Blog by Neil FrancisPosted on Tuesday 10th October 2017 at 7:58am
The Parliament of Victoria is currently debating an assisted dying Bill.
As the Parliament of Victoria prepares to debate an assisted dying Bill, South Australian Catholic anti-assisted-dying lobbyist Mr Paul Russell is at it again. This time he's sent a missive to Victorian politicians shouting about, amongst other things, a crisis of assisted dying numbers in Washington state. He’s conveniently cherry-picked his arguments again.
Mr Russell wrote that in Washington state:
“deaths from lethal drugs prescribed under the Act have nearly quadrupled (376%) from 51 in 2010 to 192 in 2016.”
His latest claim extends his misinformation crown title.
Don’t get me wrong. He cites the correct raw data figures for Washington. But he packages them up handily with FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) wrapping, all tied up with the most sinister bow he can muster.
I’ve criticised the use of uncontextualized raw data before, and I do so again.
The relevant facts
Washington state legalised assisted dying by ballot in 2008. The following year the law was put into practice, and 2010 was the first full year of its operation.
Here’s the rate of assisted deaths as a proportion of all deaths in Washington state for all the years on record. As you can see, the rate hasn’t even reached one half of one percent of all deaths in 2016.
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
0.07%
0.11%
0.14%
0.17%
0.23%
0.24%
0.30%
0.35%
Never ones to miss out on an opportunity to spread FUD, if it were just one case last year and two this year, assisted dying opponents would be shouting from the rooftops: “Crisis!! 100% increase!!”. But in reality, only a small minority use the law, yet thousands of patients and their families are given comfort by the option being avaialble even if they don't use it. That message was made loud and clear by Oregon Senator Ginny Burdick. Washington's Death With Dignity Act is modelled on Oregon's, and Oregon's Act has been in effect for twenty years.
A Catholic trifecta
Of course in his missive, Mr Russell, like his fellow Catholic whom I’ve also called out for misinformation, Prof. Margaret Somerville, avoids referring to Swiss data. And their fellow Catholic Mr Daniel Mulino, who furnished a minority report to the Victorian Parliament’s recommendations on end of life choices, a report I’ve also called out for stunning misinformation, fudges his numbers about Switzerland, referring to data from 1998 without further context.
Why do these lobbyists avoid or selectively refer to the Swiss situation? Because the actual data is an inconvenient truth to their FUD story-telling.
An inconvenient truth
Switzerland’s assisted dying law came into effect seventy-four years ago, in 1942. If just one person had used the law in 1942, using Mr Mulino’s favourite annual increase figure of 17.5%, that would equate to 110,338 people pursuing an assisted death in Switzerland in 2014.
I say 2014 because that’s the most recent year for which official Swiss Government assisted dying figures are available. And what was the actual figure in 2014? There were 742 cases of assisted dying amongst Swiss residents, and Dignitas reports that it assisted 198 foreign nationals. That’s a total of 940 assisted deaths.
Let’s add another 60 foreign-national assisted death cases from the much smaller Swiss society that provides accompaniment for foreigners. That makes around 1,000 cases in 2014, including all those who came from all over the world. And it’s less than one hundredth of the minimum rate the doomsayers predict by cherry-picking one statistic that suits their argument.
Swiss law has the fewest safeguards
The Swiss assisted dying law has none of the safeguards of the Washington law. By Mr Russell and Co’s reckoning, you’d think that the Swiss (and those who visit) would be dropping off like flies.
By way of further comparison, the doomsayer number of assisted deaths for 2014 (a minimum of 110,338 cases) is substantially greater than the total number of deaths in Switzerland that year: 63,938. It’s an obvious impossibility.
In 2014, the Swiss rate of assisted deaths including all the foreign nationals who came to use its law, was 1.5% of all deaths; and 1.2% for resident-only cases.
And the rate of assisted deaths in Luxembourg in 2014 (legalised in 2009), whose laws are much more liberal than Washington’s though stricter than Switzerland’s, was 0.17% of all deaths. It’s odd how the doomsayers don’t report Luxembourg data, either.
And what are these cases?
These are cases of people in extremis with no realistic prospect of relief or improvement, choosing a peaceful assisted death as a better option than being forced to prolong their torture, according to their own deeply-held beliefs, values and examined consciences.
Mr Russell believes they should be required to endure their torture. There is a point to it, he says: because it joins them “in some mysterious way to the sufferings of Christ”... whether others believe in Christ, or at least Mr Russell’s version of him, or not.
You won't find this degree of candour on his anti-assisted dying website, but you can find it at NewsWeekly, which is run by the National Civic Council (NCC), itself established by Australia's most famous and conservative lay Catholic, B. A. Santamaria. Mr Russell has been President of the NCC South Australian chapter.
It’s not the numbers, it’s the circumstances
To be clear, in no jurisdiction has its legislature enacted access to assisted dying on the basis of a numeric ceiling. They’ve enacted access on the basis of intolerable and unrelievable suffering. And to this day, those are the folks who may be granted access to an assisted death.
Conclusion
Again, Mr Russell (and colleagues) do themselves no favours by conspicuously cherry-picking the data they want to use, and wrapping it up in threatening garb to create FUD amongst politicians.
Blog by Neil FrancisPosted on Tuesday 19th September 2017 at 10:30pm
The Age reports on the three AMA dcotors' appearance at Spring Street
As reported in The Age, on Tuesday this week three AMA doctors fronted the Victorian Parliament to spread the word about their perceived horrors of an assisted dying law. Their arguments don’t hold water and politicians should see them for what they are: utter nonsense.
Doctors Stephen Parnis, Mukesh Haikerwal and Mark Yates say they will continue to lobby politicians.
With what?
Here is the ‘substance’ of their arguments — a sticky blomonge of the same old confected and discredited claims.
The vulnerable will be at risk
Dr Parnis said that such a law “puts the most frail and vulnerable in our community — the dying — at profound risk,” pointing to coercion, and patients not getting the medical care they need.
As I’ve explained before, the claim is flapdoodle — circular nonsense.
It’s a circular argument (a logical fallacy) because “the vulnerable” are by definition those “at risk” and vice versa. While the circularity makes the claim about assisted dying risks seem true, it's a false imputation.
By way of comparison, we could equally say that “the vulnerable will be at risk if we wear yellow socks on Wednesdays,” so we should outlaw that as well. Or anything else of which we disapprove and make our argument seem valid by attaching it to “the vulnerable being at risk.”
Let’s not talk about it
Dr Yates argued that the Parliament should not be pursing “divisive legislation.” That’s also a false argument because it's merely an appeal to emotion: avoiding legislating anything upon which there is any disagreement and discomfort. The consequence of this argument is to not legislate at all.
Patient trust in doctors
They also argued that assisted dying legislation would “change the doctor-patient relationship” — by which they mean “damage the relationship,” or they wouldn’t have mentioned it.
Again, as I have shown before, the empirical evidence from around the world is consistent with improved, not damaged, patient trust in doctors where assisted dying is legal.
The massive AMA flip-flop
But, as I’ve also pointed out before, the real telltale of the AMA doctors’ farcical representation to the Victorian Parliament is this: while opposing assisted dying legislation because patients might be pressured, subtly or otherwise, to choose death, the AMA officially endorses the right to refuse medical treatment, which includes life-saving treatment.
The hypothetical risk of patients being encouraged to refuse life-saving medical treatment is identical in kind to that of assisted dying. Yet in Victoria, the right to refuse is protected by just three statutory safeguards, while the assisted dying legislation is founded on no fewer than 68 safeguards.
So the AMA incoherently promotes one hypothetical pressure-to-die pathway with only three protections, while cruelly opposing a parallel path with an armada of protections. Let's award 10 out of 10 for the impressive flip-flop manoeuvre.
Conclusion
The AMA doctors’ claims are without merit and advancing them does no favours to their professional credibility.
