Rhetoric: Suicide

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Anglican archbishop Kanishka Raffel doesn't know the views of his own flock on VAD

I've written previously about bishops demonstrating their ignorance, as in the example of Catholic Bishop Tim Harris who presumed most or all of his flock opposes voluntary assisted dying (VAD), when in fact a significant majority support it. This time it's the Anglican Sydney diocese archbishop who's loudly flaunting his biases.

Sydney Anglican archbishop Kanishka Raffel (pictured on the diocese website above), has launched a program calling on NSW parliamentarians to reject a bill that, with a large number of safeguards, seeks to make VAD lawful in the state. NSW is the last state in the nation that still outlaws the practice.

The problem is, the archbishop is clearly backing his own personal beliefs and interests when he calls upon Anglicans to sign and share his petition calling for the unanimous rejection of the bill. That's because most Australian Anglicans, including those in NSW, support the law reform.

In 2019, academic pollsters VoxPop obtained the attitudes of more than 155,000 NSW voters regarding VAD. The views of NSW Anglicans are shown, by electorate, in Figure 1. Electorates with an asterisk are (with some very minor boundary differences) those within the archbishop's own diocese.

nswanglicansonvad2019.gifFigure 1: Attitudes of NSW Anglicans towards VAD law reform.
Source: VoxPop 2019. * Electorates in the archbishop's own diocese.

Immediately obvious is that most NSW Anglicans, including those in the archbishop's own diocese, are in favour of VAD law reform. That is, NSW MPs would be most wise to thoughtfully consider the bill and pass it. To oppose the bill would be to invite the wrath of most voters across all electorates in the state.

The archbishop might attempt to argue that his flock would change their minds if only they "understood". But that would be a hubris-based claim that those of differing views are somehow uninformed or mentally defective because they disagree.

Indeed, as I have written in a major research series about religiosity in Australia, this profound disconnect between senior clergy and their flocks is a key reason that Australians have been deserting religion in droves. That applies especially to the Anglican church, whose membership plummeted by 28% in just the fifteen years between the 2001 and 2016 censuses. And subsequent polling suggests it has fallen further since then.

To argue the "evils" of VAD, archbishop Raffel also teamed up with well-known Catholic anti-VAD campaigners Margaret Somerville and Father Frank Brennan. More of the usual connections...


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Catholic Archbishop of Canberra/Goulburn Christopher Prowse. CC: Bart-1011

Last month, the Catholic Archbishop of Canberra & Goulburn, Christopher Prowse, published an opinion piece about VAD in the Canberra Times. Naturally, Prowse's views were opposed, which is fine. A range of views is always welcome. Misinformation, however, is not.

It would be unreasonable to expect that the opinion editor of the Canberra Times, Andrew Thorpe, would be intimately versed in the empirical evidence about voluntary assisted dying (VAD). So, it was reasonable that he publish an opinion piece on the topic offered by Archbishop Prowse. What is not reasonable, however, is that the counter-opinion I promptly submitted, pointing out several points of significant misinformation, was not published. A month later, still nothing.

A critical feature of high-quality, mainstream media journalism (which includes editorialism) is to ensure that the public can be exposed to a range of views on important topics, and that those views are generally devoid of significant misinformation. I argue that the Canberra Times has profoundly failed in this instance, and could profitably reflect on improving its conduct.

Here's the op-ed I sent, which they failed to publish.

 

Archbishop Prowse sadly misinformed on assisted dying

Catholic Archbishop Christopher Prowse’s recent editorial against voluntary assisted dying (VAD) (Canberra Times, 11 Aug) contains numerous items of misinformation about the practice. While a range of views is welcome, misinformation is not an acceptable standard in public debate about such an important topic.

Unsurprisingly, Archbishop Prowse argues that more palliative care is “the answer” to end-of-life suffering. This ignores formal statements by both Palliative Care Australia and the Australian and New Zealand Society for Palliative Medicine acknowledging that even the best palliative care can’t address all extreme suffering. It’s not like he wouldn’t know: the Catholic church is the largest single institutional provider of palliative care services in the nation.

His editorial also paints VAD deaths as “fearful”, “depressed” and “lonely”. This not only contradicts evidence published in peer-reviewed scientific research and official reports from lawful jurisdictions, but is a slap in the face to those who have chosen a VAD death, and to their families.

For example, the second person to use WA’s VAD law was Mary-Ellen Passmore. Her family and friends gathered to say farewell and sang Hallelujah together during her final moments. Loved ones of those who have accessed VAD in Victoria have described the experience as “peaceful” and “beautiful”.

Ms Passmore was also an indigenous community leader. This is relevant because Prowse argues that indigenous Australians would be fearful of VAD law, avoiding needed medical services.

This old chestnut has been rattling around since the Northern Territory VAD days in the 1990s, but was dismissed as false after a formal investigation found no change in indigenous medical service attendance. Indeed, a parliamentary inquiry heard that it was church members [not referring to Prouse or his diocesan colleagues] who were causing any indigenous fears.

Prowse also enlists “elder abuse” into his supposed army of the “vulnerable”. But a key feature of elder abuse is that it’s commissioned in secret, while VAD has numerous points of assessment, referral, review and documentation by trained professionals.

Perhaps the most egregious misrepresentation is his claim that “reasons for euthanasia quickly expand once legalised”, levelling specific claims about the Netherlands.

In fact, the Netherlands made VAD lawful by regulation in the mid-1980s. Several test cases in following years clarified that certain conditions (like extreme and unrelievable mental suffering) qualified under the regulations. These were formalised (not changed) in legislation in 2001. And that legislation hasn’t changed since. Not. One. Word.

One could be forgiven for thinking that the archbishop represents the views of Catholic Australians. But this isn’t true either. ANU studies show that some three quarters of Catholic Australians support lawful VAD.

I analysed the major 2019 data set of VoxPop — the academics who run VoteCompass — about VAD attitudes in the archbishop’s own archdiocese. It comprises the ACT and the NSW electorates of Bega, Cootamundra, Goulburn, Monaro, and about a third of Wagga Wagga.

With a VoxPop respondent count across the archdiocese of more than 34,000 people, four out of five voters favour lawful VAD with just 9% opposed. Not only that, but more than three out of four Catholic voters (76%) in the archdiocese favour lawful VAD, with just 13% opposed.

canberravadattitudes2019.gif
Voter attitudes toward VAD in the Canberra-Goulburn Catholic Archdiocese
Source: VoteCompass/VoxPop 2019.
~ Archdiocese totals weighted by elector count per district, Wagga Wagga weighted as 1/3 of.

Thus, not only does Archbishop Prowse seem unfamiliar with VAD facts, he seems remarkably unacquainted with the real views of his own flock.

Prowse argues that we are all “made in the image of God so we have dignity”. As an agnostic I’m happy for him to believe such things, though I say that everyone has dignity and life is precious regardless.

But when the archbishop proclaims that allowing VAD is “abandonment” of the person and that his views must prevail over all Australians, I call out hubris. “Abandonment” is to deliberatively seek to quash the deeply-held values and beliefs of others.

Most Australians, including Catholic ones, agree.

 


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"HOPE's" Branka van der Linden and the ACA misrepresent figures, again

Here we go again. Branka van der Linden of Catholic anti-VAD website “HOPE”, and the Australian Care Alliance — endorsed by a number of well-known, committed Catholic doctors — have just published more egregious misinformation against VAD. This time they've collectively piled it on Victoria's general suicide statistics, recently updated by the Victorian Coroner. So what did they say, and how did it misrepresent the actual situation? Let's take a look.

The reason the statistics are being discussed is because in 2017, Victoria's parliament legalised voluntary assisted dying (VAD) for the terminally ill. The law came into effect halfway through 2019, and 2020 was the first full year of its operation.

Australian Care Alliance gets the basics wrong

Here's the Australian Care Alliance's (ACA) splashy page trumpeting that Victoria's suicide rate has jumped 21.2% from 694 in 2017 to 842 in 2020.

acagetsstatswrongmarch2021.jpgFigure 1: ACA's splashy page trumpeting a 21.2% increase in Victorian suicides

That's... interesting. According to the Victorian coroner's official figures, there were indeed 694 suicides in Victoria in 2017. However, in 2020 the coroner's figure is actually 698, not 842 as claimed by the ACA. According to the ACA, Victoria's suicide count data looks like this (Figure 2).

acasuiciefigurewrong2021.gifFigure 2: The ACA polemically claims that Victoria's suicide count has increased 21.2%

So, how did the ACA reach a count of 842? Well, their argument is to shamefully and humiliatingly disrespect Victoria's terminally ill who died peacefully under its VAD law in 2020 — 144 of them according to the official 2020 reports of Victoria's Voluntary Assisted Dying Review Board — and add them to the coronial count of 698 suicides.

