool voted overwhelmingly against supporting a motion "allowing the choice of an assisted death by patients who are terminally ill and who have mental capacity".

They also refused to back calls to lift the threat of prosecution from friends and relatives who accompany loved ones abroad to die.

The vote does not mean doctors believe relatives should automatically be prosecuted. Their stance shows they think the law should stay as it is.
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Former Chief Minister of the Northern Territory, Marshall Perron, introduced the Rights of the Terminally Ill Act in 1996 making the territory the first jurisdiction in the world to legalise voluntary euthanasia. The federal Government later over turned the legislation. Mr Perron, who now lives at Buderim on the Sunshine Coast, hopes a Queensland politician will introduce a similar bill to reflect what he calls ''overwhelming community support'' for the issue.

He wrote to the Deputy Premier and Health Minister, Paul Lucas, on June 18 and his local member, Steve Dickson of the LNP, in March, asking them to raise the issue with their colleagues and to present a Private Members Bill in Parliament. He said a poll in 2007 showed 81 per cent of Queenslanders supported legalising voluntary euthanasia.

He has the support of Australian Republic campaigner, Brisbane lawyer David Muir, who is the executor of the estate of the late Clem Jones, Brisbane's former lord mayor. Mr Jones left $5million in his will to help legalise euthanasia after his wife, Sylvia, died an agonising death in 1999.

Queensland is the only state or territory never to have considered such a bill. Listen to Marshall talk about VE.

Jens Petersen, a German doctor living in Switzerland, has said he sees a lot of pain in his job, which spurs his creativity. That's earned him one of the top German-language literary awards: the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize.
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Four years ago Laura McDaid made the hardest choice of her life: to accompany her former boyfriend to Switzerland’s Dignitas clinic to escape the pain of MS.
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Three of Britain's most senior religious leaders have joined forces to stop a House of Lords amendment that they fear would pave the way to "legalising euthanasia". In their letter, the clerics said: "This amendment would mark a shift in British law towards legalising euthanasia. We do not believe such a fundamental change in the law should be sought by way of an amendment to an already complex bill."

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nichols and Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks are urging peers to reject proposals that would let families help their loved ones die abroad without the threat of prosecution.
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This latest newsletter reports on your committee's vote to recommend a change of name to DYING WITH DIGNITY NSW. This resolution will be voted on at an Extraordinary Meeting to be held before the next General Meeting on 9 August 2009. Read more about it in this newsletter. Also read Prof Peter Baume's AC (our Patron) address on why we need legislation and the President's report to the AGM. Apart from the normal updates on issues and book reviews, this newsletter also profiles VESNSW committee members..
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