Blog by Neil FrancisPosted on Thursday 14th September 2017 at 10:20pm
Another Catholic 'academic' spreads more misinformation. Photo: donaldytong
It’s very disappointing that Catholic theologian Dr Joel Hodge’s recent editorial in Fairfax media about assisted dying law reform contained misinformation: the same old tired and discredited story trotted out as though it's true. Dr Hodge also repeated an old and curiously one-sided (Catholic) examination of the hypothetical slippery slope.
Unhappily, the kind of misinformation that Dr Hodge advances muddies the waters and cruelly stands in the way of legislative action, which most Australians want.
An impeccable national survey conducted by scholars at Australian National University last year found 77% of Australians in favour of assisted dying law reform. Strong support (43%) outweighed strong opposition (4%) by more than ten to one. In the two states whose Parliaments are currently considering reform, NSW and Victoria, support stands at 75% and 79% respectively.
Non-religious support is 91%, and it’s high amongst Catholics (74%) and Anglicans (79%) as well. Bishops are jarringly out of step with the views of their flocks. And across the political spectrum, 87% of Greens, 80% of Labor, 77% of Coalition and 69% of minor party voters also want reform.
The electorate’s desires couldn’t be clearer. But politicians — who have little time to fact-check what they’re told — are fed the kind of misinformation Dr Hodge advances.
The false 'non-voluntary euthanasia slippery slope' argument
He quotes details from a medical journal article by Dr José Pereira, a Canadian Catholic physician. Like others who cite this article, Dr Hodge fails to mention that it was thoroughly debunked in a surgical deconstruction by expert scholars. They found Pereira’s claims variously unsupported by any evidence, unsupported by the sources he cited, or false, concluding that the article was “smoke and mirrors.”
Like other Catholics, Dr Hodge relies heavily on a thoroughly debunked journal article by Catholic Canadian doctor, José Pereira.A significant source of smoke, which Dr Hodge fans from this debunked article, is the claim regarding “900 Dutch deaths hastened without explicit request”: that is, non-voluntary euthanasia or NVE. Such figures are cited as ‘proof’ of the hypothetical slippery slope from legalised voluntary euthanasia to NVE.
Other opponents of assisted dying variously put the figure at 500 or 1,000. For the sake of argument, let’s say the 900 figure is equivalent to 1,000. Both the 500 and 1,000 figures, also repeatedly promoted by Catholic ethicist Professor Margaret Somerville and others, have been true. But here’s the thing.
What they don’t mention is that the 1,000 rate is from the 1990s when Dutch assisted dying was conducted under a general regulatory framework. In 2002 the Dutch euthanasia Act came into effect. Amongst the Act's many details was the establishment of a Commission which examines every reported case of assistance.
Since then, the Dutch NVE rate has dropped to 500, and even further. It has stayed low and is now similar to the NVE rate in the United Kingdom, the world’s gold standard for palliative care, and where assisted dying remains illegal.
There was a significant drop in the NVE rate in Belgium, too, after its euthanasia Act came into effect, also in 2002.
It is absolutely unconscionable that yet another Catholic commentator has trotted out the same old lie as though it's true. Dr Hodge is an academic and it is incumbent on him to check the facts before sounding off.By cherry-picking a single figure, opponents argue the opposite of the facts, implying or even directly claiming that NVE rates are caused by or have risen as a result of legalised assisted dying. I’ve comprehensively exposed this nonsense before, yet it comes up repeatedly.
It’s similar to other lines of Catholic argument against assisted dying, like the claim that Dutch elderly supposedly travel to Germany for healthcare because they fear being euthanised by their Dutch doctors — an outrageous falsehood. There’s also the faintly desperate claim that Dr Els Borst, the architect of the Dutch euthanasia Act, later regretted her reform — a fake claim she’s firmly corrected.
Consider too a Catholic bishop’s claim, without reservation and in formal evidence before an official Parliamentary inquiry, that Oregon’s general suicide rate was very low prior to its assisted dying Act but very high afterwards — contrary to the facts. Or a report cherry-picking just half a sentence from a journal paper to claim that a significant proportion of assisted-death patients in Oregon had symptoms of depression, when the other half of the verysame sentence clearly stated that none of them had.
As Professors Griffiths, Weyers and Adams wrote in 2008, “imprecision, exaggeration, suggestion and innuendo, misinterpretation and misrepresentation [and worse] took the place of careful analysis.” Sadly, the same still seems true today.
Major Catholic flip-flop on choosing death
Now let’s turn our attention to the core of Dr Hodge’s thesis. His plea for “the vulnerable” leads his argument and is heavily egged throughout the polemical pudding.
A comparison is moot: Australians have the right to refuse any unwanted medical treatment, even if it’s life-saving.
In my home state of Victoria, this right to refuse is enshrined in statute. The statute contains just three ‘safeguards’ for checking a refusal, and those only apply if the refusal is formally documented in writing but not if it’s only oral.
As I’ve explained in detail before, the consequence is that a person can refuse life-saving medical treatment with few if any checks and balances. In theory, just as Dr Hodge argues in regard to assisted dying, the person might feel pressured by greedy relatives, resource-poor doctors or others, to so refuse.
In this case, where is the Catholic call for protections? Where is the moral outrage on behalf of ‘vulnerable patients’? There is none. In fact, the Catholic Church’s call is quite the opposite. In a directive to all Catholic healthcare institutions in the USA, the Conference of Catholic Bishops make the Church’s position abundantly clear. They direct that there is no obligation for patients to use “disproportionate means of preserving life.”
The Catholic church's rhetoric against assisted dying is a major flip-flop when compared to its cosy attitude towards refusal of life-saving medical treatment: both might result in hypothetical pressure to choose death, yet only assisted dying has adequate safeguards.They define disproportionate means as “…those that in the patient’s judgement do not offer a reasonable hope of benefit or entail an excessive burden, or impose excessive expense on the family or the community.”
So, under two identical hypothetical possibilities of inappropriate persuasion to choose death, Dr Hodge’s argument bristles against an assisted dying reform containing — as he acknowledges — no fewer than 68 safeguards, while his Church argues that patients may refuse life-saving medical treatment if the patient feels it’s “hopeless,” entails “excessive burden” or imposes “excessive expense” on others, with hardly any, or no statutory safeguards at all.
The incoherence, and repetition of misinformation, is indefensible. Civil debate on such an important matter deserves better.
Blog by Neil FrancisPosted on Sunday 6th August 2017 at 3:36am
Victorian MP Daniel Mulino's minority report contains multiple serious errors and misinformation.
Last year, the Victorian Parliament's Legal and Social Issues Committee concluded an extensive investigation into end of life choices, publishing a report of over 400 pages recommending improvements to palliative care and for assisted dying. Catholic-backed Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees' Association (‘shoppies’ union) Labor member of the Victorian Parliament Mr Daniel Mulino furnished his own minority report, opposing the majority recommendation for assisted dying law reform. That’s entirely his right. However, his report contains multiple, serious cases of misinformation. He must withdraw his report.
Daniel Mulino, Labor parliamentary member for the Victorian Region of Eastern Victoria,1 and a member of the Catholic-backed ‘shoppies’ union,2 was a member of the Legal and Social Issues Committee that thoroughly investigated end of life decision making and produced a 400+ page report in 2016 making recommendations for law reform and regulation.
Mr Mulino furnished a “minority report” as an addendum to the main report in order to oppose the Committee’s recommendation that assisted dying be legalised.3
Promoted by Catholics to Catholics
Mr Paul Russell, South Australian publisher of the Catholic anti-euthanasia website ‘HOPE,’§ says this of Mr Mulino’s minority report in the Catholic lawyer association’s blog:4
“Daniel Mulino MLC's analysis should be read first, before the Majority Report. It forms not only a sound academic and rigorous approach but also, by implication, is damning of the narrow, outcome focus of the Majority Report.”
How sweet of Mr Russell to so generously plug Mr Mulino’s report. But, in gushing about the ‘sound academic and rigorous approach’ he claims to be in it, shows that he doesn't understand what constitutes proper and sound evidence, and that he's easily impressed by charts and lots of ‘literature’ citations.
Numerous fundamental faults
The reality is very different.