The ACA points out that VAD supporters have said that legalising VAD should decrease Victoria's general suicides by about 50 cases a year, but say the count's gone up substantially instead. See how they craftily deploy logical fallacy to fabricate a crisis?

Arguing that VAD law must reduce the suicide count by 50 cases a year (but seemingly didn't) and at the same time adding VAD cases to the suicide count to complain that it's gone up, requires at least three assumptions:

  1. that all terminally ill violent suiciders now automatically qualify for and easily gain access to VAD; and
  2. that nobody else with a terminal illness who would not have chosen violent suicide, should or would use the law; and
  3. that no other factors make a significant difference to trends in general suicides.

 
All these assumptions are patently false.

Obviously, some people will not legally qualify for VAD; for example, amongst its restrictions it requires death to be expected with 6 months; 12 months for a small set of specific illnesses.

Obviously, some who would not have suicided but instead would suffer intolerably and against their wishes until death, will now choose to pursue VAD.

And obviously, well-known factors such as rates of mental illness, substance abuse, intimate relationship troubles, bullying, financial or legal difficulties, and other factors are major influencers of general suicide rates. But to the ACA, the only factor that supposedly has any effect is the one they are ideologically opposed to: VAD.

It's worrisome that this nonsense is sold to the public by ACA's supposed experts: “health professionals and lawyers”.

Cherry-picked overseas data, too

The ACA's ideological bias is further revealed by their website page about the “social contagion of suicide”. In it, they cite as authoritative, the 2015 Jones and Paton (both firm Catholics) article purporting to show 6.3% suicide contagion from VAD to the general population. I've comprehensively exposed that article as an ideologically-driven mathematical farce fuelled by no fewer than ten major scientific offenses. It's interesting that the ACAs methodology is just like Jones' and Patons': reporting VAD supporter statements that legalisation should decrease the general suicide rate, and then adding VAD deaths to conclude the opposite.

They also commit one of Jones' and Patons' other offences: selectively quoting data from other studies that might be seen to support their theory, but excluding critical alternative information from the same study that runs counter to the theory.

The ACA cites a Swiss study to breathlessly report that 6.5% of those who witnessed an assisted death in that country experienced sub-threshold PTSD, and 13% full PTSD. The ACA expressly states:

“Like any other suicide, assisted suicide can profoundly affect surviving family members and friends.” — The Australian Care Alliance

There you have it: the ACA draws a direct equivalence between peaceful VAD deaths in the face of terminal illness and with loved ones present, and lonely, violent deaths by general suicide.

The ACA cites no other relevant material from the Swiss article. That's revealing, because the article clearly reported that the PTSD rates were higher than in the general population. There's what the ACA left out: the PTSD rates were higher than for almost everyone else who hadn't just suffered the loss of a loved one.

To draw valid and meaningful interpretations, it is necessary to compare the bereavement challenges of VAD family versus families of general deaths, deaths in the face of extreme suffering without hastened death, and cases of violent suicide. As I've published before from peer-reviewed studies, bereavement symptoms of VAD family are at least as good as, and can be better than those where the deceased has suffered in extremis at the end of life, and certainly relative to violent suicides.

The ACA also doesn't mention that the Swiss study found a "prevalence of complicated grief ... comparable to that reported for the general Swiss population". It's not like the information was hard to find. It's right there in the Abstract on the front page of the article.

That the ACA cherry-picked a couple of Swiss data points while omitting key “unhelpful” information, and argued, by linking the selected cherries with the above quote, that said Swiss data established something it clearly did not (that VAD deaths supposedly cause similar family trauma as violent suicides), suggests an astonishing degree of ignorance.

The ACA's cherry-picking of data, while omitting key unhelpful information, suggests an astonishing degree of ignorance.

Enough of that.

Branka van der Linden cherry-picks, too

I've crossed pens (or is that keyboards?) with Ms van der Linden several times before in regard to misinformation. She misinforms on this matter, too.

Curiously, like the ACA and also without explanation, she cherry-picks just the 2017 and 2020 suicide counts from the Victorian coroner's report (Figure 3). You'd think this was the only data in the report, but no, it isn't.

vanderlindenvicsuicidestats2021.gifFigure 3: Branca van der Linden's version of Victorian suicide counts by year

She uses these two figures to argue that said drop of 50 cases per year hasn't happened. This employs the same fallacies as the ACA: suggesting that two single data points strongly support a hypothesis, and assuming that the thing one is ideologically opposed to, VAD, is the only thing to alter the rate of general suicides over time.

Like the ACA, she also suggests adding the VAD figures to the coroner's general suicide data to say that in that case, suicides have increased significantly.

Both the Australian Care Alliance and Branca van der Linden cherry-pick just two data points from more full and robust longitudinal data to try and argue their case against VAD.

So what does the coroner's full data set look like?

The actual numbers

The Victorian coroner's 2021 report into suicides contains data for all years 2016 to 2020 inclusive. And it looks like this (Figure 4).

viccoronersuicides2021.gifFigure 4: The complete set of data from the Victorian coroner's report on suicide counts per year

Now we're beginning to see a possible reason as to why the ACA and Ms van der Linden chose just two data points. Remember that VAD was legalised by the Victorian parliament in 2017. The law was not in effect for 2017, 2018, or the first half of 2019.

Well, the data clearly suggests an increasing suicide count trend up to 2018. The upward trend stops in 2019, when VAD was in operation for the second half of the year. And in 2020, the first full operational year of VAD, the upward trend has been interrupted by a downward result. Neither the ACL nor Ms van der Linden mention this.

Neither the Australian Care Alliance nor Branca van der Linden mention the fuller, longitudinal data that doesn't support, and indeed appears hostile to, their hypothesis.

Update 19-Mar-2021

I thought it so obvious that I didn't write it up, but a colleague points out it's important to highlight, that in picking just two data points to stake their claim, the ACA and Ms van der Linden chose 2017, and not 2018, as their reference year. To compare “after” with “before” in the most basicly valid manner (full longitudinal data is better), it is appropriate to compare the last data point that completely excludes the new condition (VAD law in operation), with the first data point that fully includes it.

Those years are 2018 (none of the year) and 2020 (all of the year). But the ACA and Ms van der Linden didn't pick 2018, they picked 2017.

What possible reason might explain that? Well, by comparing 2017 with 2020, they got to say that the general suicide count increased by 2 from 694 to 698. However, had they more validly compared 2018 with 2020, they would have had to report a drop of 19 from 717 to 698.

And that would have contradicted their flimsy confection that suicides hadn't gone down after VAD was introduced.

But even the raw suicide count statistics are a bit misleading.

Interpreting suicide data correctly

Using raw counts to compare suicide statistics (e.g. year to year or place to place) is lazy and wrong. All other things being equal, if you had twice the population, you'd expect twice the suicide count. To make valid comparisons, you have to compare rates, not raw counts. This is relevant because populations obviously change over time, and Victoria between 2016 and 2020 was no exception.

I've retrieved the official Victorian population figures by year and computed the standard official suicide rate statistic: suicides per 100,000 population. The Victorian suicide rates look like this (Figure 5):

vicsuiciderate2016-2020.gifFigure 5: Victorian suicides per 100k population by year

The data shows a rising suicide rate from 2016 to 2018, a levelling off in 2019 in which VAD was operational for half the year, and a fall back to the 2016 rate in 2020, the first full operational year of VAD.

Computing from the rate drop between 2018 (11.4 with no VAD law) and 2020 (10.8, first full year of VAD law), the equivalent count of suicide decrease in 2020 was 38 persons. And that's without assuming the general suicide rate would have continued its rising trend.

The equivalent suicide decrease from 2018 to 2020 was 38 persons.

Getting all the numbers right

The ACA correctly cites then Minister for Health, Ms Jill Hennessy, as stating in 2017 that "Evidence from the coroner indicated that one terminally ill Victorian was taking their life each week." That would be 52 cases a year, which the ACA rounds out to 50 a year. The headline figure from the coroner's report actually calculates to 48. No biggie, just round numbers.

