Dr Marion Harris' Catholic ideology on full display
Dr Marion Harris recently published another op-ed, this one in The Australian, against legalising voluntary assisted dying for the terminally ill. Her “reasoning” is inane, failing the basics of Logic 101 and offering up misinformation about palliative care. It also comprehensively fails to mention her deep underpinning Catholic ideology.
Dr Marion Harris is an experienced Melbourne-based oncologist. Having practiced for some twenty years, she’s co-authored research papers published in the peer-reviewed medical literature regarding the assessment of treatments for particular kinds of cancer.
You’d think that such experience and attention to evidence and proper deduction would give rise to a moderate and thoughtful approach towards legal VAD (even if opposed) and on other more general matters. But she offers quite strident nonsensical arguments.
Inane logical flaw
The lead reason that Dr Harris advances against VAD is that people will feel coerced to take the option. She cites three cases of people who decided to pursue intensive medical treatment for cancer instead of pursuing VAD, and who she states would all have been eligible for VAD. This means she says that they would have been expected to die within six months. She then notes they’re all alive and doing well — relatively speaking, with significant medical conditions — more than a year later, due to pursuing intensive medical interventions.
I emailed Dr Harris and she confirmed that these were indeed Victorian medical cases personally known to her.
With the chosen cases outlined, she claims that “the option of VAD ignores these possibilities [of further treatment]”. That is, in the state of Victoria where she works and where VAD is legal as she acknowledged in her article, she opines that VAD would stymie such medical interventions.
So, Dr Harris argues, using three cases of patients pursuing further treatment in a state with lawful VAD, that patients will not pursue further treatment if VAD were to be made lawful. (Her op-ed is clearly aimed at NSW MPs who are currently considering VAD legislation.)
It’s as whacky as the theory that the reason you never see elephants hiding in treetops is because they’re good at it.
And it flies in the face of clear documentary evidence of careful practice published by Victoria’s own Voluntary Assisted Dying Review Board, which Dr Harris doesn’t mention. We can only wonder why not.
Dr Harris inanely argues that people won't pursue medical treatment if VAD is legal, by describing three cases in which they did while VAD was legal.
Hubris?
A possible explanation for Dr Harris’ claim that people will be vulnerable to VAD when it is legal is that while she refuses to participate, doctors who do participate would not offer any and all available medical interventions that might help. But this this would be a shabby accusation against other doctors. Indeed, VAD law mandates that the patient be fully informed about treatment options as one of the qualification criteria should they apply.
Such an opinion about medical colleagues might also suggest a certain level of hubris and harsh attitudes about others. So perhaps this is not what she means, though other explanations for her conclusion are more elusive. We can only wonder, because Dr Harris has publicly stated in writing:
- “People are free to suicide but no-one has the right to expecct [sic] their govt to kill them on request.”
- “Boo hoo Ita … cry us a river … get over yourself” in response to ABC Chair Ita Buttrose saying she felt disrespected by Communications Minister Paul Fletcher.
- “Ha ha – nailed it” in response to a post “@JoeBiden ankle injury update ….. cause was falling over a box of @realDonaldTrump ballots in his basement.”
- “Very true” in response to a post stating that if Victoria’s Chief Medical Officer Professor Brett Sutton were put “in charge of climate emergencies he’d issue matches to every pyromaniac in Victoria, punch holes in the fire hoses at every CFA, then stand back and giggle while the state burned.”
She’s also retweeted comments that Donald Trump is the only person who can save the world from the Chinese Communist Party, and that the 2020 USA presidential election was “stolen” by election fraud.
Misrepresenting palliative care
In her article, Dr Harris argues again that palliative care is “the answer” despite both Palliative Care Australia and the Australian and New Zealand Society for Palliative Medicine clearly stating that palliative care can’t help everyone, and that a small minority suffer badly leading up to death.
While a small but meaningful minority, such cases of suffering in extremis are not “very rare” as Dr Harris wrongly states.
Dr Harris wrongly states that palliative care eliminates the need for VAD legislation. The peak bodies for palliative care in Australia state that while palliative care helps many people, it can't help everyone. Nor should we expect palliative care to be the only medical discipline to be infallible. That would be cherry-picked, confected nonsense.