Rather than bore you with a mind-numbing blow-by-blow dissertation on the numerous fundamental faults in Mr Mulino’s report, I’ll demonstrate how the report cherry-picks, misquotes and misunderstands its way through the evidence, via four revealing examples.
Example 1. Cherry-picking ‘helpful’ data
Mr Mulino’s minority report illustrates the rise in number of assisted deaths in the Netherlands and Belgium, and produces some statistics (Figures 1 & 2 are directly from his minority report).
Figures 1 and 2 (of Mr Mulino’s minority report): Assisted deaths in Belgium and the Netherlands
Note that Belgian data is for the years 2003–15, but the Netherlands only for the years 2008–15. That’s odd, because the euthanasia Acts for both countries came into effect in 2002, and so 2003 was the first full year for both.
Mr Mulino doesn’t point out that his report treats the two countries differentially, and provides no explanation as to why. We might notice, however, that the dicrepancy has the consequence of making his claims look 'better.'
Using Mr Mulino’s presentation style, Figure 3 illustrates all the relevant data for the Netherlands.
Figure 3: The full Netherlands data Source: Official Euthanasia Commission reports
As you can see, there is a virtual flatline between 2003 and 2007. Indeed, there is even a tiny drop in numbers between 2005–06. This is an inconvenient truth to Mr Mulino’s thesis that there has been a consistent massive rise in numbers. It also substantially reduces the compound annual growth rate he wrongly quotes for just 2008–15.
He’s also cherry-picked only raw data. In fact, the only valid way to compare year to year, and jurisdiction to jurisdiction, is to use the rate for each year: that is, the number of assisted deaths as a proportion of total deaths in the same year and jurisdiction, so that you’re comparing apples with apples. It's necessary because the total deaths count goes down and (mostly) up a bit each year. The official government statistics for total deaths by year for both countries are readily available online, so there’s no excuse for not using them.
When you calculate the rates, you get validly-comparable results, as I illustrate in Figure 4.
Figure 4: Rate of assisted dying as a percent off all deaths in the Netherlands and Belgium 2003–2015 Sources: Official government statistics; Euthanasia Commission reports
As I explain in my detailed research whitepaper on Benelux assisted dying,5 these are sigmoid (stretched-S) shaped curves which are typical of human behaviour change. And there is a drop in the rate in both countries in 2015, which Mr Mulino doesn’t report.
My Benelux whitepaper also reports the data from Luxembourg (Figure 5), which Mr Mulino fails to mention, even though it has legislation, since 2009, almost identical to the Netherlands and Belgium, and the Luxembourg government's data is freely available online.
Figure 5: Rate of assisted dying in the three lawful Benelux countries Sources: Official government statistics; Euthanasia Commission reports
Luxembourg’s data (yellow in Figure 5; no data available yet for 2015), is also an inconvenient truth to the case Mr Mulino attempts to prosecute. There’s no substantial rise.
Example 2. Comparing apples with oranges: mis-matching data
Mr Mulino again fails to compare apples with apples. Take, for example, his vocal claim that the annual total death counts for the Netherlands decreased at the same time as the total counts for assisted dying increased.
When you look at the data he’s used (the citation for the negative total deaths trend he quotes in his Table 2), you find that he’s used total death data for 2000–10, which is falling, while his assisted dying data is for 2008–15, which is rising.
This just isn’t on: it’s completely invalid to compare data like this from one period with data from another period to claim or imply a causal relationship. Of what possible relevance is the total death data for 2000–02, while his total deaths data for 2011–15 is missing? I illustrate the full story in Figure 6.
Figure 6: Netherlands total and assisted deaths for different periods Sources: Official government statistics; Euthanasia Commission reports
The solid blue and orange lines are data Mr Mulino used and reported, and their dotted ends are data that he omitted. It’s easy to see that the total deaths data his report inappropriately relies upon has a negative (downwards) slope (left-hand blue dashes), while the matching total deaths data he should have used has a positive (upwards) slope (right-hand blue dashes). Valid comparison gives lie to his claim.
Example 3. White is the new black: Misquoting the opposite
Mr Mulino’s report also argues that there’s ample evidence that a significant proportion of people with depression are gaining access to assisted dying:
“Ganzini et al, in a broad ranging review of instances of assisted dying in Oregon, found that twenty percent of the patients had symptoms of depression.” [Italics mine]
This assertion is nonchalantly plucked from the review6 without reading it properly, seemingly to support his thesis. In fact, the source does the exact opposite. Figure 7 is an image of the Abstract, where it says in large print, right up front:
“Twenty percent of the patients had symptoms of depression; none of these patients received a prescription for a lethal medication.” [Emphasis is mine]
Figure 7: The paper Abstract articulates exactly the opposite of Mr Mulino’s claim Source: Ganzini et al 20006
Had Mr Mulino bothered to read either the abstract or the methodology of this study properly, he would have realised that the doctor sample was of those eligible to prescribe under Oregon’s Death With Dignity Act, not just those who had, and that none of the study's patients who were assessed with possible depression had accessed an assisted death.
It's not like the information was hard to find — his report cites literally half a sentence to support his claim, when the full sentence says the opposite.
Example 4. Any port in a storm: Cherry-picking, misunderstanding and misrepresenting out-of-date data
In attempting to establish a 'slippery slope' from voluntary, to non-voluntary euthanasia (NVE) — a practice where doctors may hasten death (e.g. by administering increasing doses of opioids) when the patient hasn’t explicitly requested it — Mr Mulino states in his minority report:
“Two countries with the highest rates of this type of end-of-life (Belgium at 1.5% and the Netherlands at 0.60%) allowed the practice of euthanasia and assisted dying.”
Oh dear, Mr Mulino's report cherry-picks again. Just look at his source.7 The study, published in 2003, contains Table 2, with the relevant data in it (Figure 8).
Figure 8: Table 2 from the 2003 study Mr Mulino cites Source: van der Heide et al 20037
There are no fewer than five major offences Mr Mulino commits here.
Firstly, look at the table. I’ve highlighted the line in yellow from which Mr Mulino draws his figures of 1.5% for Belgium and 0.60% for the Netherlands. You can immediately and easily see that Denmark’s rate of 0.67% is higher than the Netherlands' of 0.60%.
So, Mr Mulino’s statement mentioning only Belgium and the Netherlands with “highest NVE rates” is misleading. He failed to either report or explain why Denmark’s rate is higher than the Netherlands, while Denmark doesn’t have an assisted dying law; the opposite of his thesis.
Secondly, he also fails to mention Switzerland’s NVE rate of 0.42%, or to explain that it’s lower than the Netherlands and Belgium. That’s highly relevant, because Switzerland has the world’s oldest assisted dying law — in effect since 1942 — and its statute contains none of the safeguards in the Belgian and Dutch Acts. This too is at odds with Mr Mulino’s thesis.
Thirdly, if Mr Mulino had read the study properly instead of just cherry-picking convenient figures from it, he would have noticed in the methodology section that the fieldwork (doctors filling in questionnaires) was completed in 2001 and early 2002, that is, before either the Netherlands or Belgian Acts came into effect later in 2002 (the Netherlands in April and Belgium in September).
Thus, the Dutch and Belgian data points Mr Mulino advances as ‘evidence’ of an NVE ‘slippery slope’ from legislated assisted dying have nothing whatever to do with assisted deaths under their Euthanasia Acts, because neither Act existed at the time the study was conducted.
Fourthly, he is resorting here to a single point-in-time study, which has little to no scientific power to establish ‘causation’. To really establish causation, as a minimum you have to assess longitudinal data, which I show in Figure 9. It demonstrates the precise opposite of Mr Mulino's ‘slippery slope’ thesis that voluntary euthanasia causes NVE, which if true would lead to a significant increase in the NVE rate in both countries after statutory legalisation.
Figure 9: Longitudinal NVE rates in the Netherlands, Belgium and the UK Sources: Netherlands8; Belgium9; UK10
Both the Dutch and Belgian NVE rates have dropped with high statistical significance since their euthanasia Acts came into effect. Indeed, the NVE rate in the Netherlands is now similar to the rate in the UK, which is acknowledged as the world’s gold standard in palliative care and which hasnever had an assisted dying law. This is consistent with assisted dying law reform shining a bright light on all end of life practices.