But the figure is quite wrong. You have to read the coroner's special 2017 report to the Victorian parliament regarding suicides in cases of illness, to calculate the correct numbers.

The coroner's report didn't just include suicide data for terminally ill people. It also included cases of advanced incurable but not terminal illness, and cases of severe suffering resulting from injuries. So the terminal illness data (to which the VAD law is relevant) is a fraction of the total. We can calculate from the Tables in the report that 23% of the cases were in respect of injuries, so that leaves 77% for terminal and other advanced illnesses.

Of the illnesses listed, the relevant one as a proxy measure for terminal illness is “cancer”, and that comprises 50% of the illness cases. So, 50% of 77% of 48 cases a year = 19 cases a year in respect of terminal illness.

So that's an actual likely decrease of 19 suicide cases a year, compared with an equivalent drop in the actual data of 38 persons in the first full year.

The actual annual count of general suicides in respect of terminal illness, as reported to the Victorian parliament by the state coroner in 2017, was 19 persons a year, and not 50 as widely stated.

Don't get carried away

It's imporant to note that citing this interesting numeric analysis as “proof” of the law's effectiveness in respect of reducing Victoria's suicide rate, would, at present, be an overconfident claim. While far more firmly based in proper forms of evidence than the vapid nonsense promoted by the ACA and Ms van der Linden, this is a correlation. Correlation does not equal causation: the ACA and Ms van der Linden should remember that. For example, 2020 was a very unusual, Covid-19-dominated annus horribilis, which may have affected suicide rates in unexpected ways.

While the coroner's fuller data set so far is consistent with reasoned expectations of suicide substitution, it is premature to conclude the data proves the principle. More years' data, and more detailed, causative analysis involving the control of confounding factors, is necessary before reaching greater certainty in the association.

But as I've published in detailed and extensive analyses based on robust official data, so far all the longitudinal data on suicide rates in jurisdictions where VAD is lawful is consistent with suicide substitution, not suicide contagion. Some VAD opponents just cherry-pick their way through tidbits to try and argue the opposite.

To date, all the robust, longitudinal data on suicides in jurisdictions where VAD is lawful is consistent with suicide substitution, not suicide contagion.

Conclusion

The Australian Care Alliance and Ms van der Linden disgracefully cherry-pick and misrepresent Victoria's recent suicide data in a manner consistent with their own theories, while proper and appropriate analysis of the full data available shows results inconsistent with their hypothesis, and currently consistent with the opposite.

To paraphrase Ms van der Linden's own statement: “It is unfortunate that the deaths of terminally ill Victorians were politicised so shamelessly by [anti-]euthanasia activists for their own ends.”

These continued cherry-picked data gaffes are an embarrassment to their promoters.


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Deep and extensive Catholic connections are behind supposedly secular attacks on VAD.

A friend pointed out to me an opinion piece published this week in MercatorNet that slams Victoria's voluntary assisted dying (VAD) law. Written about an elderly woman with cancer who used the law to die peacefully, it's an angry diatribe written by the woman’s granddaughter-in-law: one Mrs Madeleine Dugdale.

Update 21-Sep-2020

Mrs Madeleine Dugdale's article has been withdrawn from MercatorNet without explanation. Here's a screenshot of the original.

dugdalegranscreenshot620.jpg

And this is Mrs Dougdale's "about" page after the article was withdrawn.

madeleinedugdaleatmercatornet2020_620.jpg

While it's far from my preferred practice to take on someone recently bereaved, Mrs Dugdale has put herself and her family firmly in the public square by publishing an editorial about her grandmother's death (actually her husband’s gran) the very day after she died.

All is not as it seems and a response is required.

Catholic talking points

Let's not beat about the bush: Mrs Dugdale's piece is a grotesque misrepresentation of Victoria's VAD law and relies on gallingly distorted framing. Despite not mentioning faith, religion or Catholicism, her opinion piece ticks most Catholic talking-point boxes I've pointed out previously, such as Mrs Dugdale’s:

  • Headlining that her gran was not in particular pain. We already know from extensive overseas experience that pain is a less common reason behind why people consider VAD.
  • Being sure to emphasise the death was a suicide, and that "suicide is not courageous, it's an horrendous act of desperation and defeat".
  • Linking it to loneliness caused by Covid-19 lockdown.
  • Shabbily inferring that doctors did not discuss and offer all and anything palliative care could bring to bear, when there's a consultation process mandated by law.
  • Suggesting that palliative care could alleviate all intolerable suffering, but which both palliative care peak bodies in Australia concede is not possible.
  • Scandalously implying that medical care workers were forced to participate in her assisted death against their will, when the law protects anyone who wishes to decline.
  • Suggesting her gran's choice was an issue of mental health, implying that she wasn't fit to decide, when in fact doctors must confirm decisional capacity.
  • Describing the process as "obfuscation and secrecy" when a strong chain of documentary evidence is mandated, while no process is mandated for the Catholic church's own accepted patient path to foreseeable death: refusal of life-saving medical treatment.

 

Mrs Dugdale employs no fewer than eight Catholic church talking points in her attack on Victoria's VAD law.

Spurned "help"

Also of note is Mrs Dugdale's description that she and her husband were "silenced" and "quickly shut down" so there was "little my husband and I could do to help." Did the family actually want help of the kind Mrs Dugdale and her husband were determined to dispense?

One wonders what Mrs Dugdale's gran would think if she could see how a granddaughter-in-law had sought to weaponise her choice for VAD, against the law itself.

Update 24-Sep-2020

We now know what gran's immediate family thought of Madelein Dugdale's savage misrepresentation of their mum's death. It's not pretty, and they've asked Madeleine for a written apology. Read the full story at Go Gentle Australia.

Who is Madelaine Dugdale?

So who is Mrs Madelaine Dugdale? Her article bio reports only that she's a former Melbourne high school teacher and now a full-time mum of four with one on the way. Move along, nothing to see here…

Well, it’s worth looking a bit more carefully, elsewhere. Mrs Dugdale graduated from (Catholic) Campion College. And that high school where she worked? St Kevin’s (Catholic) College in Toorak, Melbourne, where she taught… religion.

She's a leading member of Catholic Voices Australia, whose purpose is "putting the Church's case in the public square."

So in summary, this anti-VAD diatribe bristling with Catholic church misinformation was penned by a leading member of Catholic Voices Australia whose remit is "putting the Church's case in the public square", but which failed to identify that religious connection and attempted to give the appearance of secular impartiality.

If there's any remaining doubt about Mrs Dugdale's Catholic devotion, here she is discussing the Pope's amoris laetetia (the joy of love) book with Fr Tony Kerin, an Episcopal Vicar for Life, Marriage and Family in Melbourne.

Hidden religious petticoats indeed.

And who is the publisher?

Mrs Dugdale's anti-VAD tirade is published online by the masthead MercatorNet. It declares itself to be "dignitarian", and reveals that its Editor is a Catholic who believes in God. The masthead is named after Gerardus Mercator, the C16th cradle Catholic cartographer.

MercatorNet's About webpage opines that "religion adds clarity and conviction to the task of defending human dignity" — as if that's an exclusive province or even necessary feature of "religion" — and insists that arguments it publishes are "based on universally accepted moral principles, common sense and evidence, not faith."

Pfft.

Another invitation to "dig here"

Methinks they doth protest too much. It doesn't take much effort to peel back the veneer of neutrality.

MercatorNet is a trading name of the company New Media Foundation Ltd. (For reference, another of its trading names is BioEdge, which has the same Editor as MercatorNet, but we'll get to that later.) It's a company limited by guarantee; a registered charity established in 2005 and based in NSW.

Oddly, its 2019 ACNC records claim 2 full-time and 10 casual employees for a full-time equivalent (FTE) of 5. However, their total payroll expenditure as lodged, "Editor fees", was less than $38k. But If FTE is 5, then that's an average of just $7,600 per full-time annum. A minimum wage of $16/h over a year, without holiday leave, would equate to around $27k per person, times 5 would make a total minimum lawful payroll budget of $135k per annum. Hmmm.

Other major expenses were website maintenance and hosting ($26k), paying contributors ($18k), and insurance ($4k).

