Over the Christmas break you may have seen the 2015 Australian film Last Cab To Darwin. It had some iconic Australian actors, outback scenery and raw humour.
The interesting part for doctors was the film was based on the real-life story of terminally ill Broken Hill taxi driver Max Bell, who drove his cab over 3000km to Darwin.
He wanted to end his life after the 1995 introduction of the Northern Territory’s Rights of the Terminally Ill Act.
Dr Philip Nitschke helped four people end their lives in the 11 months it was legal to do so in the NT.
However, at the time of the film’s release, Dr Nitschke criticised filmmakers for rewriting history to misrepresent the achievements of Max Bell.
Dr Nitschke visited Perth not long after he returned from overseas to find that lawyers had negotiated 25 conditions on his registration, which were imposed by the national Medical Board.
He said support for his ongoing involvement in Exit International was strong and the Medical Board conditions so onerous that he had no choice but to burn his medical registration card and end his medical career.
With this goes any hold the Medical Board has over Philip Nitschke who said, “The conditions the board has sought to impose on me … amount to a heavy handed and clumsy attempt to restrict the free flow of information on end-of-life choice.”
There are those amongst us who say the medical profession should never be part of the argument about dying – that baby boomers who feel they have had a good innings will sort it out and lobby hard.
Maybe then we will stop reading the occasional horror stories of elderly people taking their lives in ways no one would wish.
FOOTNOTE: Philip Nitschke will be taking the show that had last year’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival in a spin to the Melbourne International Comedy Festival in April.