It’s not like he simply didn’t know
Fifthly, it’s particularly disappointing that Mr Mulino’s report only cherry-picked outdated data in an attempt to ‘prove’ his case when I had already directly furnished the current relevant evidence to his Committee as a properly-researched formal submission: Figure 9 above is Figure 19 in my submission, and I provided the peer-reviewed research citations for the data.11
Not only that, but the official transcript of my appearance as an expert witness before the parliamentary Committee confirms that Mr Mulino specifically quizzed me on that Figure 19 and I pointed out the sources of its data:12
“Mr MULINO — Figure 19, for example.
Mr FRANCIS — The reference should be in the text. The last sentence on the previous page gives you the citations for that data.
Mr MULINO — Okay.”
Even further, when fellow-Committee-member and Catholic assisted dying opponent Mrs Inga Peulich asked about the same thing (with Mr Mulino present) — “1,000 of those who have been accidentally euthanased in the Netherlands” — I literally put the chart up on the projection screen and explained it in full to the Committee until they had no more questions. The “1000” figure is the approximate rate prior to the Dutch Euthanasia Act, while the rate has dropped significantly since.
The evidence is irrefutable: it’s not like Mr Mulino was merely blissfully unaware of the relevant data contradicting his NVE ‘slippery slope’ claim. His minority report expressly overlooks this robust evidence and instead refers inapproriately to selective and outdated data that seemed to, but didn’t, support his argument.
Five major offences in a single citation: surely Mr Mulino’s report — far from ‘academic and rigorous’ — sets a new record?
A common religious thread?
The NVE ‘slippery slope’ claim is also popular amongst and spread by the Catholic Archdioceses of Melbourne,13 Sydney14 and Brisbane,15 as well as by other Catholic anti-assisted dying lobbyists such as Alex Schadenberg,16 Paul Russell,17 and Professor of Ethics at the Catholic University of Notre Dame Australia, Margaret Somerville.18
Indeed, Mr Mulino’s minority report appears amongst 11 Catholic responses against assisted dying law reform published by the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne (Figure 10).
Figure 10: Daniel Mulino’s minority report appears amongst Catholic responses on the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne’s website19
Indeed, Mr Mulino’s linked document doesn’t seem to emanate from his parliamentary office or from wider parliamentary services: the PDF file's metadata reveals that it was authored, electronically at least, by “mmacdonald”.
Calls to both Mr Mulino's electorate office and to the Parliament of Victoria confirm there is no "M Macdonald" at either. I did, however, find online one Matthew Macdonald, researcher and Executive Officer of the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne’s (CAM) Office for Life, Marriage and Family — in other words, the same organisation that published the list in Figure 10 containing the link to Mr Mulino’s minority report.
Mr Macdonald is also listed as the CAM's official contact person in its submission (#705) opposing assisted dying to the Victorian Parliament's inquiry into end of life choices.20 Both the CAM and Mulino reports also refer to a journal paper by Catholic doctor José Pereira,21 and neither report mentions the subsequent evidential rebuttal outlining why Pereira's claims were merely "smoke and mirrors".22 Even more curiously, the Pereira paper is included in Mr Merlino's minority report bibliography, though his report doesn't actually cite it as the CAM submission does.
The CAM parliamentary submission was authorised and signed by Episcopal Vicars Anthony Ireland and Anthony Kerin, who also appeared as witnesses before the parliamentary Committee, during which they told, as I've explained, a whopping great falsehood about Oregon.23
Conclusion
Contrary to Paul Russell’s enthusiastic claim that Daniel Mulino’s minority report provides a ‘rigorous’ case against assisted dying law reform, the report merely serves as further evidence of how those implacably opposed to assisted dying can cherry-pick, misunderstand and rather desperately clutch their way through their ‘evidence.’
Mr Russell is not an academic expert and one can understand his limited capacity to judge whether work is ‘scholarly.’ However, Mr Mulino holds a PhD in economics from Yale,* so it’s quite astonishing that he published a ‘researched’ report containing multiple major flaws, including outdated and cherry-picked data contrary to more recent, direct and relevant evidence of which he was specifically aware, actively inquired into and had explained and cited to him in full.
These anomolies beg the question: did Matthew McDonald or someone else at the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne write Mr Mulino’s report for him? Mr Mulino needs to explain himself, since regardless of who authoried it, he signed it off in his own name and is therefore ultimately responsible for it.
Given the multiple fundamental errors, the honourable course for Mr Mulino to pursue is to withdraw his minority report.
The question is: will he rise to the occasion?
Addendum: A missed opportunity for primary research
Mr Mulino — as well as Mrs Peulich who also wrote a minority report against assisted dying — declined to join other members of the parliamentary Committee on an official overseas fact-finding tour to jurisdictions where assisted dying is lawful. This was a critical opportunity for Committee members to directly quiz proponents, opponents, researchers, regulators, legislators and others with direct experience. It would have given them invaluable opportunities to directly examine and test assumptions, hypotheses and performance. How curious then that these two non-participataing Committee members each furnished a minority report opposing the majority recommendation to legalise assisted dying in Victoria.
---------------
§ The HOPE website is an initiative of the Australian Family Association (AFA), a faith-based organisation founded by Australia’s most famous Catholic, B. A. Santamaria. Mr Russell is a former Vice President of the AFA, and a former Senior Officer for Family and Life at the Catholic Archdiocese of Adelaide.
* While Mr Mulino holds a PhD and would be entitled to be addressed as “Dr”, his Parliamentary title is “Mr”.
Ganzini, L, Nelson, HD, Schmidt, TA, Kraemer, DF, Delorit, MA & Lee, MA 2000, 'Physicians' experiences with the Oregon Death with Dignity Act', New England Journal of Medicine, 342(8), pp. 557-563.
van der Heide, A, Deliens, L, Faisst, K, Nilstun, T, Norup, M, Paci, E, van der Wal, G & van der Maas, PJ 2003, 'End-of-life decision-making in six European countries: descriptive study', The Lancet, 362(9381), pp. 345-350.
Onwuteaka-Philipsen, BD, Brinkman-Stoppelenburg, A, Penning, C, de Jong-Krul, GJF, van Delden, JJM & van der Heide, A 2012, 'Trends in end-of-life practices before and after the enactment of the euthanasia law in the Netherlands from 1990 to 2010: a repeated cross-sectional survey', The Lancet, 380(9845), pp. 908-915.
Bilsen, J, Cohen, J, Chambaere, K, Pousset, G, Onwuteaka-Philipsen, BD, Mortier, F & Deliens, L 2009, 'Medical end-of-life practices under the euthanasia law in Belgium', New England Journal of Medicine, 361(11), pp. 1119-1121.
Seale, C 2009, 'End-of-life decisions in the UK involving medical practitioners', Palliat Med, 23(3), pp. 198-204.
Francis, N 2015, Submission to the Parliament of Victoria Standing Committee on Legal and Social Issues on the Inquiry into End of Life Choices, DyingForChoice.com, Melbourne, pp. 51.
Parliament of Victoria 2015, Standing Committee on Legal and Social Issues inquiry into end-of-life choices: Witness-Mr Neil Francis, DyingForChoice.com, Melbourne, pp. 10.
Schadenberg, A 2013, Exposing vulnerable people to euthanasia and assisted suicide, Ross Lattner, London ON.
Russell, P 2015, Submission 926: Submission to the Victorian Legal and Social Issues Committee inquiry into end of life choices, HOPE, Melbourne, pp. 56.
Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne 2015, Submission to the Legal & Social Issues Committee: Inquiry into end of life choices, Submission 705, Melbourne, pp. 16.
Pereira, J 2011, 'Legalizing euthanasia or assisted suicide: the illusion of safeguards and controls', Current Oncology, vol. 18, no. 2, pp. e38-48.