The company's bare-bones website mysteriously states only that its mission is "to help people navigate modern complexities in a way that respects the fullness of human dignity."

Of its masthead MercatorNet, the company’s website says only that the outlet is "dignitarian" and "doesn't want to be trapped on one or the other side of the culture wars". Of its BioEdge masthead it says that it's "completely independent".

Double pfft.

Who controls the company?

According to ASIC's records, the four registered Directors of New Media Foundation Ltd are Romano and Francine Pirola, Jude Hennessy and Michael Cook. Romano Pirola is the Chairperson, yet it is Michael Cook and Jude Hennessy who signed off the company's latest financial statements. Who are these people?

Romano Pirola and his wife Mavis were Joint Chairs of the Australian Catholic Marriage and Family Council, which advises the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference. They were appointed by the Pope in 2014 as one of just 14 married couples worldwide to participate in the Extraordinary Synod of Bishops on the Family. They've been awarded the church's honour of Knight and Dame of the order of St Gregory for services to the Church, and in 2016 were awarded honorary doctorates by Australian Catholic University.

Francine Pirola is the wife of Byron Pirola, Romano and Mavis Pirola's son. Francine and Byron were awarded honours by Pope Francis in 2019, are directors of the Catholic Marriage Resource Centre (which, incidentally, acknowledges that Catholic wedding numbers have been falling for 25 years) and were joint Chairs (like Byron's parents before them) of the Australian Catholic Marriage and Family Council. They've even represented the Australian Catholic Bishops at meetings of the Pontifical Council of the Family.

They're also the couple whose investment company loaned anti-marriage-equality lobby group Marriage Alliance $1.67m in support of anti-LGBTI flyers handed out to children on school buses. The Crikey exposé makes further interesting reading.

Jude Hennesy is director of the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine for the Catholic Diocese of Wollongong. It's responsible for "special religious education" in state schools.

Michael Cook is Editor of both MercatorNet and BioEdge. He's been a member of the devout lay Catholic group, Opus Dei for more than four decades. Unlike MercatorNet's About page, BioEdge's own About page doesn't mention religious links of any kind, and says it's "completely independent".

All four directors of MercatorNet's controlling company are very deeply and strongly invested in the Catholic church. One of them, Michael Cook, is its Editor.

MercatorNet's remit

Back in October 2016 I did a keyword breakdown of articles published by MercatorNet. In the then 11 years of its existence, assuming no articles were taken down, it had published more than 2,000 articles containing the word "Catholic". That's a lot for a small outlet: an average of 3.5 "Catholic" articles a week, every week, for 11 years.

In comparison, there were no articles containing the word "Anglican", and just 51 containing the expression "Church of England". There were also 121 mentioning "Hindu", and 868 mentioning "Islam", with many of those negative.

New Media Foundation Ltd's ACNC record indicates its qualifying charitable purpose is "advancing education". But publishing thousands of articles mentioning religion, most of them Catholic, would seem to more fully reflect the qualifying charitable purpose of "advancing religion". But they chose "advancing education" instead — which bypasses any mention of religion.

Tellingly, every visit to and search on the MercatorNet website currently results in a pop-up that invites you to join their "influential community of truth-tellers" to "push back against post-modern relativism". That "relativism" is a pet peeve (and language) of the Catholic church.
 

mercatornetpopup.gif MercatorNet  attacks post-modern relativism: a pet peeve of the Catholic church, to be countered by "truth-tellers".

MercatorNet headlines the Catholic church's pet peeve: post-modern relativism. This is hardly surprising given its controlling company is run by Opus Dei members, Catholic church staff, and church honours recipients.

The founding of New Media Foundation Ltd

When it was founded in 2005, New Media Foundation Ltd's registered address was 296 Drummond Street, Carlton, Victoria. Significant? Decide for yourself.

That's the address of the Drummond Study Centre. And its connection? "Spiritual activities in the centre are entrusted to Opus Dei, a personal prelature of the Catholic Church." Notice how the centre's name doesn't mention "Catholic" or even religion in any way, either. You have to delve through its web pages to find out.

Previous directors

Similarly, the list of former New Media Foundation Ltd company directors adds to its storyline.

One is Mr Richard Vella, who is or was the spokesperson for Opus Dei in Australia. He describes his personal relationship with God as "the greatest love of my life". Another is Fr Phillip Elias, who was ordained into Opus Dei in Rome in 2017.

Another founding director was Fr Amin Abboud, who died in 2013 and was given a full requiem mass funeral at St Mary's Cathedral in Sydney, presided over by church officials including Monsignor Victor Martinez, the then Regional Vicar of Opus Dei for Australia and New Zealand.

Yet another is Carolyn Moynihan, Deputy Editor of MercatorNet and frequent contributor to Crisis Magazine, "a voice for faithful Catholic laity" and a contributor to the Catholic Exchange. She rails repeatedly against the harms of marriage equality.

Get the picture?

New Media Foundation Ltd and its masthead MercatorNet's Catholic underpinnings are deep and strong.

The roots of the garden

But if you think it might simply be a small bunch of enthusiastic individuals, think again. This veritable garden of fertile Catholic plants arose from somewhere.

Where might that be? I've already pointed out seeding strategies for non-clerical commentary promoted by the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, Anthony Fisher. It's also worth pointing out that, like any other major institution that seeks to influence public policy, the Catholic church in Australia maintains a whole media and communications department.

Further, the Australian Catholic Media Council hosted the triennial Australian Catholic Communications Congress in 2018, which notably for the first time ever was held together with the Australasian Catholic Press Association (ACPA) Conference. ACPA's brief is to "give voice to Catholic perspectives on the issues of our societies". Former Vatican journalist Greg Erlandson delivered the keynote address to the joint conference, and masterclasses were held to "hone particular skills".

Not a recent phenomenon

If you think this just a recent phenomenon you'd be mistaken. Back issues of the Vatican's own newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, prove most enlightening.

At least as far back as the eighties, through the nineties and the noughties, the Vatican has been vigorous in its promotion of media engagement across Europe, Asia/Pacific and the Americas. For example, in March 1990 Pope John Paul II noted "unprecedented opportunities" to proclaim the word of God via media channels in central and eastern Europe.

In the same year, Archbishop John Foley, then President of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, told media workers at a Catholic world congress not to "falsely" compartmentalise their lives into private piety versus professional work subjected to commercial pressure, but instead spread Catholic "truth". He also schooled filmmakers amongst the gathering that "great films are 'at least implicitly religious'".

The Vatican and its 'authorities' repeatedly cajole Catholics into "truth-telling", which means evangelising the church's stances.

Ongoing evangelisation focus

Pope John Paul II repeated his firm wish for more mass media coverage in a major address in 1992, and a follow-on note in the same year encouraged USA Catholic journalists to "put their professional skills at the service of the Gospel".
 

massmedianeedscatholicpresence.gifThe Catholic church believes the mass media needs a Catholic presence.

In another example in 1993 Pope John Paul II emphasised how new media — then videotapes and audiocassettes — could serve the "new evangelisation". And in 2002, he again implored Catholics to adopt the latest new media — the Internet — in "proclaiming the Gospel". Two years later MercatorNet was launched online, as were other similar sites.

And if there was any doubt as to what Catholic communications services were for, in October 2012, Pope Benedict XVI delivered a major address confirming that "the church exists to evangelise".

That's just a few of the many.

Media for the faithful

Back in Australia, B. A. Santamaria established the AD2000 journal in the late 1980s. It's an obviously Catholic publication published by the Thomas Moore Centre in Melbourne. A quality journal aimed squarely at and informative to Catholic adherents, it is of limited interest to the general public. What reaches the general public is mainstream media.

But "Houston, we have a problem"...

Mainstream media a "problem"

In a revealing narrative, loyal Catholic Professor Margaret Somerville, now at the (Catholic) University of Notre Dame Australia, laid out the critical importance of the media to the outcome of VAD law reform in her 2001 book Death Talk: The case against euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide (especially see Chapter 19).

In it, she highlights the Catholic communications problem (without mentioning Catholicism), railing against what she claimed even then was the mostly "small-l liberal" mainstream media as resistant to religious messages. She confirmed that religious media are much more accommodating of the "pro-life" world view.

She specifically noted the importance of "framing" the issues to "significantly influence political decisions", complaining that "anti-euthanasia arguments do not make dramatic and compelling television". She then went on to outline a collection of useful anti-VAD "frames", which were wholly consistent with the Vatican's position and language.

