The First Legal 'Physician-Assisted Suicide'

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 22 September 2016

⏱️ 9 minutes

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Summary

On September 22nd 1996, an Australian doctor called Phillip Nitschke, helped cancer sufferer Bob Dent, to die. He had connected a computer to a syringe full of lethal drugs - allowing Bob Dent to choose the time of his death. It was all done under a new law which had just been brought in to Australia's Northern Territory. But soon afterwards, politicians began working to overturn that law. Kevin Andrews MP, led the campaign to outlaw assisted suicide in Australia. Both he, and Dr Nitschke have been speaking to Ashley Byrne about the case.

Photo: Dr Nitschke with his computer and automated syringe. Copyright: Philip Nitschke.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and thank you for downloading witness from the BBC World Service with me Ashley Byrne.
0:05.2	Today we're going back to September 1996 and the world's first legal doctor-assisted suicide.
0:12.0	I've been speaking to the Australian doctor who carried it out
0:14.8	and to the Australian politician who overturned the law just a few months later.
0:19.7	In Australia a man suffering from cancer has become the first to legally choose the time
0:26.1	and manner of his death by computer. Bob Dent, who was in his mid-60s, was given a lethal injection controlled by the machine. The news has
0:34.7	divided the country's church leaders and its politicians. On the 22nd of
0:39.4	September 1996, Bob Dent an Australian man with terminal prostate cancer, took advantage of a change
0:46.7	in the law in the country's Northern Territory to allow so-called assisted dying or euthanasia.
0:54.0	He was incontinent lying on a rubber sheet going through a lot of unrelievable pain.
0:59.2	He was so anemic that if he raised his head he became breathless, if he even got a significant
1:05.2	cuddled from his wife he would break a rib. This was a horrific existence in the final
1:10.2	stages of prostate cancer which had disseminated to very many parts of his body.
1:14.8	Philip Nitchki was the doctor who oversaw the first death under the new law.
1:19.2	He says the legislation was controversial from the moment it was first proposed.
1:24.2	It seemed to me a good idea and I almost rolled over and went back to sleep when I heard about
1:27.8	it but I was really taken aback by the sudden and intense opposition to the proposal both from members of my own
1:35.8	profession that is medicine but also of course the church. Dr Nitchke got involved in the
1:41.1	campaign to bring in a new law to help terminally ill people who wanted
1:45.1	to end their own lives.
1:46.8	It looked like it wasn't going to pass and I worked quite hard because of course the Medical Association
1:51.8	was saying there isn't going to be a doctor in the
	...

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