A bright spot
In her favour, Dr Harris does at least acknowledge in her article that people can have “genuinely chosen a VAD pathway for themselves”.
The Catholic Communicators’ Guild
I’ve written before about the Catholic Church and its network of anti-VAD communicators, many of whom don’t reveal their religious ideology. One can only wonder, given Archbishop Anthony Fisher’s active call to find willing “spokespeople” for the Church, if it has directly recruited Dr Harris to its anti-VAD campaign — or whether she’s merely a privately motivated individual.
Either way, there’s no shortage of evidence of Dr Harris’ very, very deep Catholic roots indeed. On Twitter, she follows, for example:
- Pope Francis.
- Vatican News.
- Catholic Bishop Tim Harris, the church’s spokesperson against VAD.
- Catholic Archbishop Anthony Fisher (Sydney).
- Catholic Bishop Richard (‘Down’) Unders (also Opus Dei: Sydney).
- Catholic Archbishop Peter Commensoli (Melbourne).
- Catholic Archbishop Mark Coleridge (Brisbane).
- Jeremy Stuparich, Public Policy Director, Australian Catholic Bishops Conference.
- Xavier Symonds, Research Fellow, Plunkett (Catholic) Centre for Ethics.
- National Catholic Register.
- Catholic News Agency.
- Catholic Arena (Catholic news and opinion).
- The Catholic Leader.
- Father Andrew McDonald (Canadian Catholic priest).
- The Society of St Sebastian (Catholic and Orthodox).
She warmly retweets posts from Catholic sources. Her posts are also consistent with the Catholic Church’s stances on sexuality and abortion, though her attitudes in denial of global warming are inconsistent with the Vatican’s, which supports efforts to combat it.
Indeed, in June 2021 she co-authored a similar op-ed also in The Australian, again replete with Catholic talking points. The other author was Emeritus Professor of Medicine Haydn Walters. What The Australian failed to declare is that Dr Walters is a board member of the innocuously named “Christopher Dawson Centre for Cultural Studies”. The stated aim of this organisation, nestled directly within the Catholic Archdiocese of Hobart (it shares the church's head office address), is chillingly arrogant: “to promote awareness of the Catholic Intellectual Tradition and Cultural Patrimony as essential components of human civilization”.
Dr Harris even directly defends the Church. For example, in response to a post criticising the Church as incoherent for saying it would never abandon people who choose assisted dying, yet says it is likely to deny last rites and pastoral care for those who do, Dr Harris wrote:
- “Well the church is actually correct - the person is about to have an elective assisted suicide which is very different to a natural death so it does seem reasonable to question giving last rites - it’s the persons choice to select VAD and choices have consequences…”
Dr Harris provides ample evidence that she is a devout and traditional Catholic. That is her right. Curiously, though, she never mentions personal religious foundations for her views on VAD which align so strongly with Catholic Church talking points.
Conclusion
Dr Marion Harris’ anti-VAD tirades follow the same talking points as the Catholic Church and its network of communicators. In the current op-ed alone, she’s crafted an inane failure of logic, and employed misinformation about palliative care, to curry fear of responsible VAD law reform.
The invective apparent in some of her musings does her reputation no favours. While her personal view to never participate in VAD is deserving of respect, I argue that denying others their own choice of conscience, especially on the basis of misinformation and dumb logical falsehood, is not.
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For the record
For those wanting to run the "religious persecution" flag up the pole, this article is not for you. I wholeheartedly endorse Dr Harris's right to both her religion and her personal rejection of VAD. This article does not claim that Dr Harris's arguments are wrong because they are Catholic. It is to say, with appropriate reasoning (which Dr Harris failed to employ) and evidence that the claims she makes about VAD in her op-ed are illogical and poorly informed. They are an offence to acknowledging and protecting the different and deeply held ethical views of others.
The link I make to Catholicism is to point out how much of the nonsense promoted against VAD law reform is a malodorous vapour emanating from a seeming (and not infrequently actual) coordinated effort of a Catholic Church intent on imposing its views on all Australians, Catholic or not. Most Australians are not Catholic. And most lay Australian Catholics support VAD.
As I explain in a separate research series about Religiosity in Australia, the Church's intransigent attempts to trample the consciences of its own flock (let alone all Australians) is one of the reasons citizens have been abandoning the pews in droves in recent times.