Downie, J, Chambaere, K & Bernheim, JL 2012, 'Pereira's attack on legalizing euthanasia or assisted suicide: smoke and mirrors', Current Oncology, vol. 19, no. 3, Jun, pp. 133-8.
Blog by Neil FrancisPosted on Sunday 6th August 2017 at 2:31am
The terminally ill are not choosing between life and death, but between two ways of dying, according to their own beliefs and conscience. Photo: Andrew Drummond/AAP
In Monday’s Herald Sun, Victorian Archbishops Philip Freier and Denis Hart, and Bishops Ezekiel, Suriel, Lester Briebbenow, Bosco Puthur and Peter Stasiuk published a half-page advertisement admonishing the Victorian government for its initiative to legalise assisted dying for the terminally ill, an ad similar to the one published by religious figures in 2008.
I have no quarrel with individuals of faith regarding their own private beliefs. However, the bishops’ attempt at public “leadership” through the advertisement is deserving of redress for its multiple fallacies.
The ‘abandonment’ fallacy
The bishops claimed that assisted dying “represents the abandonment of those who are in greatest need of our care and support”. On the contrary: to ignore the deeply-held beliefs and rigorously-tested wishes of people at the end of life is to abandon their values and critical faculties in favour of the bishops’ own religious dogma.
The ‘competition’ fallacy
The bishops demand there should be more funding for healthcare rather than assisted dying, fallaciously pitting one option against the other. The Victorian government is indeed increasing funding for palliative care. It’s also aiming to provide lawful assisted dying for when even the best palliative care can’t help – which Palliative Care Australia has acknowledged – giving lie to the faux competition.
The evidential fallacy
Contrary to the bishops’ false presumption that legalised assisted dying will decrease trust in “the treatment and quality of care” from doctors, scientific studies into attitude change show that more people trust doctors when assisted dying is legal. Patients can then talk openly about options, even if they decide against assisted death. The bishops have abandoned facts in favour of religious assumptions.
The equivalence fallacy
The bishops refer to assisted dying as “government endorsed suicide”. They fallaciously equate a reasoned, tested and accompanied decision for a peaceful assisted death in the face of a terminal illness, with the impulsive, violent, isolated and regrettable suicide of individuals (many of whom have mental health and substance abuse issues) who are failing to cope with problems that can be addressed.
However, while the latter are choosing between life and death, the terminally ill are choosing not between life and death, but between two different ways of dying, according to their own beliefs and conscience. Rigorous 2016 research from Australian National University shows that the vast majority (79%) of Victorians support assisted dying choice for the terminally ill (with just 8% opposed), clearly distinguishing it from general suicide.
Shame on the bishops for disrespectfully equating the two.
The inconsistency fallacy
They also argue that assisted dying ought to remain prohibited because within healthcare, “mistakes happen and the vulnerable are exploited,” and “that in spite of our best efforts, our justice system could never guarantee” no one would die by mistake or false evidence. However, as I’ve pointed out before, an identical hypothetical problem exists under the refusal of life-saving medical treatment, a statutory right that Victorians have enjoyed for nearly 30 years. The statute has only three “safeguard” requirements, yet even those only apply if the refusal is formally documented, but not if it’s verbal.
Further, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops directs that patients may refuse treatment if it imposes “excessive expense on the family or community,” yet makes no mention of the hypothetical “vulnerability” of the patient to be persuaded so, nor directs any requirements to assess the veracity of the refusal.
In stark contrast, the Victorian proposal for assisted dying legislation contains more than 60 safeguards and oversights.
The bishops are at risk of ridicule for such a gargantuan flip-flop: supporting the refusal of life-saving treatment with little or no oversight, while vocally opposing assisted dying legislation that mandates an armada of protections.
The not-so-hidden agenda
The bishops’ methods are rather unsubtle – hoping that these arguments, erroneous but carefully crafted to avoid any religious connotations, will be accepted as non-religious. Yet religion is writ large across their plea: as signatories to the letter they are all clerics employed directly and centrally in the promotion of their religions.
The authority fallacy
They might also rely on their religious status to convey gravity and authority to their pleas. Yet as people paid to do a job, like anyone else, their titles grant them no special privileges in lecturing Victorians about how they should die in the face of a terminal illness.
According to the 2016 census, just 23% of Victorians identified as Catholic, 9% as Anglican, 0.5% as Lutheran, and the other bishops’ signatory denominations so small as to not appear separately in the government’s statistics. Combined, the bishops’ faiths represent around 33% of the Victorian population, while 32% of Victorians identify with no faith at all. Surely the bishops are not arguing that they’re speaking for these other Victorians, too?
But the bishops don’t represent the views of their own flocks, either. According to the 2016 ANU study, 89% of non-religious Victorians support assisted dying law reform, as do 78% of Victorian Catholics and Anglicans. Indeed, opposition to assisted dying exists mostly among those who attend religious services once a week or more often – that is, those who are frequently exposed institutional religious messages of opposition – yet who comprise just 12% of Australians and 11% of Victorians.
Minding their own flocks
Australians are abandoning religion in droves. For example, when Freier ascended to the top job of Anglican Primate of Australia in 2006, some 19% of Australians identified as Anglican (2006 census). A decade later under his leadership, the 2016 census showed a drop of about a third to just 13%, and in Victoria, his home territory, to just 9%.
Hart’s Catholic church has experienced a drop in affiliation too, and it’s likely to continue and accelerate as Australians react with shock and disgust to the extent of child sexual abuse that the royal commission has exposed from under his organisation’s “pastoral umbrella”.
In conclusion, rather than bishops lecturing the government and Victorians with fallacious and faintly desperate arguments about the choices they shouldn’t have at the end of life, attending to their own flocks may be more useful Christian leadership.
May their God go with them in that endeavour.
This article was originally published in The Guardian.
Blog by Neil FrancisPosted on Thursday 27th July 2017 at 11:52pm
Research results must be judged in relation to the study's methodology.
In his latest blog, titled “Who are you going to trust?”, anti-assisted dying lobbyist Mr Paul Russell says:
“Polling noted today in the Australian shows a significant level of distrust in our political classes to get the issue of euthanasia and assisted dying right.”
He then goes on to quote some select statistics from said poll. In his blog, he mentions nothing about the sponsorship or conduct of the poll. After some searching, I found no other reference to said poll on his ‘HOPE’ website.
This is rather curious, because The Australian article he quotes, points out that the ‘poll’ was commissioned by him (his website is called ‘HOPE’).
Thus, Mr Russell tries to add credibility to his ‘poll results’ in his blog by citing only that it has been reported in a national newspaper. This ‘quote-someone-else-so-it-must-be-authoritative’ rhetorical strategy has been used before by opponents of assisted dying (see Box at end).
But as Mr Russell has himself promoted — happily republishing the opinion of the CEO of Christian Medical Fellowship (UK) — “opinion polls add up to very little.” That’s quite true… when they’re poorly designed and run, including the big no-no, ‘push-polling’, in which the researcher attempts to get the answer they want by crafting questions more likely to get it.
I searched hard for any reference to the methodology of said ‘poll’, but was unable to identify any despite a diligent search. Therefore, we don’t know what approach Mr Russell took: robust or otherwise.
Let’s assume for the sake of argument (and the absence of public evidence) that a poll of some kind was actually conducted. If it were a truly legitimate poll, you’d think that Mr Russell would be shouting about the study from his own rooftop (the ‘HOPE’ website). But so far, he hasn’t.
Mr Russell, while quoting statistics, has said absolutely nothing about the methodology — that I can find via a quite diligent search.
Results can only be interpreted in light of how the research was actually conducted, so quoting a 'study' while failing to publish its methodology in full is an absolute no-no. It only invites derision.
Rebecca Urban, for The Australian, quotes a number of ‘statistics’ from the ‘poll’ seemingly without question. But she’s hardly to blame: she’s skilled at journalism, not primary research.
So, for the benefit of Paul Russell, Rebecca Urban and all journalists reporting claimed statistics, here’s your minimum standard of conduct if the public are not to guffaw at the claims. All reported results must be in relation to properly disclosed methodology:
Who commissioned the research? (✔ Ms Urban reports who)
Who conducted — actually carried out — the research (e.g. a reputable research company)?