Indeed, you'd be forgiven for thinking Professor Somerville wrote the church's framings, because she's given pre-eminent billing over the Vatican itself in the Catholic Archdiocese of Perth's website for bioethics, the LJ Goody Bioethics Centre. Of further relevance is that the Catholic Archbishop of Perth is, along with the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, the ultimate authority controlling the University of Notre Dame Australia, where Somerville is a Professor.

(Incidentally, the website's home page "What's new" announcement is more than 5½ years out of date, which gives the impression that the Centre was a hasty, event-specific confection whose purpose has long since passed.)
 

ljgoodybioethics2020-09small.jpg Professor Margaret Somerville gets pre-eminent billing on Catholic bioethics, above the Vatican itself.

Don't mention the war religion

Amongst Professor Somerville's numerous writings slamming VAD, some stand out more than others. One that does is a 2008 editorial titled Death talk in a secular age, in which she vigorously encourages religious opponents to "formulate a moral argument against euthanasia without resorting to religion" [my emphasis]. And who published this editorial? Why, it was MercatorNet!

Did the Catholic church take note of Professor Somerville's strategy? As I've pointed out before, Mr Ben Smith, Director of the Life, Marriage and Family Office at the Catholic Archdiocese of Hobart, fails to mention who he really is in at least two purportedly "independent" groups fulminating against Tasmania's current VAD Bill. One of the groups he leads, Live & Die Well, encourages people to write objections to their parliamentarians, but expressly commands "DO NOT use religious arguments."

Professor Somerville was also a keynote speaker at a 2008 conference of media professionals in Toronto, in which she advised journalists and editors how to "frame" the debate against VAD. But these were not just any journalists and editors at large. They were Catholic journalists and editors: members of the Association of Roman Catholic Communicators of Canada, whom she schooled alongside a number of Catholic church officials. The conference's title? "Proclaim it from the rooftops!"

Catholic Professor Margaret Somerville has been central to the Catholic church's hostile "framing" of VAD, and helping media specialists spread that framing through the media.

More religious frustrations

Over the years Professor Somerville continued to build upon the theme, including in her 2015 book, Bird on an Ethics Wire: Battles about values in the culture wars. She escalated her criticism of the "intense tolerance" of "the now ubiquitous moral relativism" as an illustration of how VAD law reform demonstrates what happens "if we take a purely secular approach not balanced by religious views."

A curated garden

You will have noticed by now significant common threads in favour of Catholic "truth"; against "relativism"; calls to evangelise using the media; calls to avoid and actual avoidance of religion in argumentation; avoidance of revealing religious connections in by-lines; and a united portfolio of Church-friendly framings of VAD by a busy theatre of players.

Given the church's perceptions of a hostile mainstream media, is it any wonder that some devout Catholic contributors, and deeply Catholic media outlets, hide their religious petticoats and zucchetti while publishing grave misinformation in the curry of fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) against VAD?

This isn't a random jungle.

No, it's a curated garden, tended to by what we might call the 'Catholic communicators guild'.

Failure to mention deep Catholic roots behind purported "secular" attacks on VAD law reform is a strategy of the 'Catholic communicators guild'.

Conclusion

In this review, I've revealed only some of the deep Catholic connections that resulted in a shocking appropriation of the death of an elderly woman with cancer, using misinformation and framing wholly consistent with the Catholic church's evangelisation, but withholding key information about those deep religious underpinnings.

It's clear the Catholic church understands that its religious arguments are unpersuasive to the wider community. It's also important that the public and legislators understand how religious forces attempt to sow fear, uncertainty and doubt about VAD law reform by giving the appearance of secular neutrality to its messages.

Mrs Dugdale’s gran deserved better than to be appropriated for the aggrandisement of an agenda that is clearly at odds with her own beliefs and values… and the values of the overwhelming majority of Australians.

May she rest in peace.


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St Mary's Cathedral, Hobart, Tasmania

Hobart Catholic Archbishop Julian Porteous makes a number of incorrect representations about voluntary assisted dying (VAD) in his recent Talking Points article (Hobart Mercury 23rd Aug). And, most of his own flock disagree with his opposed stance.

Let's take a look at the facts, and the Archbishop's 'alternatives'.

NOTE: While The Hobart Mercury published Archbishop Porteous' arguments, they declined to publish this rebuttal.

Key points

  1. Archbishop Porteous wrongly equates VAD with general suicide and insinuates they are lonely deaths when they aren't.
  2. He claims that palliative care can always help, when palliative care peak bodies clearly state that it can't.
  3. He insensitively co-opts Covid-19 victims and their families into his arguments, despite them having nothing to do with VAD.
  4. He doesn't represent his own flock: three quarters (74%) of Australian Catholics support VAD, including near half (48%) who strongly support VAD. A tiny 15% are opposed.
  5. In just twelve years (2007─19), the Australian Catholic church has lost a quarter (26%) of its flock. Of those remaining, an increasing proportion, now half (50%), never or almost never attend services.
  6. Diocese Director of Life, Marriage and Family, Mr Ben Smith, encourages Catholics to write to their politicians using the same talking points as Porteous, and with express instructions "DO NOT use religious arguments".

Assisted deaths completely different from general suicide

One particularly egregious aspect of Archbishop Porteous' rhetoric is the innuendo he employs to equate VAD with general suicide, including liberally sprinkling the word "suicide" through his narrative.

But there are profound differences between general suicide and VAD. Most Australians understand that, and research shows that most Australian doctors agree.

Assisted deaths are not lonely

The Archbishop, with astonishing misjudgement, also co-opts the Covid-19 deceased into his story arc: people whose funeral can't be attended by loved ones because of government-imposed lockdown. He obliquely infers that VAD users are or will be naturally unattended by loved ones — even without imposed lockdown.

He further slathers on observations about family reconciliations during the natural dying process, with the implicit meaning that's the only dying context in which families might reconcile.

His presumptions skirt extensive evidence that one of the most treasured factors amongst both VAD law users and their loved ones is the opportunity to express love and caring, and the ability to gather and say goodbye.

Further, multiple scholarly studies show that loved ones recover from bereavement after an assisted death at least as well as those bereaved from natural death, and in some cases, better.

Contrary to Archbishop Porteous' sinister insinuations, VAD deaths can prompt families to gather, express love, say goodbye, and grieve well.

Palliative care can't always help

Archbishop Porteous also argues that palliative care "is able to manage pain and suffering" such that nobody should experience a bad death. He ought to know better: more than half of all palliative care services in Australia are delivered via Catholic institutions.

Palliative Care Australia has clearly stated that "complete relief of all suffering is not always possible, even with optimal palliative care". Even Catholic Doctor's Association palliative care specialist Dr Odette Spruyt, a past President of the Australian and New Zealand Society of Palliative Medicine, has said "it is simplistic to argue that palliative care can remove all suffering at the end of life."

Both of Australia's peak palliative care bodies acknowledge that even the best care can't relieve all terrible suffering at the end of life.

Less treatment but more treatment

Then there's the incoherence of the Archbishop’s argument acknowledging that people want to avoid more medical intervention, while arguing at the same time that more medical intervention (palliative care) is always the only answer to end-of-life suffering.

What about the devout religious?

He adds an odour of hubris to this unctuous spread by noting with disapproval that "family members of those who have had difficult deaths" are the most vocal supporters of law reform. Indeed. These are real people with real experiences of when even the best palliative care can't help.

For balance, it's worth pointing out that numerous research studies show that it's the most religious who are the most vocal opponents of VAD law reform.

Numerous scholarly studies show that it's the most religious who are the most vocal opponents of VAD law reform.

But don't mention religion

It's curious then that the Archbishop — a senior cleric — invokes not a single religious statement or reference in his narrative. Perhaps he's coordinated well with his diocesan Director of Life, Marriage and Family Office, Mr Ben Smith, who advises in an anti-VAD letter-writing guide handed out at Tasmanian masses last week, "DO NOT use religious arguments".

Unsurpisingly, Mr Smith also recommends other language demonstrated in the Archbishop's opinion piece: imply that people will be vulnerable, say that palliative care is the answer, bring up the Covid-19 pandemic, and refer to assisted suicide rather than assisted dying.

