An article in today's  Hobart Mercury confirms Exit International's attention on the euthanasia & assisted suicide bill set to be debated in the Tasmanian Parliament next week. Continue reading

 we looked at the confusion that is unnecessarily clouding the debate over the Tasmanian euthanasia bill. Nick McKim MP failed to note the necessary distinctions between an action with the direct intention to kill and an action with the intention to relieve pain and suffering. In my last post  Continue reading

In March, at the time of the euthanasia & assisted suicide discussion paper in Tasmania, The President of the Tasmanian Branch of the Australian Medical Association condemned the move in the Australian Media.  MP Nick McKim - a prime mover in pushing the agenda forward, responded. Continue reading

Recently Tasmanian Premier Lara Giddings MP, in response to a tweet from a colleague about the problems with euthanasia in jurisdictions where it is legal replied: "Interesting that democracies from Oregon to Switzerland with Voluntary Assisted Dying have not gone back and overturned their laws - why?"  That's a very worthwhile question. Note well, of course, that none of the jurisdictions where either assisted suicide or euthanasia is legal call it 'voluntary assisted dying', but we get the point. Continue reading

In February this year, the Tasmanian Premier, Lara Giddings and Nick McKim MP released a discussion paper on euthanasia seeking submissions and input from the community on a draft proposal for legislation they referred to as . Their intention to work towards this legislative change had been originally announced in mid-2010.'Voluntary Assisted Dying (VAD)' Continue reading

This is a summary opinion on some of the provisions of the Tasmanian  Voluntary Assisted Dying Bill 2013. It is not an exhaustive commentary but merely an indication of some of the principle concerns: Continue reading

Euthanasia and the Giddings/McKim bill get a celebrity endorsement from TV personality, Tracey Spicer in the .  Tracey Spicer's story about the death of her mother is well known. Her mother passed away in clearly difficult circumstances in 1999. In June 2008, Spicer wrote about her experiences in the .  Continue reading

The   today () ran a feature on their letters page under the title:  Continue reading

For the sake of our readers from outside Australia, Tasmania is an island state off the south coast of the Australian mainland with the next stop-south being Antarctica. 'Mainlanders' as people like me are often called by our Tasmanian cousins, engage in the kind of parochialism that, I guess, is pretty common anywhere.  Tasmanian's respond in kind. I well recall on one of my visits to the Apple Isle that a colleague, in a sign of appreciation for my work said that I was, "Proof that Tasmanians can swim!" Continue reading

The  UK Telegraph is reporting the death of a person in Belgium on the grounds of "unbearable psychological suffering". Continue reading