What precise population were respondents drawn from, how were they recruited, and screened in or out? What were the counts and percentage participation (approached/participated)?
What were the dates of the fieldwork?
What procedures were used to establish and maintain the authenticity of who was sampled (e.g. if an online poll, could people from anywhere technically participate in this Victorian poll)?
How was the questionnaire administered (e.g. paper self-complete, online, CATI)?
What was the script of stimuli administered to respondents? In other words, what prompts were given and what questions were asked: exact order and wording?
What results were obtained for each question (i.e. full rather than selective crosstabs)?
Until Mr Russell publishes in full how his ‘poll’ was conducted, the only honourable course of action for him to pursue is to withdraw the claimed results.
Until then, we can only see them as untrustworthy and a bit of a joke.
Rhetorical tactic — “Not” quoting yourself
This rhetorical tactic is also used by Mr Russell’s fellow Catholic, Prof. Margaret Somerville. For example, in her 2015 book Bird on an Ethics Wire, in relation to the supposed (but fanciful) fear of being euthanized in the Netherlands if adequate pain management is accepted, Somerville says in Chapter 4:
“It has been alleged that Dutch physicians have interpreted patients’ consent to pain management as consent to euthanasia.38”
If you’re like most people, you’d assume, given the effort of a citation (38), that an independent source had made the statement based on some evidence. Indeed, if you look at reference 38 you’ll see that the author is Lauren Vogel, and the source article is in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. All sounds like solid, legit stuff, doesn’t it?
However, Ms Vogel is a journalist, not a Dutch medic or a researcher, and what she reports in relation to Somerville’s claim is merely a quote of what someone said. And who is that someone? Why, it’s Margaret Somerville — what a coincidence!
Somerville could have just said “I’ve argued this before…”, but instead gives a seemingly robust reference to a source that has the appearance of independence and scholarship. Yet obviously she knows that the source is merely herself saying so.
Let’s be clear: something is not true just because someone alleges it. Even if they allege it twice or more. And happen cite themselves via someone else in the process.
Blog by Neil FrancisPosted on Friday 21st July 2017 at 1:53am
The Parliament of Victoria, Australia
The Victorian Government has introduced its assisted dying Bill into the Victorian Parliament. It's based on extensive consultation with a wide range of stakeholders, and over 1,000 submissions. You can read all about it here.
The Ministerial Advisory Panel on voluntary assisted dying today handed down its final report to the Government.
The Panel was comprised of seven subject experts, with Professor Brian Owler as Chair and Professor Margaret O'Connor as Deputy Chair.
It consulted extensively across Victoria, taking hundreds of submissions and appearances from relevant stakeholders, and reviewing legislation from other jurisdictions in which one form or other of assisted dying is permitted.
Today, it formally handed its report, comprising over 250 pages, to the Government.
The Panel has developed what is arguably the world's most detailed and carefully laid out principles to inform legislation, and are a credit to its efforts and professionalism.
Key aspects of the recommendations for voluntary assisted dying are:
The person must be 18 years or over; and
Be ordinarily resident in Victoria and an Australian citizen or permanent resident; and
Have decision-making capacity in relation to voluntary assisted dying; and
Be diagnosed with an incurable disease, illness or medical condition that:
is advanced, progressive and will cause death; and
is expected to cause death within 12 months; and
is causing suffering that cannot be relieved in a manner the person deems tolerable; and
Doctors and other healthcare workers are not permitted to raise assisted dying — only to respond to formal patient requests.
The person must make three formal requests, the second of which must be written and witnessed by two independent people.
The person must make the request themselves. Nobody else is authorised to make the request, and the request cannot be made via an advance care directive.
Ordinarily, the minimum timeframe between first request and opportunity to take the medication is ten days.
The person must maintain decisional capacity at all three requests.
Two doctors must reach independent assessments that the person qualifies.
Only doctors who have completed specialist training for voluntary assisted dying may participate.
Any healthcare worker may decline to participate for any reason, without penalty.
A prescription dispensed for the purpose of voluntary assisted dying must be kept in a locked box and any unused portion returned to the pharmacy after death.
The person must self-administer the medication; except if the person is unable to, a doctor may administer. An independent witness is required if the doctor administers.
Establishment of an authority to receive assisted dying reports, to assess reports, and to refer unacceptable cases to disciplinary or prosecutorial authorities.
For Parliament to review summary reports; twice in the first two years and annually thereafter; a formal review at five years.
In total, the recommendations include no fewer than 68 safeguards, designed to strike, uniquely for Victoria, an appropriate balance between access to the law, and protection of dying persons.
The Government will respond to the Final Report shortly, and it is anticipated that legislation will be introduced into the Victorian Parliament in August or early September.
A full copy of the Final Report can be obtained here.
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Safeguards proposed for Victoria's voluntary assisted dying framework
Access
Voluntary
Limited to 18 years and over
Residency requirement [Victorian resident and Australian citizen or permanent resident]
Limited to those with decision-making capacity
Must be diagnosed with condition that meets restrictive set of criteria [advanced, progressive and will cause death]
End of life is clearly defined [death expected within weeks or months, not more than 12 months]
End of life condition combined with requirement for suffering
All of the eligibility criteria must be met
Mental illness alone does not satisfy the eligibility criteria
Disability alone does not satisfy the eligibility criteria
Request
Must be initiated by the person themselves
No substitute decision makers allowed
Cannot be included as part of an advance directive
Health practitioner prohibited from raising voluntary assisted dying
Person must make three separate requests
Must have written request [witnessed in the presence of a medical practitioner]
Two independent witnesses to request [exclusions for family members, beneficiaries, paid providers]
Specified time must elapse between requests [first and third requests must be at least 10 days apart with exception when death imminent]
Additional time required to elapse between steps of completing process [second assessment and third request must be at least one day apart
Must use independent accredited interpreter [if an interpreter is required]
No obligation to proceed, may withdraw at any time
Assessment
Eligibility and voluntariness assessed by medical practitioners
Must be two separate and independent assessments by medical practitioners
Assessing medical practitioners must have high level of training/experience
Assessing medical practitioners must have undertaken prescribed training [to identify capacity and abuse issues]
Requirement to properly inform person of diagnosis, prognosis and treatment options, palliative care, etc, [by both assessing medical practitioners]
Referral for further independent assessment if there is doubt about decision-making capacity
Coordinating medical practitioner must confirm in writing that they are satisfied that all of the requirements have been met
Medication management
Person required to appoint contact person who will return medication if unused
Medical practitioner must obtain a permit to prescribe the medication to the person
Medication must be labelled for use, safe handling, storage and disposal
Pharmacist also required to inform the person about administration and obligations
Medication must be stored in a locked box
Administration
Medication must be self-administered [except in exceptional circumstances]
If physical incapacity, medical practitioner may administer
Additional certification required if administered by medical practitioner
Witness present if medical practitioner administers
Practitioner protections
Health practitioner may conscientiously object to participating
Explicit protection for health practitioners who are present at time of person self-administering
Explicit protection for health practitioners acting in good faith without negligence within the legislation
Mandatory notification by any health practitioner if another health practitioner acting outside legislation
Voluntary notification by a member of the public of a health practitioner acting outside legislation
Mandatory reporting
Reporting forms set out in legislation
Reporting mandated at a range of points and from a range of participants to support accuracy
First assessment reported [to Board]
Second assessment reported [to Board]
Final certification for authorisation reported [to Board, incorporates written declaration and contact person nomination]
Additional form reported [to Board] if medication administered by medical practitioner
Prescription authorisation reported by DHHS [to Board]
Dispensing of medication reported [to Board]
Return of unused medication to pharmacist reported [to Board]
Death notification data reported [to BDM and collected by Board]
Offences
New offence to induce a person, through dishonesty or undue influence, to request voluntary assisted dying
New offence to induce a person, through dishonesty or undue influence, to self-administer the lethal dose of medication
New offence to falsify records related to voluntary assisted dying
New offence of failing to report on voluntary assisted dying
Existing criminal offences for the crimes of murder and aiding and abetting suicide continue to apply to those who act outside the legislation
Oversight
Guiding principles included in legislation
Board is an independent statutory body
Board functions described in legislation
Board reviews compliance
Board reviews all cases of [and each attempt to access] voluntary assisted dying
Board has referral powers for breaches
Board also has quality assurance and improvement functions
Board has expanded multidisciplinary membership
Board reports to publicly [to Parliament every six months for first two years, thereafter annually
Five year review of the legislation
Guidelines to be developed for supporting implementation
Blog by Neil FrancisPosted on Tuesday 13th June 2017 at 2:38am
The Age reports a 'gloves off' campaign of misinformation
Both the Herald Sun and The Age reported last week that religious anti-assisted dying crusaders are running a 'gloves off' campaign in Victoria.