Director of Hobart's Catholic Life, Marriage and Family Office, Mr Ben Smith, urges Catholics to write to their politicians to oppose VAD, but directing them “DO NOT use religious arguments”.

Far from representing the 'everyman'

Rather than use any religious references, Archbishop Porteous carefully crafts his grave implications in 'everyman' language as though the points he makes are naturally agreeable to everyone.

But he doesn't represent the great majority of Australians, four out of five (80%) of whom support VAD, according to the most recent (2019) impeccable national study from Australian National University.

Far from representing Australian Catholics

Nor does Archbishop Porteous represent the views of most Australian Catholics. The ANU study also found that three quarters (74%) of them support VAD, with only a tiny minority (15%) opposed. A staggering near-half (48%) of Australian Catholics now strongly support VAD, up from around a third (36%) just three years earlier in 2016.

Three quarters of Australian Catholics support VAD law reform, almost half of them strongly.

At the same time, the ANU study reveals that the Catholic Church represents fewer and fewer Australians. In just the twelve years between 2007 and 2019, the Catholic Church lost a quarter (26%) of its flock. Australians with no religion (41%) now outnumber Catholics by two to one (21%).

In addition, of the fewer still identifying as Catholic, there's been an increase of more than one in five — now comprising half (50%) — who never, or almost never, attend services.

It's worth emphasising that even amongst those who haven't abandoned the Catholic church altogether — the more entrenched — strong support for VAD law reform has soared.

The Australian Catholic church has lost a quarter of its flock in 12 years, and half of those remaining never or almost never attend services.

Not the best spokesperson

Amid shrinking flocks, withering attendance and a weighty jump in strong Catholic support for VAD, it's curious that the Archbishop continues to vocally push entrenched opposition. Perhaps Sydney's Catholic Archbishop Anthony Fisher was right when he said in 2011, "Bishops, for instance, are not always the best public spokespeople for the Church on such matters." Indeed.

As politicians are only too keenly aware, they're elected by the people, not appointed by religious officials.

Australians unambiguously show a determined and increasing appetite for lawful VAD. It would be a courageous politician indeed who resolved to trudge the road now so obviously on the wrong side of history.


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Palliative care specialist advances incoherent reasons to oppose VAD.

Director of Palliative Care at Cabrini Health, Associate Professor Natasha Michael, yesterday published an opinion piece in The Age newspaper. In it, she rails against Victoria’s voluntary assisted dying (VAD) Act which comes into effect on 19th June. Instead she articulates an arrogant and prescriptive view of what Australians should and shouldn’t be allowed, consistent with Catholic dogma, as I uncover.

Michael, along with fellow devout Catholic Dr Stephen Parnis, ‘tirelessly’ opposed the introduction of Victoria’s VAD law. They continue to actively oppose it, and her opinion piece reveals her spurious ‘reasoning’.

The Catholic Healthcare brick wall

More than half of all palliative care services in Australia are delivered through Catholic institutions, of which Cabrini Health is one arm. These institutions have determined that VAD will not be available in any of their facilities or via any of their services, even if the individual patient and doctor are supportive.

This arbitrarily limits access to lawful choice by citizens.

Confected ‘institutional conscience’

I say ‘arbitrarily’ because ‘institutional conscience’ is a confection: it doesn’t really exist. Only real persons have conscience. The fabricated dictates of any institution — presented as ‘moral rules’ — extinguish the actual real conscience of those who exist within it: at least, those whose conscience differs.

The upshot is that a specific cohort of religious, celibate men in Rome dictate whether Australian citizens can or can’t obtain lawful healthcare services from half the service providers.

So let’s examine what the institutional ‘conscience’ has to say.

Disgraceful framing in headline

We can’t let voluntary assisted dying negate our commitment to the ill”, Michael’s article headline screams.

Firstly, VAD is not available to the “ill”. It’s available only to those with terminal illness and intolerable suffering, according to 68 criteria.

Secondly, Michael invokes a false dichotomy of “negating a commitment”. VAD does not “negate a commitment”. Indeed, to fail to hear and respect a persistent, fully informed and tested request for VAD that meets all the criteria is to negate palliative care’s commitment to honour the patient’s deeply held values, beliefs and decisions.

Medical-coloured glasses

The introduction of voluntary assisted dying legislation in Victoria on June 19 will remind us of the occasional failure of medicine,” Michael says.

That’s it. The patient’s death is a failure of medicine, as though a person’s death is a medical event rather than a deeply human and private one of personhood.

It also flags the common but immature medical assumption that “death = failure”. Death is inevitable, not a “failure”. The key question about death for people with terminal illness is “how”, and Michael presumes to prescribe the “how”: being receptacles for interventions that she and her colleagues provide.

Let’s be clear. Many people are helped enormously by palliative care. That’s a great credit to the discipline’s specialists.

However, as Palliative Care Australia acknowledges, even the best palliative care can’t relieve all excruciating, debilitating and humiliating refractory symptoms.

Michael’s answer to this sometimes “failure” of medical interventions? Deliver more interventions, whether the patient considers them consistent with his own values, beliefs and circumstances or not.

They’re very heavily medical-coloured glasses indeed.

Three faux ‘threats’

Michael then invokes three faux ‘threats’ supposedly caused by lawful VAD in Victoria.

Faux threat 1: “Validating suicide as an acceptable choice”.

Michael exposes her own bias here: that all self-hastening of deaths are the same — that there is no meaningful difference between a dying person who is fully informed and whose rational choice for a peaceful assisted death has been extensively tested, with the violent and impulsive action of a person suffering a temporary, resolvable personal crisis, be it mental illness, substance abuse, intimate relationship breakdown or other circumstance.

Michael is pretty much on her own here. Most Australian doctors make a clear distinction between these very different contexts.

Faux threat 2: “accepting substandard medical care by supporting the lack of rigour in defining [VAD] eligibility”.

Michael overlooks that there is a major lack of rigour in existing, lawful end-of-life choices.

There are no statutory requirements for a patient to refuse medical treatment, even if the treatment would be life-saving.

There are no statutory requirements for the voluntary refusal of food and fluids in order to die, either.

More critically, despite terminal sedation being a common end-of-life medical practice but ethically problematic (including that it may hasten death and may not alleviate intractable symptoms), not only is there no statutory requirement for its practice, but neither the Australian Medical Association nor Palliative Care Australia have official guidelines on its practice.

Thus, in railing against the staggering 68 standards of practice prescribed in Victoria’s VAD law — vastly more than any other in the world — as a “lack of rigour”, Michael makes no mention of three other major life-end choices that have no such standards, including her own discipline’s terminal sedation.

Doctor, heal thyself (and thine own systems).

Faux threat 3: “introducing into the healthcare curriculum the intentional ending of life as acceptable medical treatment”

Michael creates a misleading impression here. By referring to ‘curriculum’ you might think that all medical students would have to undergo training on how to end lives, or be ‘indoctrinated’ to accept VAD. That is not true.

To be able to prescribe lethal medication under Victoria’s legislation, the doctor must undergo additional training in relation to that procedure. Doctors will only receive the training if they self-nominate for it: it’s not compulsory.

If, by ‘curriculum’ Michael means only “VAD might be discussed” in medical school, then she would have to articulate why termination of pregnancy (to which the Catholic church objects) should not be discussed, either. Nor the transfusion of blood, since many Jehovah’s Witnesses object to the procedure.

Own failure in palliative care principles

Nowhere in her opinion piece does Michael acknowledge that the patient may deeply hold values and beliefs that validly favour VAD. Thus, Michael offends the first principle of palliative care which is to make the patient the centre of care and to honour as much as possible the patient’s values, beliefs, attitudes and wishes.

Indeed, in her conclusion, Michael states that palliative care “remains committed to the ongoing accompaniment of our patients. Not abandoning them” and which is “the only plausible method of compassion and care.”

This surely is the most egregious and arrogant self-interest of all: patients must subject themselves to being accompanied by palliative care staff and their ‘interventions’ whether they want more or not.

On the contrary, to fail to hear and respect a genuine, informed and persistent request for a peaceful hastened death from a dying patient for whom this accords most firmly with his deeply held values and beliefs, is to abandon the patient.

Conclusion

Michael is of course entitled to her personal stance, and I celebrate her right to hold her views: for herself.

However, her ‘requirement’ that all Victorians be denied access to an option that four out of five believe to be moral — and instead subject themselves to interventions administered by Michael and her colleagues — reveals an unattractive arrogance.

It’s a shame that Catholic bioethics doesn’t teach more about reflection, especially as to whether one’s own beliefs ought to dictate and limit the choices of others with equally firmly held, though different, values.

In the meantime, Victorians are pawns to the tyranny of the Vatican as to whether there is a local healthcare facility that will hear and examine their request for a peaceful, assisted death in the face of terminal illness.

In many places, there won’t be.


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Jones, Paton and Kheriaty's articles demonstrate poor science and multiple, egregious instances of bias.

In 2015, Dr David Jones and Prof. David Paton published an article titled “How does legalization of physician-assisted suicide affect rates of suicide?” in the Southern Medical Journal. The article purported to establish suicide contagion from Oregon and Washington Death With Dignity Act (DWDA) deaths to “total suicides.”  It also purported to establish no decrease in general suicide rates, which Jones & Paton argued should occur by substitution of assisted death for some general suicides. (Notice how these two ‘expected’ results — an anticipated rise and an anticipated fall in suicide rates — are at odds in principle.)

In my thorough and empirically-backed response, I expose the disgraceful playbook of these authors as they shambolically commit no fewer than ten deadly sins against science in the pursuit of their opposition to lawful assisted dying.

Get the full report here

Executive Summary

In 2015, Dr David Jones & Prof. David Paton published an article in the Southern Medical Journal titled “How does legalization of physician-assisted suicide affect rates of suicide?” This study examines the article, as well as an enthusiastic editorial of it by Dr Aaron Kheriaty in the same journal issue, both of which portray “suicide contagion” from Oregon and Washington’s death with dignity acts (DWDA).

However, while contagion from general suicides is a well-established phenomenon, there are multiple sound reasons to reject contagion theory in relation to assisted deaths, including:

  • Most healthcare professionals readily acknowledge key differences in the characteristics of assisted deaths: for example, a fully informed, tested and rational decision with shared decision-making.
  • Those using Oregon and Washington’s DWDAs are, by qualifying for it, already actively dying. Thus, they are choosing between two ways of dying rather than between living and dying.
  • Most of those using the DWDA discuss it with their families (expected, peaceful death), whereas most general suicides occur in isolation and without discussion (unexpected, often violent death).
  • Multiple studies show that while families of general suicide experience complicated bereavement, families of assisted dying cope at least as well as, and in some cases better than, the general population or those who considered but did not pursue assisted death.

 
Even if “suicide contagion from assisted dying” theory were sound, direct evidence from official government sources shows that the number of potential suicides in Oregon in 2014 would have been fewer than 2 in 855 cases: undetectable by general modelling methods.

Jones & Paton’s article title conveys an air of skilled and scientific neutrality. However, close examination of the article, and Kheriaty’s editorialisation of it, reveals least ten serious flaws or ‘scientific sins.’

The authors demonstrated little understanding of the complex issues surrounding suicide, willingness to unjustifiably equate assisted dying with general suicide, contentment with failing to search for, consider or include contrary evidence including from sources they cite to argue their case, unreasonable trust in a model that couldn’t hope to legitimately resolve their premises, satisfaction with executing their model amateurishly, a disposition to overstate confidence of causation in the absence of meaningful statistical correlations, and an inclination for emphasising results in accordance with their theories while de-emphasising or ignoring others.

Any of these flaws was serious enough to invalidate Jones & Paton’s article and Kheriaty’s conclusions of it, yet there is not one deadly flaw: there are at least ten.

Their claim of a supposed 6.3% suicide contagion rate from assisted dying in Oregon and Washington is a conceptual and mathematical farce.

The Southern Medical Journal is a peer-reviewed journal. However, it is difficult to reconcile the rigorous standards and sound reputation that peer review is intended to maintain, with the numerous, egregious flaws in this study and its dissemination.

Rather than inform the ongoing conversation about lawful assisted dying, the Jones & Paton and Kheriaty articles misinform and inflame it.

Given the numerous egregious flaws, both articles ought to be retracted.

 

Get the full report here

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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.


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More Dutch evidence contradicts Margaret Somerville's 'suicide contagion' theory

I’ve previously published an extensive analysis of how Professor Margaret Somerville, of the Catholic Notre Dame University of Australia, cherry-picked her way through select data that seemed to be (but wasn’t) consistent with her ‘contagion’ theory from assisted dying to the general suicide rate. I provided ample evidence from lawful jurisdictions that comprehensively contradicts her claim. I also published the summary in ABC Religion & Ethics.

Yet Somerville still says despite extensive real-world experience to the contrary, that “I believe that my [suicide contagion] statement will prove to be correct.”

She and her Catholic colleagues still hold onto several tenuous threads of information that might — just might — appear consistent with her theory, despite the truckloads of evidence to the contrary.

One of those tenuous threads is that the general suicide rate in the Netherlands has increased from 2008, around the same time that use of the Dutch euthanasia law also increased. (The general suicide rate previously fell as assisted dying rates increased.)

I reported official Dutch government statistics and expert financial reports to show that the unemployment rate explains most (80%) of the variation in the Dutch general suicide rate since 1960, and that the Netherlands was particularly hard-hit by the global financial crisis from 2008 — whereas neighbouring Belgium wasn’t and its suicide rate dropped as assisted dying numbers increased. Unemployment in hard times is a known significant risk factor for suicide.

Now, a detailed and peer-reviewed analysis of Dutch data recently published in the Netherlands Journal of Medicine throws more mud in the face of Somerville’s theory.1

The research looked at the Dutch assisted death and general suicide rates from 2002 through 2014, separately for each of the five Euthanasia Commission reporting regions.

Headline results of the averages for 2002–14 are shown in Figure 1.

netherlandsfiveregionmap.jpgFigure 1: The average assisted death rate (and suicide rate) as a percent of all deaths by region, 2002-14
Source: Koopman & Putter 2016

As you can see, Region 3, which includes Amsterdam, had by far the greatest assisted death rate (3.4%), compared with the other four regions (1.7% – 2.0%). Yet Region 3’s suicide rate at 1.2% was the same as Region 5 which had only half the assisted death rate of Region 3 (1.7% vs 3.4%). (The authors, unusually, expressed suicides as a percentage of all deaths rather than per 100k population.)

The results are the opposite of Somerville’s theory which says that Region 3’s general suicide rate should be much higher than (not the same as) Region 5’s.

Those figures are the average for 2002–14. It’s possible that the picture is a little different for the more recent years in which the assisted dying rate is higher.

To answer that question, I’ve retrieved official Dutch Government data and calculated the assisted dying rates and general suicide rates for 2014 alone, the most recent year for which all the data is available. I’ve also calculated the general suicide rate per 100,000 population, the more usual way of reporting and comparing suicide statistics. The results are shown in Figure 2.

dutchregionsveandsuicide2014.gifFigure 2: The Dutch assisted death rate and general suicide rate by region for 2014
Sources: Euthanasia Commission annual reports, Dutch Government statistics

While region 1 (the far north) has the lowest assisted death rate (3.2% of all deaths), it has by far the highest general suicide rate (13.6 per 100k population).

The latest Dutch regional data shows the opposite of Margaret Somerville’s ‘suicide contagion’ theory, adding to the already extensive evidence against it.Conversely, region 3 (which includes Amsterdam) has by a very large factor the highest assisted dying rate (6.0% of all deaths), yet it has the second-lowest general suicide rate (10.3 per 100k population).

This latest empirical evidence is consistent with other extensive evidence I’ve published showing an inverse — or no — relationship between assisted dying rates and general suicide rates.

The question is whether Margaret Somerville and her Catholic friends will pay the slightest attention, or continue to rely on invalid, cherry-picked morsels of data that they think support their theory, but don’t.

 

References

  1. Koopman, JJE & Putter, H 2016, 'Regional variation in the practice of euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide in the Netherlands', Netherlands Journal of Medicine, 74(9), pp. 387-394.