Religious forces are gathering once again to attempt to thwart the views of the great majority of Victorians in favour of assisted dying law reform.
Matt Johnston in the Herald Sun quoted Paul Russell, a long-term figure in Catholic circles, and Greek Orthodox Bishop Ezekiel, in statements against assisted dying.
Farrah Thomazin in The Age quoted religious stalwarts Margaret Tighe of Right To Life, and the Australian Christian Lobby, in further statements against assisted dying.
The crux of the story is that 'pollsters' claim to have run a survey in Victoria. They refuse to be identified. They refuse to publish their methodology. And they refuse to publish all their results. Enough said.
They cherry-pick an item from their supposed poll to claim that 33% of Victorians who oppose assisted dying will change their vote against a supporting politician at the next election. They neglect to mention that only a tiny minority of Victorians actually oppose assisted dying. Their analysis is astonishingly superficial, even assuming they ran a proper, robust poll and didn't manufacture the numbers themselves.
They then use this tidbit of 'data' to put the fear of electoral defeat into politicians who will soon to face an assisted dying Bill in the Victorian Parliament.
What rubbish. Assisted dying (AD) opponents seem to be utterly shameless in misrepresenting and distorting cherry-picked data to push their religious agenda — which they pretend isn't religious.
The real situation in respect of AD is the exact opposite of their claims as I show in a proper, robust analysis of legitimate data, demonstrating that:
A massive 78.9% of Victorians support AD, with only a tiny 8.1% opposed. Strong supporters outnumber strong opponents by more than ten to one.
Significantly more supporters of AD believe that law reform is personally important, than opponents believe the status quo (no law) is personally important.
At a general election, far more Victorian voters will punish Members who oppose the AD Bill than will punish Members who support it (3.5 to 1 overall, 2.4 to 1 for the Liberal/National Coalition and 6.6 to 1 for Labor).
The co-sponsors of Victoria’s 2008 AD Bill were returned with greatly increased majorities (including relative to their party’s overall performance) despite campaigns against them by anti-AD crusaders.
So that Victorian politicians are not misled, I have forwarded my report to the Victorian Government's Cabinet and other selected members of Parliament.
The only way in which this campaign could be called 'gloves-off' is that opponents, lurking around with their shadowy misinformation, don't want to get bullshit on their mittens. Hands seem to be much easier to wash. And hide.
Blog by Neil FrancisPosted on Thursday 9th February 2017 at 9:53pm
You only have to look to understand who is campaigning against your right to choose an assisted death in the face of intolerable and unrelievable suffering.
A case in point is a massive advertisement published in both of Melbourne’s daily newspapers: News Corp’s The Herald Sun (right-wing) and Fairfax Media’s The Age (left-wing). The ad was published in 2008 when Victorian MLC Colleen Hartland introduced the Medical Treatment (Physician Assisted Dying) Bill into the State legislature.
The Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne, Denis Hart, also sent the advertisement as a letter to all members of the Victorian Parliament.1
So, who are the advertisement’s signatories? I’ve listed them all in Table 1.
Table 1: Signatories to the 2008 Victorian anti-assisted-dying advertisement
Rt Rev. Graham Bradbeer
Moderator, Presbyterian Church of Victoria
The Rev. Fr Graeme A. Michell, FSSM
Parish Priest, Anglican Catholic Parish of St Mary the Virgin, Melbourne
Rev. Ross Carter
Uniting Church in Australia
Pastor Graham Nelson
Senior Pastor, Life Ministry Centre
Rev. Dr Max Champion
National Chair of the Assembly of Confessing Congregations within the Uniting Church in Australia
Rev. David Palmer
Convenor Church and Nation Committee, Presbyterian Church of Victoria
Pastor Mark Conner
Senior Minister of CityLife Church
Rev. Greg Pietsch
President, Victorian District, Lutheran Church of Australia
Dr Denise Cooper-Clarke
Adjunct Lecturer, Ridley Melbourne Mission and Ministry College
Rabbi Dr Shimon Cowen
Director Institute for Judaism and Civilization
Very Rev. Dr Michael Protopopov
Dean - Russian Orthodox Church in Australia
Rev. Megan Curlis-Gibson
St Hilary’s Anglican Church, Kew
Marcia Riordan
Respect Life Office, Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne
Archbishop Dr Philip Freier
Anglican Church of Melbourne
Metropolitan Archbishop Paul Saliba
Primate of Antiochian Orthodox Archdiocese of Australia, New Zealand & the Philippines
Imam Riad Galil
West Heidelburg Mosque
Member of the Victorian Board of Imams
Bishop Peter Stasiuk CSSR DD
Eparchy of Saints Peter and Paul of Melbourne, for Ukrainian Catholics in Australia and New Zealand
Rev. Father James Grant SSC
Chaplains Without Borders,
Melbourne Anglican Diocese
Dale Stephenson
Senior Pastor Crossway Baptist Church
Assoc. Professor Afif Hadj MB BS (Melb) FRACS
Director of Surgery, Director of Medical Training, Maroondah Hospital (A Monash University Teaching Hospital)
Pastor Peter Stevens
Victorian State Officer
Festival of Light Australia
Archbishop Denis Hart
Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne
Dr Nicholas Tonti-Filippini
Associate Dean, JPII Institute for Marriage and Family Melbourne
Rev. Fr Geoff Harvey
Priest of the Good Shepherd Antiochian Orthodox Mission Parish, based at Monash University
Rob Ward
Victorian State Director Australian Christian Lobby
Assoc. Professor Rosalie Hudson
Aged Care & Palliative Care consultant/educator
Jim Zubic
President of Orthodox Chaplaincy Association
Peter McHugh
Senior Pastor Christian City Church, Whitehorse
Persons in blue: Career is religion
Almost all of them are religious by career
To save you a lot of time assessing who these people are, I’ve coloured in blue all the folks whose job it is to espouse religion — at least, their own hierarchy’s view of it.
That’s 27 of the 29 signatories who by career are intensely immersed in their own religious perspective of the world; established and promoted through institutional doctrine.
But what about the other two?
What about the other two signatories, Assoc. Prof. Afif Hadi and Assoc. Prof. Rosalie Hudson (in yellow)?
Notice that Prof. Afif Hadi’s entry lists only his surgery profession. Highly relevant, but not mentioned, is that he was President (previously Vice Chairman) of the Australian and New Zealand Board of Trustees, Antiochian Orthodox Archdiocese of Australia and New Zealand. As head of the Board of the Archdiocese, his religious signature is intimately entwined with another: Metropolitan Archbishop Paul Saliba, the Primate of the Antiochian Orthodox Archdiocese.
Assoc. Prof. Rosalie Hudson’s listing too, mentions only seemingly secular links. What is omitted is that she is or was Chair of the University of Divinity (a multi-faith religious institution) Human Research Ethics Committee, Secretary of the Uniting Church’s committee on bioethics, a member of the Interfaith Committee, and an Academic Associate at Charles Sturt University’s School of Theology.
Thus, both Prof. Hadi and Assoc. Prof. Hudson are also deeply rooted in religious faith. The point is not to make any criticism of their faith or practice, but merely to observe the deeply religious connections to opposing assisted dying law reform. It’s worth mentioning that both Hadi and Hudson do valuable charity work.