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Dr Michael Gannon announces the AMA's policy review to AMA members in 2015

In 2016, the Australian Medical Association (AMA) reviewed its policy on ‘euthanasia and physician assisted suicide.’ Despite ample evidence to the contrary, the AMA executive set its policy as opposed to assisted dying, when the only position that would have acknowledged and respected the views of most of its membership was a position of neutrality.

amauncoveredinfographicmar2017.jpg Infographic summary of 'AMA uncovered'

 

Get the PDFs: Infographic | 'Sixteen questions' | Full report

 

AMA policy review

The Australian Medical Association (AMA) has been historically opposed to legislative reform that would permit doctor-assisted dying for patients in unremitting and untreatable extremis. Its hostile position had been expressed through a Position Statement (PS) in effect for at least a decade, although its Code of Ethics has been completely silent on the matter.

The AMA’s opposition to doctor-assisted dying has been one of the factors leading to the failure of a number of attempts at assisted dying law reform.

In 2015 the AMA announced a review of its ‘policy’ on ‘euthanasia and doctor assisted suicide,’ managed through its Federal Council. The review was conducted from late 2015 and throughout 2016. It included an online survey of more than 3,700 Australian doctors.

Deeply flawed survey — against assisted dying

The survey methodology contained, however unconsciously, multiple serious design flaws biased against assisted dying: flaws which were brought to the attention of the AMA executive separately by two survey design experts. The executive dismissed the criticisms, incoherently arguing that while the AMA’s reviews are “fully-informed decisions based on well-researched, comprehensive information,” the survey was “not formal ‘research’ as such” and merely a “means to engage our members.”

The AMA relied on selected statistics from the survey to publicly explain the outcome of its review. It also provided its own members a private, detailed report of the review, of which more than half was a comprehensive statistical analysis of the survey.

The ‘Survey Limitations’ section of the report mentioned several minor issues, but not the significant biases brought to the attention of the executive by experts.

Yet supportive doctor responses

Despite these significant biases against assisted dying, the survey found:

  • 68% of doctors said that even with optimal care, complete relief of suffering is not always possible.
  • 60% of doctors said that if lawful, euthanasia should be provided by doctors, and more than half of them (total 32%) said that they would indeed practice it.
  • 52% of doctors said that euthanasia can form a legitimate part of medical care.
  • 50% of doctors expressly disagreed with the AMA’s statement that “doctors should not provide euthanasia under any circumstances.”
  • 38% of doctors expressly disagreed with the AMA’s policy opposed to assisted dying (only half expressly agreed), and 35% of doctors said that euthanasia should be lawful.
     

Some doctors oppose legalisation, not euthanasia itself

In relation to the last point, other scholarly research has found that an additional 25% of Australian doctors are opposed to law reform not because they are opposed to assisted dying itself, but because they would rather practice it in private without regulatory ‘interference.’ This confirms that more than half of Australian doctors believe assisted dying can be a legitimate and practical part of medical care.

AMA not representative of Australian doctors

Only AMA members were invited and permitted to participate in the survey, and more than 70% of Australian doctors are not AMA members, despite the AMA expressly advancing itself as representing all Australian doctors. Non-members are likely to be more supportive of assisted dying — snubbing AMA membership due to the AMA’s ‘officially’ hostile stance.

Hostile tweets by President during review

During the review process, AMA President Dr Michael Gannon made repeated public statements hostile towards assisted dying, including a statement that doctor assisted dying would offend the Declaration of Geneva. The Declaration has nothing specific to say about assisted dying, and any general Declaration statements Dr Gannon relied upon would be equal arguments against abortion. Yet the AMA accepts abortion practice by doctors.

Indefensible conclusion by AMA Executive

Finally, in the face of ample evidence (despite the methodological biases) that at least half of the AMA’s own members favour doctor involvement in lawful assisted dying and deem it legitimate medical care, and 38% of its own members expressly disagreeing with its opposed policy, the AMA executive decided to maintain ‘official’ organisational opposition in the revised PS.

The PS, which was previously named broadly as about ‘end of life care’, is now exclusively named as about ‘euthanasia and physician assisted suicide,’ even though it continues its broad coverage. This suggests that, however unconsciously, the executive’s attitudes against assisted dying have become more entrenched.

The PS continues to unequivocally state as before that “The AMA believes that doctors should not be involved in interventions that have as their primary intention the ending of a person’s life.” In announcing the conclusions of its review the AMA has promoted this statement widely and as though it applies to all Australian doctors, most of whom are not AMA members.

Neither AMA 'policy' nor its Code of Ethics is binding

Despite the confidence and certainty of the statement, the AMA advises that neither Australian doctors in general nor even its own members are bound by its PSs. Thus, statements in AMA PSs are more ‘suggestions’ or ‘thought bubbles’ rather than authoritative statements.

More recently, the AMA’s Code of Ethics has been updated, yet remains entirely silent on doctor-assisted dying, in curious contradiction of the ‘certainty’ of its PS. The Code of Ethics is not binding on doctors (even AMA members), either.

Incoherent demands for policy consultation

The AMA executive continues to demand deep involvement in the development of a legal framework for assisted dying (despite saying that doctors should not be involved in the practice), yet it has developed no specific frameworks for three other related, already-lawful medical practices: refusal of life-preserving medical treatment, continuous deep sedation until death, and the voluntary refusal of food and fluids.

These discrepancies collectively raise the question as to whether the AMA’s ‘official’ opposition to assisted dying law reform is political rather than medical.

Conclusison

The evidence is clear that the only “justifiable” position the AMA executive could have taken was to declare the AMA neutral towards lawful assisted dying — a matter of individual conscience for its member doctors.

Australian doctors may well question the AMA executive as to how such a flawed process arrived at the outcome it did, and a collection of questions are posed for the AMA to answer. Sixteen questions are posed below.

 

Get the PDFs: Infographic | 'Sixteen questions' | Full report

 

Sixteen questions for the AMA

  1. Why does the AMA, through its Tasmanian representative, think it appropriate to state on national television that dying patients in extremis and without relief can suicide by themselves, even if the AMA doesn’t “encourage” it?
  2. Why did the AMA repeatedly delete corrections to its negative MJA misinformation about assisted dying practice in Belgium?
  3. Why did the AMA decide to review its “policy on euthanasia and physician assisted suicide” when it didn’t specifically have one? It had a policy on the role of doctors in end of life care.
  4. Why did the AMA review comprehensively ignore the substantial secondary data that already exists about the attitudes and practices of doctors and patients in end of life decisions?
  5. Why did the AMA not proactively obtain professional advice and assistance with the design and conduct of its doctor survey, and prefer to use such an amateurish one?
  6. If the AMA really represents all Australian doctors, why did it expressly exclude more than two thirds of them from its survey?
  7. Why did the AMA persistently use inappropriate language and inadequate definitions about assisted dying?
  8. Why did the AMA not make any serious attempt to understand patient perspectives beyond superficial statements that ‘opinions are divided’?
  9. Why did the AMA not report the multiple significant biases in its survey, which it knew about, in the ‘limitations’ section of its final report?
  10. Why did the AMA President consider it appropriate to make multiple statements hostile towards assisted dying while the review was underway?
  11. Why did the AMA executive decide to continue to demand doctors not participate in assisted dying, when more than half of its own members said it could be appropriate clinical practice provided by doctors, nearly four in ten expressly disagreed with the policy, and a third said they’d participate if assisted dying were legalised?
  12. Why does the AMA consider it appropriate to make repeated categorical, public statements that doctors should not be involved in assisted dying, when its Position Statement is not binding on its own members, let alone all Australian doctors?[1]
  13. How can the AMA justify the incoherence of having an expressly opposed stance to assisted dying in its revised Position Statement while it remains totally silent on the matter in its Code of Ethics, revised at the same time?
  14. How can the AMA legitimately demand to be centrally involved in developing an assisted dying framework — in which it says doctors should not be involved — for law reform, when it has no frameworks at all for the similar contexts of refusal of life-preserving medical treatment, continuous deep sedation until death, and the voluntary refusal of food and fluids (all currently lawful and practiced)? When will it develop and publish those?
  15. Why does the AMA continue to present itself to the media and the public as representing all Australian doctors, when more than two thirds of them are not members?
  16. Will the AMA include a formal analysis and critique of this deeply flawed policy review as part of its modernisation efforts in order to rebuild its brand value and stem the falling tide of its membership? That is, is the AMA prepared to learn from its mistakes?

[1]   The AMA’s Code of Ethics is not binding even on its own members, either. So when the Code states “don’t engage in sexual, exploitative or other inappropriate relationships with your patients,” that’s merely a ‘suggestion’ or ‘recommendation’ rather than an ‘obligation’ as a member of the AMA.

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