So, all of them are deeply religious
A pertinent question to ask is: ‘What proportion of the signatories are neutral, scholarly researchers who have studied the empirical evidence from jurisdictions where assisted dying is already lawful?’ Answer: None of them. Enough said.
And what proportion of the signatories to this anti-assisted dying advertisement are very deeply invested in organised religion? The simple answer is as usual: 100%,all of them.
Disconnected from their flocks
Critically, these career-religious fail to reflect the views of their own flocks. We know from repeated polls, for example, that three out of four Australian Catholics, more than three out of four Uniting Church members, and four out of five Anglicans (Church of England) support assisted dying law reform.
This kind of clerical disconnect from the contemporary will of the people is one of the key reasons Australians are deserting religion in droves, as successive censuses show.
Conclusion
The evidence is irrefutable. Those who are actively organised to oppose your right to choose an assisted death are deeply religious, even when they use seemingly secular arguments (more on those later).
They are entitled to their opinions for themselves. But what right do they have to deny the vast majority of Australians, who do not agree with their views, the right to choose?
To phrase it in the personal, why does the Catholic Archbishop of Melbourrne, Denis Hart, think it appropriate to demand that Mr Geoff Drummond, a Buddhist, should have suffered against his will at the end of life for the Archbishop's version of faith, rather than Mr Drummond's own spiritual beliefs? Why does Rabbi Shimon Cowen think it appropriate to demand that Mr Alan Rosendorff, a fellow Jew, should have suffered against his will at the end of life for the Rabbi's version of faith, rather than Mr Rosendorff's own carefully-considered and deeply-held views? And why does Imam Riad Galil think it appropriate to demand that Mr Peter Short, not a Muslim, should have suffered against his will at the end of life for the Imam's beliefs, rather than his own?
Perhaps hubris remains alive and well amongst religious conservatives?
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Declaration: In fairness to those mentioned in this article, I openly declare that I am agnostic.
References
Bradbeer, G, Rt Rev., Carter, R, Rev., Champion, M, Rev. Dr, Conner, M, Pastor, Cooper-Clarke, D, Dr, Cowen, S, Rabbi Dr, Curlis-Gibson, M, Rev., Freier, P, Archbishop Dr, Galil, R, Imam, Grant SSC, J, Rev. Fr, Hadj, A, Assoc. Prof., Hart, D, Archbishop, Harvey, G, Rev. Fr, Hudson, R, Assoc. Prof., McHugh, P, Michell, GA, Rev. Fr, Nelson, G, Pastor, Palmer, D, Rev., Pietsch, G, Rev., Pietsch, M, Protopopov, M, Very Rev. Dr, Riordan, M, Saliba, P, Metropolitan Archbishop, Stasiuk, P, Bishop, Stephenson, D, Stevens, P, Pastor, Tonti-Filippini, N, Dr, Ward, R & Zubic, J 2008, Reject physician assisted dying - An open letter to Victorian MPs, Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne, viewed 13 Jun 2008, http://www.cam.org.au/Euthanasia.aspx.
Blog by Neil FrancisPosted on Saturday 24th September 2016 at 11:31pm
St Patrick's Cathedral, Melbourne, Australia. Photo: Donaldytong
Against current moves to legalise assisted dying, Australian Catholic Father John George invokes Nazi Germany, resorts to ad hominem attacks to dismiss those who disagree with him, and demands that the Pope’s edicts are binding on everyone regardless of their own faith or world view.
On 24th September 2016, Journalists Greg Brown and Rick Morton published an article in The Australian, Victorian coroner credited with turning tide on euthanasia, summarising recent Australian moves to legalise assisted dying choice.
Catholic Father John George commented on the article online, quoting four sections of the Catholic Church’s catechism that prohibit assisted dying (sections 2276–9).
Pushback
Other readers of The Australian remarked that they respected his view for himself but they had no interest in the Pope’s views given the readers were not Catholic. In fact, repeated polls in Australia have shown that even the great majority of Catholics (three out of four) do not agree with the Vatican on the matter of assisted dying, a matter which Fr George dismisses merely as ‘fickle votes and polls.’
I would remind Fr George that these are not fickle: Australian public opinion in favour of assisted dying choice has been consistently in the majority for now more than four decades.
Fr George further quoted Catholic sources, for example the LJ Goody Bioethics Centre in Perth, Australia, which he failed to mention is, literally, an agency of the Catholic Archdiocese of Perth. He also selectively quoted Palliative Care Australia, failing to mention that they have acknowledged that not all pain and suffering can be eliminated at the end of life, even with the best palliative care.
Ad hominem attack
In response to a rising tide of objections to his musings, including from Mr Ian Wood, a fellow Christian and co-founder of Christians for Voluntary Euthanasia Choice, Fr George resorted to the ad hominem attack: to attack the person (or persons) rather than the arguments. He said:
“The pro euthanasia claque here make professional Nazi propaganda expert Goebbels look like a 5th rate amateur.” — Father John George.
For anyone in the dark, a claque is a group of sycophants hired to applaud a performer or public speaker. How rude. Fr George seems to have neglected to reflect that it is he who is hired to promote the performance of the Vatican. I applaud his right to do so, and I do not compare him to a treacherous propagandist in a murderous wartime regime in order to dismiss his arguments: I address the arguments themselves.
Nazi Germany
Fr George makes repeated mentions of Nazi Germany as a core reason to deny assisted dying choice.
In contrast, several years ago I was chatting at a conference with the pleasant and engaging Peter McArdle, then Research Director of the Australian Catholic Bishop’s Conference. He volunteered that he very much disliked the “Nazi Germany” argument so often used in religious circles, and wished it would stop because in so doing it meant they’d already lost the debate.
I agree. It’s a lazy and indefensible argument: that rational people in a functioning democracy must be denied choice for themselves on the basis of what some murderous regime did against others at the point of a gun.
Indeed, to rely on such a standard would be to equally argue against the right to religious practice, because the Catholic Church, through its inquisition practices (medieval C12th, papal C13th, Spanish C15th, Roman and Portuguese C16th) relied on torture and resulted in confiscation of property and at least tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of executions for witchcraft and heresy.
Ultimate hubris
But the real crux is that Fr George then unequivocally demands that:
“Principles elaborated by the pope are universally applicable.” — Father John George.
This ultimate hubris reveals a profound lack of self-reflection, both personally and organisationally. Even entertaining for a moment the premise that one individual (or even organisation) can tell everyone on the planet how they must live their lives, how would we choose that person or organisation? Why is it less valid for the head of any other branch of Christianity, of Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism (or any other religion) or an agnostic (which I am) or an atheist, to set such rules for everyone, overriding other deeply-held beliefs and values?
A keener example of ‘blinded by faith’ would be hard to find.
Conclusion
I argue that Fr John George displays some of the gravest hubris of some members of the Catholic church. I respect and applaud his world views for himself and those who wish to subscribe. But using canonincal arguments (that is, religious arguments demanded as universally true by virtue of the supposed authority that dispensed them) is probably a major contributor to the current flight of people away from organised religion.
More happily, such an attitude is also contributing to accelerating the legalisation of assisted dying choice because folks can see these arguments for what they are. For that I doff my hat to Fr George.
Figures 1 and 2 (of Mr Mulino’s minority report): Assisted deaths in Belgium and the Netherlands
Figure 3: The full Netherlands data
Figure 4: Rate of assisted dying as a percent off all deaths in the Netherlands and Belgium 2003–2015
Figure 5: Rate of assisted dying in the three lawful Benelux countries
Figure 6: Netherlands total and assisted deaths for different periods
Figure 7: The paper Abstract articulates exactly the opposite of Mr Mulino’s claim
Figure 8: Table 2 from the 2003 study Mr Mulino cites
Figure 9: Longitudinal NVE rates in the Netherlands, Belgium and the UK
Figure 10: Daniel Mulino’s minority report appears amongst Catholic responses on the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne’s website19
